ABSTRACT
I grow ever more fascinated by Judge Cicconetti, of Painesville, Ohio. He is the judge who – under some American permission irreproducible in our fretful land – amuses himself by devising interesting punishments for everyday crimes. A woman who abandoned 35 kittens in a wood was made to spend several hours out there herself, in the same freezing temperatures, to see what it felt like. A man who called a police officer a pig was made to stand for two hours in a pen in the town centre alongside a hog, holding a placard with an arrow pointing at it saying ‘THIS IS NOT A POLICE OFFICER’. A man found with an illegal gun was made to go and look at dead bodies in a mortuary. Teenagers who defaced a nativity scene paraded through town with a donkey wearing a sign saying ‘SORRY FOR THE JACKASS OFFENCE’. Noisy neighbours got sentenced to a day of total silence in the woods. General pests are robustly sent to shovel snow.
