the law: criminals

I asked my mom if there were still pirates, like in "Peter Pan." She said, no all the pirates had been caught and put in jail. So I believed that if you went down to the county jail, the cells would be full of pirates (complete with eye patches, peg legs, etc.).

When I was younger (4-7?, I'm 13 now), I used to believe that serial killers hid in your cereal box and jumped and killed you when you opened the box. So, after hearing the word 'serial killer', I refused to eat cereal for several weeks.

When I was a kid, every time the lights in our house would dim, I thought another prisoner on death row was being electrocuted. Just like in the movies.

I used to think that when someone was "under arrest" it meant that when they went to jail they would get the bottom bunk so they would have to sleep "under a rest"-ing prisoner.

I once asked my dad why the police can't catch the robbers since the stripey tops, black masks and swag bag give them away. Obviously all burglars where this attire all the time!

I thought bad people in real life all looked weird/ugly like on cartoons. For this reason I was confused when adults said not to talk to strangers since they might be bad people because couldn't you tell if someone was bad just by looking at them?

When I was little, my grandfather used to tell me that if you ever got sent to jail, the only thing they would let you eat would be birdseed and Coca-Cola. I believed this for years and was terrified that I would get sent to jail if I was bad in any way, and I would sit and contemplate how they could possibly make people survive on just birdseed and Coke! I believed it for a long time until I finally found out the truth. Although I am proud to say I've never been arrested for anything :)

when I was young I thought when your tooth fell out the tooth fairy would take it to her factory grind it into a powder give it to toothpaste makers and that was what was in toothpaste!

I was told that criminals would sneak into the house at night and the only way they couldnt get me was if I stayed in my bed. this somehow morphed into me thinking that anytime my feet touched the ground at night I would get pulled under my bed by terrible criminals. even tho my bed was just a matress on the floor.

I used to not get why anyone would plead guilty since wouldn't you just go to jail for sure then? (this was before I knew they would go easy on you if you plead guilty) I also thought parole and probation was the same thing

You know how they say a crime in punishable by "up to x years in prison or y dollars fine? Well I thought when a person was convicted they got to pick which one for their punishment

I thought for a long time that trespassing was actually "trustpassing" because you entered even though they didn't trust you to invite you in..

I thought if someone paid your bail you didn't have to go to jail at all even if you were convicted i.e it was like a get out of jail free card. I figured most people just couldn't afford it and that's why they stayed in jail.

I thought crimes were a lot rarer than they actually were--for instance, if someone held up a gas station in Maine, it would be on the news all over the country, with pictures on TV and massive manhunts going on. When I read in a book that "there has been no crime in all of Mexico for five days" (because the criminals were all working together on a huge plot), I didn't see why that was such a big deal.

Up until I was nine or ten, I believed that if you broke the law--for anything, ever--you would go to jail for the rest of your life. I didn't know that there were such things as five-year or even three-month sentences. You went to jail, end of story, never came out.

I was very confused when I watched the third Wallace and Grommit movie and the paper said "Grommit gets life" for being framed as a sheep-stealer. I thought that meant he was going to be executed.

I used to believe that Prosecution meant Execution so whenever I saw a sign that said "Shoplifters will be Prosecuted" I thought "Oh my gosh if I steal this they're going to kill me!".