Chris, at Public Criminology, points to an excellent example of how institutional rules can have unintended and counterproductive consequences. In this case, the rule applies to people convicted of committing sex offenses against children. Such offenders, once released from prison, are disallowed from living with 2,500 feet of schools, parks, churches, or any place where children might congregate.

So far so good.

But it turns out that, in Miami, that translates into everywhere. That is, everywhere is within 2,500 feet of one of these places. The yellow dots in this still the places near which sex offenders are not allowed to live:

Parole officers are at a loss and have instructed released offenders to live under a causeway in the middle of Biscayne Bay (see the red arrow). They even check on them every morning to make sure they are there.

These sex offenders, then, are forced into homelessness by rules designed to protect children.

The video below reports on the situation. In addition to the human rights concerns, there is a concern that the living conditions may actually increase the chances of recidivism.  Living under a bridge: (1) is arguably even less enjoyable than prison, (2) smothers hope of ever reintegrating into society, and (3) is not really conducive to self-improvement.

See also our other posts on rules that apply to released sex offenders here and here.

UPDATE: Comments thread closed.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

This vintage ad for 7-Up is a great illustration of how our ideas about what sounds tasty is culturally and historically contingent.

For other great examples, see these posts on soup for breakfast, spam, poop coffee, the rise and fall of aspic, and prunes (they’re for kids!).

From Found in Mom’s Basement.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

On this sign, woman = person… and in most places in the world, most of the time, that is weird!

The sign, found here (via), can be found in Haarlem, Netherlands.

UPDATE: In the comments, Tara linked to a BBC story about Fuenlabrada, Spain. They’ve replaced half of all walk/don’t walk signs with figures in skirts.

And Astrid linked to some examples from Germany.

The social construction of female as skirted aside, neat!

Spain:

Germany:

NEW! Pharmacopaeia also linked to a sign from New Zealand:

Also in the comments, Caroline asked us to link to our post where stick figures suddenly sprout skirts when paired with children.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

The figure below, borrowed from Matthew Yglesias, shows that poor children, especially poor black children, have higher concentration of lead in the blood than other middle class children.

Lead poisoning is a serious problem, causing cognitive delay, hyperactivity, and antisocial behavior. If poor children do less well in school and on standardized tests, it may be, in part, because of the environmental toxins to which they are disproportionately exposed.

See also a previous post in which I argue that lead poisoning remained a mother’s problem until the China toy scandal put middle class children at risk, at which point the state stepped in to ensure children’s safety.

Also see this post on race and toxic release facilities.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Our friend Jason S. is in Tokyo this week.  He reports that designing and assembling dolls is a popular hobby there.  The photograph he sent us shows that doll bodies come in three sizes: small, medium, and large.  Unfortunately that doesn’t suggest acceptance of a diversity of body types, nor does it allow for a just-my-size version, unless you’re talking only about boobs:

By the way, Jason will be back from Tokyo in time to come to OUR PARTY ON SUNDAY (August 9th at 6pm at Johnny Foley’s Irish Housein San Francisco, CA)!  We hope you can come!

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Ideal bodies vary across cultures and time.   In the U.S. today, childhood obesity is considered a significant social problem and is widely covered in the news, on talk shows, and the like.  When food was more scarce, however, having a fat child was a sign of health and well-being.  This ad, from 1898, is for a tonic that will fatten up your child.  How times change.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

PARTY!

Please join us for the first ever Sociological Images party! We’d love to see all of you–sociologists and non-sociologists alike–in San Francisco on Sunday, August 9th at 6pm at Johnny Foley’s Irish House.   We want to meet you and we think it’d be super cool for you to meet each other, too.

FROM THE ARCHIVES:

Sociological Images was born in July of 2007.  In honor of our birthday, we point you to our very first post ever:  Faith Hill re-touched for the cover of Redbook.

One year later, we published a fascinating example of the white man’s burden.  This time, however, it’s a white woman’s burden in the form of a Pampers commercial.  It’s something; you should check it out.

NEWLY ENRICHED POSTS (Look for what’s NEW!):

We added a third PostSecret postcard where someone confesses thoughts about race, while explaining that they are not racist.  Ponder them here.

Our post about an Icelandic cartoon that portrayed Barack Obama as a cannibal now includes an image of the comic book graphic novel Barack the Barbarian, thanks to sender-inner Lindsay.

Phil Howard had some updated graphs on concentration of organic brands, so we updated our post on who sells organics.

To our post featuring ads that portray men as animals, we added an advertising campaign by Jim Beam that suggests men are “stags” (has there ever been a word with more meanings?).

In another food-related update, Amanda C. and Dmitriy T.M. both sent us material that we added to our post about sexualizing food.

Natalie sent us links to some images of kids’ t-shirts with sexual slogans, which we added to our existing post on the topic.

At the suggestion of Glenn R., we added ads for Caramba Tequila to our not-so-subliminal sex and ejaculation imagery posts.  We also added an image to the latter post sent in by Jeff G. and a commercial for Creme d’Or ice cream Jay L. brought to our attention. The commercial is a doozy.

We added some very scandalous ads for hearing aids to our “sex sells” post.

Rachel McC. J., from Deeply Problematic, sent us another example of efforts to protect women by telling women to protect themselves instead of targeting badly behaving men.  We added it to our previous post telling women to stop men from sexually harassing them in the subway.

Tricia V. sent us another example of resistance to advertising that objectifies women.  In this one, from Haiti, someone scrawled “Women’s bodies are not merchandise” across a full-sized billboard.

The Huffington Post featured a slide show of billboards in New York called “Sex in the Sky.”  Kiera S. thought it would make a good addition to our “What Warrants a Slide Show” post.  We agreed.

We added a Volkswagen ad to our post on vintage advertising suggesting that women are horrible (horrible!) drivers.  See it here.

We added a vintage ad marketing Zippo lighters to “modern mothers” to our post featuring ads in which babies tell their moms to smoke Marlboros.

Before the “obesity epidemic,” kids were just chubby.  We added two additional material to our post featuring vintage ads selling clothes for “chubby” kids, one of them sent in by Holly M.

Women LOVE to clean!  We added a vintage ad to a previous post about the joy of women’s work.

We recently posted about a business called the Occasional Wife.  A blogger at The Grand Narrative pointed us to several companies along the theme of Hire-A-Hubby.  We added them to our original post on the social construction of “wife.”

We updated a post on gendered marketing of products with images of pink and blue scooters for the mobility impaired and a cordless screwdriver marketed to women by including a manicure set. Turns out it wasn’t very popular.