If you were 62, unemployed and broke, what would you do to avoid living on the streets? Well, if you are Timothy Bowers, you rob a bank. ...
... and make sure that you get caught.
Apparently, Bowers is like most people out there, because he cannot pay all his living expenses by working at a minimum wage job.
Judge Angela White asked if he truly wanted to spend the next three years in prison.
"That would suit me fine," Bowers said. "At age 66, I would receive full Social Security benefits," which he can collect as soon as he gets out of prison.
My only comment is that the bank teller could have given him more than $80 for all his trouble.
More like this
This is one way to deal with looming un- and underemployment. From the NY Times:
NPR has a nice report on the motivations behind false confessions.
...he is us. Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers relates the results of some polling. Democratic voters were asked the following question:
He never had a chance to spend the money. From a functional perspective, more money (from the teller) could only serve to increase his noteriety or his sentence.
Some time ago in the New Yorker Magazine (I think) Malcolm Gladwell had an article called "Million Dollar Murray." It wa about a homeless man named, of course, Murray and how arresting him repeatedly as a vagrant and putting him in the lock up for a day or two and otherwise providing reactive care for his condition of life was costing the city millions of dollars. And the point was that a decent social support system could care for people like Murray for far less than that.
I've heard many such stories, usually involving homeless people scoring a couple-or-few meals with minor arrests. One particularly amusing tale was a guy who was stopped at a red light, when somebody (as it turned out, a homeless alcoholic), ran up and headbutted his car. They were, of course, hoping for a room and meal courtesy of the driver's insurance. Too bad there were witnesses....
I think O. Henry got there first...
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