http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polly_Klaas
In 1993, a young girl named Polly Klaas was abducted from her home and found murdered sometime later. The case was a cause-de-celebre, one of the first modern cases of media hysteria over a child kidnapping and led to a number of legal changes, most notably California's "three strikes law".
What if she had been found alive? Would we still have three strikes laws throughout the country? Would the media hysteria surrounding "stranger danger" (which has possibly contributed to, among other things, the current child obesity epidemic) be less prolific had this case ended in a happier way?
Would we have to go back earlier (i.e., the Adam Walsh kidnapping/murder) to find the origin of the media's modern obsession with child abduction or was this the case that caused most of the hysteria? I'd like to hear some thoughts on this from others, it's something I've been thinking about for a while (every time I turn on Nancy Grace, for example... would she still have a career if Polly Klaas hadn't been killed?)
In 1993, a young girl named Polly Klaas was abducted from her home and found murdered sometime later. The case was a cause-de-celebre, one of the first modern cases of media hysteria over a child kidnapping and led to a number of legal changes, most notably California's "three strikes law".
What if she had been found alive? Would we still have three strikes laws throughout the country? Would the media hysteria surrounding "stranger danger" (which has possibly contributed to, among other things, the current child obesity epidemic) be less prolific had this case ended in a happier way?
Would we have to go back earlier (i.e., the Adam Walsh kidnapping/murder) to find the origin of the media's modern obsession with child abduction or was this the case that caused most of the hysteria? I'd like to hear some thoughts on this from others, it's something I've been thinking about for a while (every time I turn on Nancy Grace, for example... would she still have a career if Polly Klaas hadn't been killed?)