World's Finest

It's no secret I'm a huge fan of Batman. I have numerous comics and memorabilia, and have seen all  5 Batman films (I deny the existence of the wretched Joel Schumacher films. Clooney as Batman and Schwarzenegger as Freeze? Really??). In fact, Batman is what got me into detective stories in the first place. As he is one of DC Comic's two most popular characters, he is frequently paired and compared to the other one: Superman.  

I'm not a fan of Superman in the least. It usually takes his pairing with Batman or some other more interesting character to get me to read a Superman story. He's just a boring hero. When you have a guy who's a nigh invulnerable alien, can fly, has super-speed, super-intellect, x-ray vision, cold breath, and can shoot lasers out of his eyes, what do you have to threaten him with? His main weakness is a super rare green space rock that somehow every one of his villains has (in fact, one of the more amusing Superman/Batman team-ups was about them getting tired of everyone getting a hold of kryptonite so they go on a quest to round it all up and destroy it). And do you know why they always seem to have it? BECAUSE THAT'S ALL THEY HAVE TO THREATEN HIM WITH! The two main Superman stories are "Oh no,  the villain has kryptonite!", or "Oh no, the villain has powers on par with Superman's!". Compare this with Batman. His "powers" are his willpower, high intellect, and years of training and discipline. Yes, he has money and gadgets, but his ability to think one step ahead is what assures him the victory, not the material items. He defeats his villains with careful planning and skill, and due to the fact that he is an ordinary human, one wrong move could cost him his life. These character traits make for far more interesting and varied stories, where you can actually believe there is a chance he could die. 

Of course there are good Superman stories just as there are bad Batman stories (I'm looking at you, Grant Morrison), but overall I find the normal, mortal man who dedicated his life to his craft a far more interesting hero than a man who can just about do every member of the Justice League's job better than they can.

 In summary, Batman rules.

Justification

Last week I blasted CSI pretty hard for its unrealistic portrayal of police work (I could have kept going, honestly), so today I'll post about a law enforcement show I do like: Justified.

Justified is a show centered around Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens and his exploits in Harlan County, Kentucky. I know what you're thinking. I blasted CSI for its lack of realism, but like a show where the main character is practically a one man army. Here's the difference though: Justified is classified as a drama, where CSI claims to be procedural drama. In fact, the creator of CSI is constantly spouting off (lies) that everything in the show is based on "real science". But that's not what this post is about. It's more about me proving I'm not a dirty hypocrite.

For those who don't know, my future goal is to be a Deputy U.S. Marshal, and no, it has nothing to do with this show. I would require a bigger paycheck if I knew I was going to be shot at THAT much. With that being the case, however, I have done ample research into what an actual Deputy Marshal does. One of the things I like about the show is it actually does a good job of displaying the various duties a Deputy Marshal would be doing. While Raylan does primarily hunt fugitives (it is a TV show, after all), he has had to perform some of the less glamorous tasks as well, such as judicial and courtroom security, prisoner transport, asset forfeiture, and witness protection. When he is hunting fugitives, he usually relies on your classic investigative techniques, such as interviews and searches. No magic lab in this show. Also, when the Marshals Service is seen interacting with other agencies such as the ATF, State Troopers, and ICE, it does a good job showing where each agencies' jurisdiction begins and ends. Surprisingly, the show even shows the all the paperwork and the long process a Marshal would have to go through after they are forced to shoot a suspect.

Does it have unrealistic aspects? Of course it does, I don't try and claim otherwise. The reason I don't have an aneurysm over its flaws is it, at least, keeps our hero confined inside the scope of his duties. It is also meant  as entertainment, and doesn't pretend to be deeper than that. I get that TV shows have to go over the top from time to time, and I don't even fault CSI for that. You'll note I never argued in my post that the murder in my example episode involving a dead guy in a scuba suit in a tree in the middle of the forest was stupid (It is, though. I mean, c'mon). I was more focused on the fact that under those circumstances the CSI was more focused on the splinter and tracked it back to the killer's coffee table (considerably more ridiculous). Bottom line is if one person watched Justified and another watched CSI, and they then each were hired to work those jobs, the one who watched Justified would be far less shocked by the translation to real life. In fact, he would probably be relieved to find he wasn't always going to be under a hail of gunfire. The CSI fan, by contrast, would constantly be wondering when they were going to go tackle the bad guy as he dusted for fingerprints...AGAIN.

Our Legal System: A Hot Mess

Like many people today, I like to think that I'm used to the constant influx of stupidity displayed in the news. However, despite my lowered expectations I still find myself frequently awestruck by the absurdity I see when perusing news headlines. I'm not talking about the stories filed away under sections titled things like "Strange News", where you know what you're getting yourself into. I'm talking about stories billed as "normal" news. I blame society's acceptance of these insane events as normal for how we got where we are today, where warnings have to be plastered on everything for fear of being sued by people who complain no one warned them not to run around the slippery sides of a pool. More to blame, however, is the court system that established the precedent of awarding small fortunes to these people rather than scold them not to waste taxpayer dollars for bringing these inane cases to their attention.

Most people have heard about the lady who spilled hot coffee on her lap and sued McDonald's for not labeling the container to warn of its content's temperature. She won the case, and got a small pile of money for her trouble. Does this strike anyone else as insane? Let's break it down, shall we?

The lady ordered hot coffee. She knew it was to be a hot beverage, as I'm sure she would have been pissed if it had arrived cold. She then accidentally spills the coffee on herself, and proceeds to blame McDonald's for not labeling the beverage she wanted hot AS hot so that she would know not to accidentally spill it on herself. She then took this story to a judge. The judge didn't laugh, but instead awarded her the case. He decreed that McDonald's should have placed in writing that the beverage she wanted hot was indeed hot, and that they should warn people to be careful when handling the dangerous beverage. THIS is what I'm talking about. Now we have to label everything because no one takes responsibility for their actions and because the courts have opted to side with these people.

Our court system is descended from English Common Law, which was brought over to America when the first colony was settled. In this type of law system tradition and precedent are what's important. What does this mean? In a nutshell, it means that when determining a verdict for a case, judges refer back to similar cases in order to remain fair and consistent. Basically, if the Supreme Court previously decided that police officers may use aggressive maneuvers during high speed pursuits (they did), and a suspect who was injured in one such case decides to sue the police, then the new judges will look back to the previous decision and cite that as to why they are ruling in favor of the defendants. What all this means is that when the first decision was handed down in favor of the plaintiff in a case like the hot coffee lady's, it set a precedent for all other similar cases to follow. This ultimately has made our society lawsuit happy, and I feel it has made us worse off as a people.

Bottom line: if you trip on a curb because your face was in your phone, own up and accept the dose of humility you just received and accompanying lesson, don't threaten to sue the building's owners for not instructing you how to look where you're going. That would only further the growing acceptance of irresponsibility in our country.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigators Investigated

As a criminal justice major and someone who is extremely interested in detectives and detective stories, you may be surprised to find I am not a fan of procedural dramas such as CSI. "Not a fan" is putting it mildly, actually. In general, they get more wrong than right and take a few to many creative liberties for the sake of entertainment, so much so, in fact, that there is now a phenomenon  known as "The CSI Effect".

The CSI Effect, in a nutshell, explains how procedural dramas have shaped America's perception of forensic science and how it works. Now, there is two sides to every coin, and on the plus side it has brought public attention and interest into a little known and important field in police work. As you may have surmised from my opening dialogue, I will be reviewing the OTHER side of this coin, as the above pretty much sums up all the positives.

In most of these shows a small unit of detectives and forensic scientists (one of them is usually quirky for comedic value, usually the one who examines the bodies, imagine that) go out to a crime scene, gather evidence, interview witnesses and suspects, go back to the lab, process the evidence, discover a vital and improbable clue, and finally go arrest the suspect in the thrilling conclusion. What's wrong with this? Well, everything. How can this be? I'll go step by step.

First in this long line of flaws is the "small unit of detectives and forensic scientists" part. I worded it that way because the most characters in these show seem to be both, which simply doesn't happen. Detectives do the investigating, while forensic scientists process the evidence. This whole overall investigation is usually (always) handled by more than 5 people.

Continuing on with my previous point is flaw number two. The "gather evidence" and "process evidence" parts are handled by separate teams. That's right, crime scene investigators (the titular CSI team) come in and collect the physical evidence, take pictures, etc, and then take them to the lab. That's it for them, they're done. You heard me right. That's what a CSI actually does. A COMPLETELY SEPARATE GROUP OF PEOPLE then process the evidence in labs, match the fingerprints, photos, all that. Let's start keeping count of the different unrelated jobs going on here, shall we? That's three so far, including the detective(s). On a related note, half the "science" in these shows are completely made up. Real life labs don't glow blue and have supercomputer databases that can analyze anything they want in about an hour. Even the stuff real labs can actually do will take days, weeks, or months to get the results. But this is TV, and real life is boring, right?

Our third flaw brings us to the improbable clue. Dear lord, where do I begin? This is the point in the show where I feel people without any knowledge of the previous flaws police procedure should turn off the TV and go outside and exercise or something so that they can try to add an extra hour onto their lives to make up for the one they just lost. In one instance, our crack team is able to trace wood fragments found in a body dressed in a full scuba suit to a coffee table owned by the killer. Yup. Wood, a pretty commonly available resource, was successfully matched EXACTLY to a MASS PRODUCED coffee table, which then provided indisputable proof that the killer did it. No possible chance that this wood could have come from something else. Oh, and where was the body found? IN A TREE, which we all know from living on planet Earth, IS MADE OF WOOD. But I'm sure this splinter really caught the CSI's eye as really bizarre under that circumstance. The whole "victim being in a scuba suit in a tree in the middle of a forest" thing is whatever, but HEY! Did you guys notice this splinter!? We should really look into this! Ugh.

That pretty much sucked the life out of me, so the final flaw will be brief. A detective, usually with a full team of police officers or a SWAT team will go arrest the suspect. No one involved in the evidence does this part (we're up to 4 now).

That basically sums up my distaste for these "procedural" shows. I could go on for days, but I'll say one final thing: Putting on and taking off sunglasses does not make you or your bad puns cool or do anything to emphasize your point. Thank you, thank you very much.

Elementary

In continuing with my explanation of logical reasoning as they can apply to detective work I'll be reviewing the differences in deduction, abduction, and induction.

Last post I stated that Sherlock incorrectly refers to his brand of logical reasoning as deduction, when it is, in fact, abductive reasoning. What's the difference? Well, deduction (in boring formula form) is deriving b from a, where b is a formal consequence of a. For example, if only female lions can get pregnant and a lion is pregnant, then that lion must be female. Given the truth of the assumption, the deduction is consequently true. Abduction is slightly different in that the truth of the  assumption is not guaranteed, and  therefore our abduction is also not guaranteed. For example, if you happen to see someone laying at the bottom of a flight of stairs, you could assume they tripped and fell, when  in fact they could have been pushed, or perhaps they simply enjoy napping at the bottom of the stairs. The person falling down the stairs is the hypothesis that explains our observation, but only one of many. Induction is also different in that our observations may give us good cause to believe something, though our conclusion may not be true. For example, a person might assume all fish swim underwater because all the fish they've seen thus far swim underwater. This same person would then be quite startled to see fish walking on land and gliding over the ocean.

That concludes my explanation of the three forms of logical reasoning. Next post I'll dive into a different, as yet to be determined, topic.

The Blog, Mr. Watson, is Afoot!

This is my first blog posting, and outside of pop culture references the only experience I have with the concept is The Professional Blog of Doctor John Watson from the excellent BBC Series Sherlock, which is a modern re-imagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's hero. As a fan of detective stories I was quite taken with the show and Sherlock's intuitive deductions, and as this blog will be relating to the criminal justice field, what better topic to start with?

Sherlock Holmes's method of deduction is based on simple observation and reasoning and is actually a technique called "abductive reasoning”, and not deduction at all. In the short story A Scandal in Bohemia Sherlock was able to deduce that Watson had been in inclement weather and had a clumsy serving girl based solely off a glance at his shoes. When asked how he could know this Sherlock replied, “It is simplicity itself ... My eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it. Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey.” As you can see, based on the powers of observation and logical reasoning Sherlock was able to display his prowess in deduction.

Next post I'll go into more detail about the differences between Deduction, Abduction, and Induction. Until then, may you observe, rather than simply see.