Friday, March 27, 2009
Crime and Stupidity
It’s always disappointing when the perpetrator of a crime is caught by their own stupidity rather than the meticulous police work that TV crime shows suggest. Are they stupid beforehand do you suppose, or does crime addle their brain? I always wonder why killers bury the body of their victim under the floorboards for instance. They may be in a panic, but doesn’t it cross their mind that when the neighbours notice a funny smell, they’ll probably report it to the police?
And this week, the staggering corruption of an American judge has been revealed, equalled only by the stupidity that exposed him. He’d been handing down hundreds of custodial sentences for children as young as 14 for the heinous offences of stealing a $4 jar of nutmeg and creating a satirical MySpace page of their headteacher. But, as he said in an interview with the Guardian last month, he was only doing it because he wanted to help the kids straighten out their lives. It obviously didn’t occur to him that his somewhat unusual sentencing policy might raise a few eyebrows as well as questions. And when it did, the resulting investigation found that he and another senior juvenile judge, had earned themselves a neat little $2.6m (£1.78m) in kickbacks from the co-owner and builder of a private detention centre in return for a steady flow of children.
Isn't this supposed to happen only in third world countries?
And this week, the staggering corruption of an American judge has been revealed, equalled only by the stupidity that exposed him. He’d been handing down hundreds of custodial sentences for children as young as 14 for the heinous offences of stealing a $4 jar of nutmeg and creating a satirical MySpace page of their headteacher. But, as he said in an interview with the Guardian last month, he was only doing it because he wanted to help the kids straighten out their lives. It obviously didn’t occur to him that his somewhat unusual sentencing policy might raise a few eyebrows as well as questions. And when it did, the resulting investigation found that he and another senior juvenile judge, had earned themselves a neat little $2.6m (£1.78m) in kickbacks from the co-owner and builder of a private detention centre in return for a steady flow of children.
Isn't this supposed to happen only in third world countries?
