A recent camp put on by the Suffolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office is sure to produce a few future crime-fighters.

This was the eighth year for the weeklong day camp, and the camp has expanded from its beginnings to take on more students and tackle more subjects.

This camp is a great tool for teaching young people that everything isn’t always like it is on television, but that things like crime scene investigators, forensic scientists, police detectives and prosecutors are excellent careers, even if they don’t produce the glory of Hollywood.

Young people can also learn that forensics and crime scene investigation are exciting.

Even what were once extraordinary technological advances in crime-solving, like the use of fingerprint evidence and the discovery of DNA, are now old hat. The generation now coming through the forensics camps held each year isn’t familiar with a world where DNA left behind by criminals can’t be used to identify them.

But the world of forensics technology is advancing at a rapid pace, combining old evidence like fingerprints and DNA — which have always existed, even if humans didn’t discover their crime-solving abilities until later — with evidence in the growing realm of crime that takes place entirely in the cyberworld.

During the camp, students learned about the process of investigating crime scenes. They learned to take photos, take notes, do drawings, and document and collect evidence.

While investigating mock crime scenes, students made a cast of a footprint in the dirt and lifted fingerprints from the handle of a “stolen” vehicle. They even worked with a mock victim to determine what items left in the vehicle weren’t hers and to carefully collect these items.

We look forward to these teens one day being on the front lines of investigating crime in our city or serving in other localities, potentially, throughout the world.