Back in the Day

[game_byrd]

Title: Back in the Day
Characters: Nathan Petrelli, Peter Petrelli
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Word count: 1,200
Setting: Preseason, New York, 2002 (set a few couple years after Light Up and Reminiscences)
Summary: Peter gets busted at a club and has to call his big brother to bail him out.

Comments

[wanderinspirits]

Really good.

I like that you mentioned that the police had no evidence against him and that they were trying to scare him into confessing so he would get a lesser punishment. That happens a lot more than people would want to think. Only so many even really make it to the court system anyway. (I'm a Criminal Justice major. We have discussions about this all the time, especially when I'm in my advisor's classes and he's a judge.)

It's good that he was a brother who knows how to work the system. :P

[game_byrd]

I've known a couple people who got crosswise with the law. Neither of them went to trial, both pled out to things they hadn't done. The stories they told of the tactics used on them showed me how heavy-handed the manipulation and psychological ploys are. They made me seriously question the guilt of those in prison. It really colors how I portray the law in my stories, too. Good luck in your major! The system is full of backwards incentives, but there's nothing wrong with the people.

Thanks for the comment!

[wanderinspirits]

Thank you very much. I'm not planning on being a cop but instead to go and get a masters in either that or Psychology (my minor) or law school. But, I'm open minded to what's out there

[game_byrd]

Yes, you're exactly right with them simply wanting the case solved. That's what I meant by backwards incentives. They're measured and rewarded by how many people they get convictions on, not whether they got the guilty party. 'They' in this case constitute the district attorney, prosecutorial teams, and the police.

I read an article Friday about investigations into crime labs - how the high case load and big backlog led to rewards for those who processed samples faster, and the fastest processing was simply to say 'yes' or 'no' to a match without bothering to test them. Since the criminal justice system is often immune to being double-checked by outside parties, the practice of falsifying results appears to be endemic and widespread.

[game_byrd]

Yay! Thank you!

I wrote this about a year ago. Found it yesterday while I was browsing through my files, doing some clean-up. Meanie and I had been talking about things Nathan would know about Peter's past, focusing on whether and how Nathan might know that Peter was bisexual, since for More Between Us Than A Wall, Peter's been fairly discreet and closeted. I remember trying to explain 'Well, Nathan would know that Peter at least frequented those places because ...' and suddenly a story popped out. LOL.