Anyone who's already furious over the horrific "affluenza" trial (ably dissected with entirely appropriate rage by Jack Graham) might want to take a look at this link, if only in the hopes that your rage might reach such incandescent proportions that we can hook power lines up to you and save us a few months of munching through dead dinosaurs.
In brief, a white professional actively tries to get himself arrested for graffiti tagging, finds it almost impossible, and when he finally does get himself locked up for the night and has to appear before a judge, he learns a) the treatment of arrestees in NYC is abominable, and b) you can be literally banned from leaving New York for three years for your first misdemeanour, just so long as the judge is pissed off at you.
As usual, the point here is not to have a giggle at how outrageously screwed up the American justice system seems to be in just about every state (though it really, really is), so much as another reminder that legal systems are frequently horrendously capricious and prone to overreaction, and trying to bypass this with comforting thoughts that it's only those people who have to worry about it in the first place is a large part of the reason why.
(h/t to Kevin Drum)
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