The Pros and Cons of Stacking the Deck

I saw a television news report about Florida inmates playing cards. Four jailbirds occupied a round table playing a game of poker. At first glance, I couldn’t find anything newsworthy about killing downtime in the klink waiting for a commuted sentence. Then the camera zoomed in on the playing cards handled by the captive audience. Each card had narrative about an unsolved crime, an actual picture of the victim, along with contact information in the event you could produce a lead. Believe it or not, inmates are using these cards for recreation like cheese bait waiting for a rat to snitch. I am not a betting man but I don’t think whoever had a hand in the manufacturing of these cards ever consulted victim’s rights groups. The news report fashioned these cards as a good thing waiting to happen.

Other than sadistic inmates, who would use these playing cards? I don’t even know if motorcycle gangs would break out these playing cards at a rain delayed Harley Davidson rally. I doubt whether these cards could be put to tasteful use in the break room of TV’s America’s Most Wanted studio. I don’t foresee the general public looking to cheer up their Saturday night poker tournaments with these specialty card decks. In my opinion, I find it obnoxious giving convicted criminals essentially a toy to make a game out of advertising the unsolved crimes of their more skilled counterparts. If we need to stack the deck, why not just remove all of the Get Out of Jail Free cards from Monopoly boards in penal institutions? Are these twisted decks of cards a feasible way to search for at-large criminals or are we continuing to murder the victim’s memories? Do we need to randomly shuffle the victims in a deck of cards and deal them out to convicts to use as props for illicit betting in games? Are we that skewed on justice that we must ante up to unsolved crime? Must we resort to associating the cold cases with amusement from the cagey criminal element? Is it homage or carnage if Jone Benet Ramsey or Nicole Simpson are aces of the deck? If a victim is made a slain king or queen is it disrespect or honor? Personally speaking, I have had trouble finishing my breakfast cereal after glancing at a picture of a Missing Person on a milk carton. So I just can’t extend compassion to the defenseless victims slaughtered at the hands of the cunning if they are being pawed by greased palms and used for wager as part of a straight queen high. I have had heard about some bad deals in my life. Maybe more crimes will be solved through card playing but the only people who are being dealt worse hands than the criminals seem the victims…all over again.