Comments on: The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law

The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law

Deathalicious — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:52:58 -0800

The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:05:51 -0800

Cute!

By: Sys Rq

Sys Rq — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:25:16 -0800

Best argument for the criminalization of terrible "handwriting" fonts I've ever seen. That's what it was about, right?

By: Ghostride The Whip

Ghostride The Whip — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:26:02 -0800

There's a joke here about lawyers making an illustrated guide with a million words and relatively few pictures. Interesting guide, though.

By: ryanrs

ryanrs — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:38:49 -0800

I've seen more legible writing scrawled on a jailhouse wall.

By: Nomyte

Nomyte — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:45:25 -0800

I'm sure there's a better definition of crime than the circular one offered in the link: "Criminal law is about crime. Crime is activity that is punishable under criminal law." Although, having read a fair bit in the anthropology of law, I suspect that the best cross-cultural definition is just the extension of the concept: crime is just the list of all activities that are classified as criminal.

By: weewooweewoo

weewooweewoo — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:51:23 -0800

I was just thinking about how cool it was that people now make their own handwriting as fonts, and how personalized fonts for every different user could potentially make the internet feel a lot more intimate. But don't mind me, I realize now that no one likes handwriting fonts.

By: Sphinx

Sphinx — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:52:52 -0800

Pardon me if this is offensive, but isn't law about the people, not poorly drawn stick figures?

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:09:49 -0800

This is interesting – thanks, Deathalicious. Somewhat pithier, more musical, and UK-specific: the DIY-punk classic from 1978, "Advice On Arrest" by the Desperate Bicycles.

By: Ad hominem

Ad hominem — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:26:55 -0800

What I took away from that is that we might be better off, in the aggregate, if we had a 24 hour execution channel, full of fake executions, and never even bothered to arrest anyone at all. The only people who do a cost benefit analysis, who deterrence would work on, are people like white collar criminals who want another Porsche. They would think twice if they mistakenly assumed they would surely be caught and executed.Most everyone else is going to commit the crimes they did no matter what, because it was a one time mistake or they were forced into it by desperation. What I find interesting is that the people that are made examples of don't even need to exist. People are deterred not by actual cases, but TV shows and urban legends.

By: kithrater

kithrater — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 21:53:38 -0800

What I took away from that is that we might be better off, in the aggregate, if we had a 24 hour execution channel, full of fake executions, and never even bothered to arrest anyone at all. But people would inevitable become inurred to it - they'd realise it was fake, not care, etc. So you would then have to arrange an accident where a real person was executed by the 24 hour execution channel, just to keep everyone on their toes. Of course, you would merely be faking that a real person was accidentally executed on the fake execution channel, because we're not barbarians after all.

By: Ad hominem

Ad hominem — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 22:04:28 -0800

I like it. We would also have all the current cops go around getting deep undercover, commit a fake crime and disappear only to show up on the fake execution channel. I think crime fighting needs some outside the box thinking.

By: Zarkonnen

Zarkonnen — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 01:20:13 -0800

Stealing a million dollars is punished more severely than shoplifting. Yeah, right. But seriously, how about an illustrated critique of this illustrated guide showing how this is sometimes more of a fairytale used to justify oppression than the way it actually works?

By: Zarkonnen

Zarkonnen — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 01:24:02 -0800

(That being said, it's does cover many good points. It appears I'm sort of grumpy this morning.)

By: reprise the theme song and roll the credits

reprise the theme song and roll the credits — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 03:25:48 -0800

The browser window has to be opened out to what is, in my opinion, a rather unreasonable width to avoid the left side of the comic being cut off. Luckily, the site is readable and usable enough with the stylesheet disabled. This is in Firefox. I thought it was a pleasant and entertaining read. Informative, too, presuming its accuracy. It seems to jibe with what I remember of other criminal-law-for-layfolks stuff I've read. (The Law is a Ass, etc.) One thing I found odd in Part 17E: It seems like a certain amount of care was taken to show that Steve had no idea that Archie was bringing a gun to the store, but then it wasn't raised as a possible objection. I mean, according to the hypothetical statute it wouldn't matter anyway, but it never came up. Yay, Applejack!

By: Sticherbeast

Sticherbeast — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 04:24:26 -0800

One thing I found odd in Part 17E: It seems like a certain amount of care was taken to show that Steve had no idea that Archie was bringing a gun to the store, but then it wasn't raised as a possible objection. I mean, according to the hypothetical statute it wouldn't matter anyway, but it never came up. The fact that it doesn't matter is exactly why it wasn't raised as a possible objection.

By: This, of course, alludes to you

This, of course, alludes to you — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 04:38:16 -0800

there are some things that should be cute there are some things that when made cute feel like deep-cover trolling with the object of provoking rage

By: reprise the theme song and roll the credits

reprise the theme song and roll the credits — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 04:58:14 -0800

The fact that it doesn't matter is exactly why it wasn't raised as a possible objection. Things that don't matter are raised as possible objections in pretty much every case in the entire blog, specifically so the law-enforcing character can explain that they don't matter. On that very page, Steve objects that she didn't personally kill anyone. And, of course, that didn't matter. And in an earlier page, it's actually stated that accomplices, who didn't know someone brought a gun, might not have been liable for felony murder. (The hypothetical murder statute from Part 17D hadn't been introduced yet and wasn't taken into account.)

By: This, of course, alludes to you

This, of course, alludes to you — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 05:00:32 -0800

oh yeah no i didn't see the pastelhorse something's definitely up

By: DynamiteToast

DynamiteToast — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 07:53:15 -0800

Started slow, but I was hooked when the comic got to excuses and examples. Very interesting.

By: arkham_inmate_0801

arkham_inmate_0801 — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:00:06 -0800

First response - reminds me of the series of primers Pantheon Books put out with titles like Marx's Kapital for Beginners, which I really enjoyed.

By: gjc

gjc — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:06:11 -0800

Why is Steve drawn as a girl? It's a fine example of its style, and the law seems mostly right, but I'm not sure what the point is. The browser window has to be opened out to what is, in my opinion, a rather unreasonable width to avoid the left side of the comic being cut off. Luckily, the site is readable and usable enough with the stylesheet disabled. This is in Firefox. How small is your screen? The comic is only ~900 pixels wide.

By: John Cohen

John Cohen — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 08:36:54 -0800

What I took away from that is that we might be better off, in the aggregate, if we had a 24 hour execution channel, full of fake executions, and never even bothered to arrest anyone at all. The only people who do a cost benefit analysis, who deterrence would work on, are people like white collar criminals who want another Porsche. You're assuming deterrence is the only reason for criminal punishment. There's also incapacitation. If there were no real punishment, all criminals would be freely roaming the streets. No one wants to live in that kind of world. I have no idea why you think only rich people are rationally motivated by incentives and disincentives.

By: reprise the theme song and roll the credits

reprise the theme song and roll the credits — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 11:35:34 -0800

How small is your screen? The comic is only ~900 pixels wide. Yesterday, the browser window had to be much wider than that, otherwise the comic was pushed past the left margin, past where you could scroll to. Now that I reload today, that's not happening anymore. I guess it got fixed. Why is Steve drawn as a girl? She's referred to as "her" in the text, too. Maybe it's short for "Stephanie"? It kind of threw me at first, but then I thought, y'know, Stevie Nicks, so I guess it's not unprecedented?

By: reprise the theme song and roll the credits

reprise the theme song and roll the credits — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 11:54:31 -0800

Here's a screenshot of how it used to load. It looks like the window had to be about 1045 pixels wide for the whole comic to be visible, and about 1240 pixels wide for the left margin to appear.

By: snuffleupagus

snuffleupagus — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 07:14:32 -0800

FWIW, the comic does a fairly good job of hitting the high points of the conceptual components of a 1L criminal law course. (At least, the one I took.)