The Sex Offender Registry: The Future Always Disappoints History

All our futures are carved by a history we did not live, and cannot share. There are some among us who are never able to recover from the trauma of childhood. Murder, death, illness, and sexual molestation, are all dark stars in the sky that look down upon us, and judge us for being unable to comprehend the constellation of their human conclusions.

Continue reading → The Sex Offender Registry: The Future Always Disappoints History

The Criminal Chemist

In the past, one of the strongest ways that a prosecutor could prove that there had been criminal wrongdoing was to use witnesses. A person or two may have seen a criminal snatching a purse and running off with it. There could have been even more witnesses. On the other hand, it was entirely possible that the witnesses were all fabricated by a shrew prosecutor in search of a win.

Continue reading → The Criminal Chemist

The Laser Shooting Air Force Candidate

Parents love their precious little snowflakes and will do anything for them. It doesn’t matter if they are completely guilty of a crime. Case in point — the mother of one Corey Miller, aged 18, who was arrested for pointing a laser pointer at a police officer’s car and then at the police officer’s face when he went over to investigate why this was the case.

Continue reading → The Laser Shooting Air Force Candidate

When Prison is Preferable to the Streets

There are many things that children say when they are asked what they want to be when they grow up. Children will say that they want to be an astronaut, or that they want to be the president of the United States. (The fact that an over two hundred year life of the United States have yielded but 44 presidents does not seem to hinder teachers in grade school from telling large groups of children that they could be president if they wanted to be president.) No child, as far as I am aware, has ever said that they hope one day to live their life in prison.

Continue reading → When Prison is Preferable to the Streets

Facebook Gets Student Arrested

A man slowly ascends the stairs of a tall building. He has an assault rifle strapped to his back and carries a megaphone in one hand. When he gets to the roof he looks down on the hundreds of people walking down the street and calls for their attention. He watches carefully as they gather around in the street below and when just enough people are listening he lifts the assault rifle in one hand and puts the megaphone to his mouth and says, “Ladies and gentlemen… I own an assault rifle illegally!” Within minutes he is arrested and nobody is surprised. Why then would someone do the online equivalent and provide photographic evidence to the world, including the police that eventually arrested said someone?

Continue reading → Facebook Gets Student Arrested

Turning to the Public for Detective Investigative Help

If you look at a weekly lineup of television shows at any given time you will notice that there are always plenty of shows that involve criminal investigation. Thinking back to my own childhood I remember that one of my favorite book series to read was the Encyclopedia Brown series in which at the end of every story, the reader is given the opportunity to solve the crime having read all of the facts and details of the crime. It is possibly in this spirit — that many people like to believe that they could solve a crime if given the opportunity — that the police in Sarasota County released all of the information they have regarding a puzzling unsolved crime.


Continue reading → Turning to the Public for Detective Investigative Help

The Pain of Removing Racism

It is difficult to change who you are once you have lived a certain way for years, even decades. For people who struggle to lose weight, for example, part of the problem is not that the workout routines or proper nutrition is difficult on a day to day basis — but actually changing the lifestyle to become that in which those routines are the norm and the nutrition is a healthy one is the challenge. This is just as difficult when, for example, a person is trying to break away from a bad way of living — a criminal lifestyle, gang membership, or similar affiliation.

Continue reading → The Pain of Removing Racism