I'm disappointed every time I think of the way crime is handled in the country I was born in. Having spent my childhood in the US and adulthood (to now) in Germany, I look back once or twice a year at local papers not far from where I used to live. What I expect or hope to read is something about the Red River Revel, Peach Cobbler, the State Fair (where I took my first date in high school), or even pictures of long-lost friends. Instead, I get plastered with pictures of young people's mug shots. I don't want this diary to take up the matter of reflecting official statistics and absolutely depressing trends- in particulary, that your chances of going to jail sometime in your life for something in the "Land of the Free" is greater than anywhere else in the world. Instead, I just want to give a quick overview of my thoughts looking at the "Bossier Bookings" a few paragraphs down under "local news" (see above link).
First, I think parading high resolution pictures of petty criminals does nothing but humiliate a person in front of their families, adding to their woes and prevents them from getting a job. More importantly, I think it makes it much more likely that these individuals will identify themselves as having criminal personalities and act accordingly in the future out of shear desparation.
Here are some of the counts I read:
Fugitive X Not sure what that means exactly and I'm certainly not a lawyer, but trying to keep from being arrested is NOT a crime in Germany. It is enshrined into the consitution that every man's desire is to be free, no matter what they did- therefore, you cannot lock someone up under additional charges for running from the police- provided you endanger noone else's life in doing so (so speeding down the highway at 150mph would get you in a lot of trouble for endangering other peoples lives, but not for running from the police AFAIK). On a related note, if you are charged with a felony and appear in court, you cannot receive additional charges of lying under oath (I don't believe you can even be asked to give an oath) because it is assumed understandable in principal for someone to want to lie to remain a free person. Note this rule does not hold for witnesses, etc.
worthless checks: maybe it's an offense here maybe not, but I can assure you the common man or woman NEVER gets convicted of this because, well, normal people don't write checks here at all and they haven't for as long as I've lived here. Anyone with a bank account is issued an EU-wide (EC) debit card from their bank. If you don't have the cash on your account or the ability to take out credit, then when you go to pay with the card it simply declines. It might be a bit embarrassing, but it's no offense, of course. Furthermore, if I owe you $1000 for a sofa and want to pay you privately, all you have to do is give me your bank account number. I then go to the nearest automated tellar machine (of which there are thousands), enter your name, account number and amount, then hit the "transfer" button and you get the money regardless of what bank you have an account at and it doesn't cost me anything even to transfer a measely $5.
simple possession of marijauna: this is a biggy in the US. Locking people up and/or branding them criminals in front of their peers and preventing them from getting jobs all for something that is entirely between them and their own bodies. I fail to understand it- all the more so when the reasoning is "but it's so bad for you". As long as I've lived here, I have never heard of anyone getting arrested, let alone their picture in the paper, for smoking/possessing small amounts of weed.
bongs and pipes: every town in Germany with more than, say, 50000 people probably has its own (perfectly legal) bong shop- often these shops are located in some of the busiest downtown shopping sections.