In the 1940s, a Chicago heiress turned the notion of a dollhouse on its head. Tapping into the power and intimacy of miniature dwellings, Frances Glessner Lee constructed 18 tiny scenes of violent death set in rooming houses, rustic cabins, garages, attics—even a nursery. Lee’s crime scene dioramas may be a trifle outdated, but time has not robbed them of any of their power.

While many Americas can tell you the name of a famous criminal, and some may even mention a famous law officer or prosecutor of some renown, conspicuous by their absence from the public imagination in any positive light are the men and women whom we've charged with reforming the felon, the social workers and all too often the corrections officers. Due to this state of affairs, it seems unlikely the average American would be able to name more than the most local institution in America's penal archipelago. 

The principal finding of the Times investigation is a damning indictment of an administration that has claimed repeatedly to be targeting the worst of the worst violent, foreign-born criminals. In reality, according to the Times analysis, “two-thirds of the nearly two million deportation cases involve people who had committed minor infractions, including traffic violations, or had no criminal record at all.” In contrast, only “20 percent—or about 394,000—of the cases involved people convicted of serious crimes, including drug-related offenses, the records show.”