I recently read a news article about a prison crochet club. (This would go under the category of things I'm absolutely not making up.) Apparently, there are a number of prison-based crochet clubs, but this article concentrated on one particular start-up.

The club has become so popular there's a waiting list. The inmates most attracted to stitching scarves and sweaters for homeless children? Murderers and rapists. Apparently the guy convicted of smuggling pot in his Underoos has other things to do.

But this is the part that gets me: The civilian volunteer who teaches these guys to chain stitch, and who probably looks like your grandmother, says she thinks of the inmates as just being guys who made "poor choices."

Really? Poor choices?

Now first let me say that I am a hardcore liberal sort of gal. And I'm for prison reform and inmate rehabilitation any way we can get it. I think it's in everyone's best interest. But "poor choices?" Let's take a moment to review the history of the men in her club.

One guy killed his girlfriend in front of their son and hid the body. Its location is still unknown. Another killed an ice cream store manager, another strangled his girlfriend (different guy, different girlfriend) and another committed triple homicide. That guy's in for life, so he's going to have lots of time to make booties.

Writing mystery novels means that, by necessity, I write about crime. And even if you're doing it with a good bit of gallows humor and with your tongue stuck firmly - perhaps permanently - in your cheek, you'd be a monkey not to do your research. And when I read about "poor choices," I can't help but think about my visit to the L.A. Sheriff's Department Homicide Bureau.

Two of the detectives were nice enough to invite me down and show me around. One stopped in front of a giant piece of poster board with the pictures of perhaps 40 women on it. He was trying to determine if the women in the pictures, whose names he mostly didn't know, were still alive or had been some of the still unidentified victims of a serial killer.

When it was time for me to leave, he insisted on walking me to my car, which was parked in the homicide bureau lot not more than thirty yards from the front door, behind which sat any number of some of the best law enforcement officers in the state. It seemed to me that if ever I was safe walking myself to my car, this was it. In fact, if asked, I would've told you that I could've danced naked through the lot while shooting off firecrackers and still not be remotely tempting to any passing badies. I tried explaining this to the nice detective, leaving out the nudity part, of course.

Me: "Don't be silly. You're very busy."

Him: (silence)

Me: "My car's just right there. I'll be fine."

Him: (silence...this time with a look that said, "Did you not see the poster?")

He walked me to the car.

After what he sees every day, I wonder what he'd think of the knitting lady's summary: "poor choices."