criminal

Every criminal would be an artist if he had the talent, and every artist would become a criminal if he had the guts.

The notion that a vast gulf exists between "criminals" and those of us who have never served time in prison is a fiction created by the racial ideology that birthed mass incarceration, namely that there is something fundamentally wrong and morally inferior about "them." The reality, though, is that all of us have done wrong. As noted earlier, studies suggest that most Americans violate drug laws in their lifetime. Indeed, most of us break the law not once but repeatedly throughout our lives. Yet only some of us will be arrested, charged, convicted of a crime, branded a criminal or a felon, and ushered into a permanent undercaste. Who becomes a social pariah and excommunicated from civil society and who trots off to college bears scant relationship to the morality of the crimes committed. Who is more blameworthy: the young black kid who hustles on the street corner, selling weed to help his momma pay rent? Or the college kid who deals drugs out of his dorm room so that he'll have cash to finance his spring break? Who should we fear? The kid in the 'hood who joined a gang and now carries a gun for security, because his neighborhood is frightening and unsafe? Or the suburban high school student who has a drinking problem but keeps getting behind the wheel? Our racially biased system of mass incarceration exploits the fact that all people break the law and make mistakes at various points in their lives with varying degrees of justification. Screwing up-failing to live by one's highest ideals and values-is part of what makes us human.

During my stay in the United States, I witnessed the spontaneous formation of committees in a country for the pursuit and prosecution of a man who had committed a great crime. In Europe, a criminal is an unhappy man who is struggling for his life against the agents of power, whilst the people are merely a spectator of the conflict: in America, he is looked upon as an enemy of the human race, and the whole of mankind is against him.

interview from Ross E. Cheit about The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children (Oxford University Press, February 2014).In the foreword to your book you mention a book titled Satan__ Silence was the catalyst for your research. Tell us about that. Cheit: Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker solidified the witch-hunt narrative in their 1995 book, Satan__ Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, which included some of these cases. I was initially skeptical of the book__ argument for personal reasons. It seemed implausible to me that we had overreacted to child abuse because everything in my own personal history said we hadn__. When I read the book closely, my skepticism increased. Satan__ Silence has been widely reviewed as meticulously researched. As someone with legal training, I looked for how many citations referred to the trial transcripts. The answer was almost none. Readers were also persuaded by long list of [presumably innocent] convicted sex offenders to whom they dedicated the book. If I__ dedicating a book to fifty-four people, all of whom I think have been falsely convicted, I__ going to mention every one of these cases somewhere in the book. Most weren__ mentioned at all beyond that dedication. The witch-hunt narrative is so sparsely documented that it__ shocking.

Many professionals have to sign gagging clauses or face the sack if they speak out. The social worker and therapist was familiar with the scare that revelation brings to the survivor. [_]We are in this story. It isn't ours, but we are in it nonetheless, not least because of the viscous campaign which has followed us over the last ten years. Any organisation with which we work may receive correspondence from the accused adults_ and __alse memory_ movements. Some of these propagandists are confidentially dominating the professional and political arguments using new information technology to spread what we consider to be smears, innuendo and misinformation. P8(refers to authors Beatrix Campbell & Judith Jones _ a journalist and a social worker/therapist)

The discovery that detonated Cleveland is one of Britain__ great contributions to awareness of child abuse. In 1986 and 1987 the Leeds paediatricians Dr Jane Wynne and Dr Christopher Hobbs reported in the Lancet that they were seeing more children who were being buggered than battered. About 300 cases were corroborated. The children were young _ two-thirds were pre-school children _ and anal abuse was more common than vaginal penetration. They also noted that __oys and girls seem to be at similar risk_. Almost half of the children who suffered anal abuse also showed a sign written up in the forensic textbooks as __nal dilation_, an anus opening when it was supposed to stay shut; opening and expecting entry. What the paediatricians were observing was not an acute sign, the effect of a single intrusion _ a spasm or seizure _ but a sign that was telling a story about everyday life; the anatomy of adaption. Anal dilation seemed to describe the architecture of abuse: it allowed the body to receive an incoming object, regularly.

The witch-hunt narrative is a really popular story that goes like this: Lots of people were falsely convicted of child sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s. And they were all victims of a witch-hunt. It just doesn__ happen to line up with the facts when you actually look at the cases themselves in detail. But it__ a really popular narrative _ I think it__ absolutely fair to say that__ the conventional wisdom. It__ what most people now think is the uncontested truth, and those cases had no basis in fact. And what 15 years of painstaking trial court research (says) is that that__ not a very fair description of those cases, and in fact many of those cases had substantial evidence of abuse. The witch-hunt narrative is that these were all gross injustices to the defendant. In fact, what it looks like in retrospect is the injustices were much more often to children.

The survivor movements were also challenging the notion of a dysfunctional family as the cause and culture of abuse, rather than being one of the many places where abuse nested. This notion, which in the 1990s and early 1980s was the dominant understanding of professionals characterised the sex abuser as a pathetic person who had been denied sex and warmth by his wife, who in turn denied warmth to her daughters. Out of this dysfunctional triad grew the far-too-cosy incest dyad. Simply diagnosed, relying on the signs: alcoholic father, cold distant mother, provocative daughter. Simply resolved, because everyone would want to stop, to return to the functioning family where mum and dad had sex and daughter concentrated on her exams. Professionals really believed for a while that sex offenders would want to stop what they were doing. They thought if abuse were decriminalised, abusers would seek help. The survivors knew different. P5

Talk of "witch-hunts" conceals an inconvenient fact: men charged with rape stand a better chance of walking free than other defendants. The conviction rate in rape trials _ 63 per cent in 2012/13 _ is quite a lot lower. Prosecutors are taking a bigger risk when they bring rape cases to court, especially when the alleged offences happened decades ago, leaving no forensic evidence.The Independent, 9 February 2014

A prisoner is imprisoned by the crime that he has committed. A jailer is imprisoned _ in the very same prison _ by the employment contract that he has signed.

Genetics, accidents of birth or events in early childhood have left criminals' brains and bodies with measurable flaws predisposing them to committing assault, murder and other antisocial acts. .... Many offenders also have impairments in their autonomic nervous system, the system responsible for the edgy, nervous feeling that can come with emotional arousal. This leads to a fearless, risk-taking personality, perhaps to compensate for chronic under-arousal. Many convicted criminals, like the Unabomber, have slow heartbeats. It also gives them lower heart rates, which explains why heart rate is such a good predictor of criminal tendencies. The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, for example, had a resting heart rate of just 54 beats per minute, which put him in the bottom 3 per cent of the population.

Edward Snowden isn't a traitor. He reported the crime of conspiracy to deny citizens of their constitutional rights. NetworkEtiquette.net

I rushed to the bathroom for every corner of the hospital was suffocating. I got hold of acid-bottle, which was meant for toilet cleaning. As I took it into my hands, I realized I had more filth inside me than a toilet. A toilet could be cleaned by an acid bottle, or a toilet cleaner, but there was no such product that could cleanse a criminal from inside. I felt so ashamed of myself that I couldn__ even look into the eyes of my reflection in the mirror on the wall.

I grew excited when I realized this basic asymmetry implied that nothing _ no evidence, no information, no facts or data _ connected me to the stranger except for the evidence of my own personal observations which remained private as long as I kept them that way. And what did that mean? First of all, it meant I could influence the stranger__ life in any way I wanted without him or anyone else suspecting my involvement. But what did that mean? Among other things, it meant I could disrupt this man__ life in some rather extreme ways and never become a suspect in a subsequent investigation. Or did it mean that? I wasn__ sure but I felt I needed to find out.

Sometimes the guilty one is not the person who has committed the crime, but the person who has created the possibility for it to be committed.

What better weapon than the human brain? The human brain was Mrs Twartski's and Wiezenslowski's domain. The children who were used were the castaways of the United States government, like dogs abandoned and a vet's office. Mrs. Twartski read the letter out loud, slowly and carefully enunciating every word in her thick Polish accent. The German scientists were looking for children who could learn quickly, were between ages four and twelve, and could withstand being famished without dying. Deutschland were paying dollar $50,000 per subject. Everyone in living room exactly Mrs. Twartski and all my aunts let out a huge "Ahhh". My sister's and my eyes grew wide because we had no idea what this meant or why the adults were so excited. Then my sister's eyes narrowed as if she knew something that I didn't yet, as if she had just figured something out.

He could have killed me for the blunder_ which really wasn__ my fault_ but I was lucky , and he gave me another chance. The two officers who questioned him were also incredibly lucky for not having had any idea who it was they__ been questioning.

Some people call street lights 'Crime Lights', as they are associated with an increased level of criminal activity.