I did a bit of smuggling many years ago. I was young, traveling through Asia, and running with a group of budget travelers. Someone knew this guy out of Hong Kong who would send you off with suitcases full of…well, things he didn’t want to carry. He told us that it...

Where do you want me to start? I have a good laundry list of things, I guess. Underage drinking, obviously. Public intoxication. Public urination. Just instances of drugs, marijuana, LSD, some with driving. In middle school, I was a big shoplifter. My friend and I...

This won’t take long. When I was a teenager, I drove my parents’ car on the highway in excessive speeds. Like 130 mph excessive speeds. I had some concept of this–I was 18. The damage that could have resulted… I could have derailed so many possibilities in life. I...

It was high school; I was a delinquent. A straight-A delinquent. Once I got to college, I began reassessing what I wanted to do in life. I decided to study the mind. I’m fascinated by it all. How much we know, how much we don’t, and how much we take for granted. The...

I got started through the neighbors. It was never more than a personal hobby until then. Can you keep our contacts open? We don’t want to lose customers while we’re out of town. What do I get out of it? You can keep the profits. When they came back—they asked me if I...

After I first moved here and before I could find a job, I used to help college students write exams. They were mostly pre-med. So, sorry if your doctor’s grasp of liberal arts is a little anemic. But at least I was able to pay rent.

My dad was a heroin addict; mom had a mental illness. I should have been a statistic—but I’ve always been my own person. That said, I like drinking. In my early twenties, I used to work at this bar—and one of my favorite customers was in law enforcement. He was drunk...

I was listening to the radio the other day, and this great song came on. I made my phone listen to it and tell me what it was. My Way by Frank Sinatra, my phone said, with an option to buy the track. And in that moment, my mind immediately went to ways of obtaining...

If we lived anywhere else, we would have been caught. If we had lived where we lived and had skin any color other than white, we definitely would have been caught. But we lived in an affluent neighborhood on a very white street and the only time we saw flashing lights...

I’m a rule follower. It’s very difficult for me to say this. Honestly, I’m not ashamed. Yet I was shaking this morning thinking about it. I broke the law. I made choices that could have led to my incarceration, but I didn’t hurt anyone. I would never hurt anyone. I’m...

I’ve done lots of things that would destroy my ability to be a nurse. I have sold drugs and I have bought drugs and I have done drugs. I’ve worked in schools and with kids and with vulnerable adults. I grew up with a really strong family base and community support—and...

By the time I turned 21. . . let’s see. I sold drugs, possessed drugs, drove drunk, drove stoned, trespassed, and burglarized. What else? Even if I had been caught, in my community—my affluent community—I’m sure I would have found my way through it. My brothers did....

Anything was better than watching my family disintegrate. I couldn’t hold us together, I couldn’t keep my brother alive, but I could control my high. I could laugh and forget about what was happening at home; this was a new and welcome reality. Oh, the luxuries to...

I love that witch doctor stuff. Essential oils, rocks, the whole nine yards. It’s not just personal health, but I’m into community healing, too. If you look at my resume, you’d see probation officer and you’d see natural healer. Odd, right? I probably wouldn’t be able...

A few years ago, I went to a rave where I ingested substances that seemed very fun at the time. I had gone with friends who were selling, and throughout the night, I’d point people their way. I was working for a tech company at the time and had access to all sorts of...

Should I tell you about the drug offenses? There’s marijuana, coke, LSD, Molly, study drugs. Sorry, this is really weird. Oh, I stole a traffic cone. I used a fake ID, peed in public, had an open container. I have never been arrested, much less convicted. Oh, I had...

I’d say sex in cars, but that’s lame – who hasn’t done that? Here’s one: I drove a motorcycle without a license or helmet for about a year. My friend and I had an elaborate plan to evade police. It involved back roads and shortcuts (I’d be able to navigate the streets...

My story is boring. Outside of religious ceremonies, I didn’t drink till I was 18. I went to a small, very liberal arts school where I was a lot tamer than many of my classmates. My freshman year, we had a few dorm parties (all before my No Shots Rule), and I competed...

I definitely benefited from my white male privilege. Time and again we were told to “sleep it off,” “you better get yourself home,” “oh, you kids,” (seriously) and “boys will be boys” by police. I’d be unemployable had I been caught. Instead, I went to rehab. I...

I guess I don’t know where to start.  Childhood? My grandfather was a horrible alcoholic; of course, I didn’t understand this till I almost became one myself.I got married young, and even then I knew it wouldn’t work. I had very low self-esteem and low I got married...

It was my 19th birthday. I really didn’t drink much before I turned 21, but my friends came into town and, well, we celebrated. I went to a small Catholic college and everyone at the school knew how to avoid campus ‘police,’ but my friends who were driving us around...

The only thing I can think of is underage drinking. There was one particular incident a while back. I was visiting my girlfriend at her college, about an hour away from where I was living. I drank to loosen up. I’m straight-laced and socially uncomfortable—but I was...

Oh man. There’s so much. Here’s one anecdote I remember: One time we broke into a schoolmate’s family’s shed as retribution for ongoing disagreements. We thought we could find a spare key, but ended up smashing out a window instead. It was one of those things where...

A while back I was taking the train; my headphones were in, but the sound was off. There were these two guys behind me, couldn’t have been more than 18. Neither could find a job because of a felony. A felony? When I was their age, I was thinking about college, not a...

My prefrontal cortex was not fully developed. I was young, disenchanted with the college experience and life in general. I wanted to explore. I took up with a busboy, on his second year of a student visa. Flirtations led to a fling. Pillow talk graduated from sweet...

In college–I was not so good. In the months following my 21st birthday, I bought booze for my teammates on several occasions. What was I to do? The freshmen were desperate and I remembered what that was like. Besides, this way we could keep an eye on them, make sure...

I went to an exclusive boarding school, the kind of place you’d think only exists in movies. That’s where I met my boyfriend, X. X was as reckless as he was smart, and he was seriously a genius. He was also Hispanic and very dark. I was crazy about him. After high...

Everyone has a story. What’s yours? If you’d like to start the We Are All Criminals conversation in your town, send us a note!

I definitely bought my younger sister plenty of alcohol, and she’d definitely give plenty to her friends. After I got into law school, I told her it had to stop. That is, I could still buy for her, just not her friends. That’s where I drew the line. The area we were...

I bought my friend a bottle of RumChata for her 19th birthday. Her mom bought the wine—so I think that makes us accomplices.

It might be kind of boring… but here goes.  I was 17 or 18, when a friend and I that both played tennis thought it would be funny to prank a teammate’s car. We filled the inside with toilet paper, smashed a couple of eggs on the roof, and wrapped the doors with the...

At closing, I didn’t know which bar I was at; I didn’t even know which side of town I was in. I remember puking out the car window as I was trying to find home. It wasn’t enough to make me stop stop—but I didn’t go on any more twelve-hour benders. Shortly after that,...

We’ll it’s kind of crazy: I’ve never told anybody about this. I was 18, living in a city close to the Canadian border, and dating a Canadian. I had a fake ID that said I was 19—the legal drinking age in Canada. So on weekends we’d cross the border to go to bars, and...

Recently, a client came into my office. He had been charged with a laundry list of offenses—for crashing a wedding. This guy ate and he drank and he was arrested. Trespassing, Felony Burglary, Disorderly Conduct, and Theft of Services— aggravated by false pretenses....

I have lots of stories—so many aren’t even worth telling: shoplifting in high school, underage drinking (like everyone else), driving around with someone in the trunk, and smoking pot (actually, on seminary campus—there’s so much drug use on campus). But there’s one...

This is a story of privilege and a little insanity. And as a Hindu child of immigrants, who grew up in a vegetarian household, my story – it turns out – isn’t just mine. When I was eleven, I took the vegetarianism that I grew up with at home and kicked it up another...

When I was 20, I had a friend who worked at a local department store. His job was to preapprove applicants for credit, and I was Harvey MacDonald from Alabama. I used the card a couple of times – bought some clothes and some other bullcrap. On the third try, they...

I’ve always been a rule follower, but I could not stop stealing. In school, I worked hard to get good grades, and all I wanted as a reward was gum—Bubblicious, to be exact. But we grew up poor and on food stamps, and the answer was always no. No, no, no. So I took...

Should I just list them? Drinking as a minor, using fake IDs (some were confiscated, but nothing else ever happened), and buying alcohol for kids underage. Drinking and driving. Drinking while driving. Open bottle. I loved trespassing. Public urination. Obstructing...

I was no baller. We just sold to friends. A lot of the stuff we did then wasn’t illegal. But now? We’d be in prison now.

It’s not so much I was hanging out with the wrong crowd … it’s just what we did was wrong. After a while, it got to the point where I kept at it because I wanted to keep an eye on my friend. I think I helped in the end. So was it really wrong afterall?

It was before the tattoos and nose ring. I got away with it because I looked like an Amish-esque white girl. They didn’t even question me; they just let me leave. It’s difficult for me to think about how a person of color would have had a completely different...

I was shitfaced. A cop picked me up at 3:00 am, wandering around town. Hey, you want a ride?  I’m not falling for that! No really. Get in the car. You can sit in the front. I got in and looked over my shoulder: there were two black guys in the back. I thought of this...

I see kids in court all the time for stuff that my friends and I did. Chucking water bottles, playground fights—I used to get yelled at by the Vice Principal; they’re charged with assault. At twelve. That’s absurd. It’s crazy to think about the stuff I’ve gotten away...

I’ve gotten away with stuff that’s like oh yeah, that only because I’m white–that’s the only reason why that cop let me go. I once drove drunk onto a crime scene. They had the road blocked off and I didn’t realize it: there were like two cop cars and I figured they...

So, should I just start? Okay. I have smoked marijuana with friends. I’ve stolen a stop sign with friends. I drank underage with friends. I went to several college parties underage with friends. I drove drunk once. A friend asked if anyone could drive and I said yes...

Start taking notes, because my list is long. Where I’m from, you can drink alcohol at 18. So when I moved here to go to college, I got a fake ID. I used it for three years—and only stopped using it as often when my 21st birthday got close. Do I use drugs now? No. I...

This could go in any direction. Where do you want to start? Let’s see. Paperwork crimes? I was charged in-state tuition at an out-of-state school. That saved me tens of thousands. Drug crimes? Selling out of an apartment complex is what got me through college. Fights?...

Back in the day, we thought no one could touch us. We were just kids—what could any one do to us? And it wasn’t that I didn’t have money. I was a really spoiled kid. I could say, “Hey Dad, I’m going to the mall. He’d say, Here’s some money.” But there was a thrill...

Some of it was felonistic, I suppose. How big was the big one? It was a gallon sized Ziplock. Is that a felony?  Yep, that’s a felony. FYI, I’m not still dealing, in case you’re curious. In fact, in my mind, I was never dealing. I was doing a favor for friends. The...

In high school it was weed, college mostly mushrooms. I loved mushrooms. I’d buy mushrooms today if I knew someone who could get them —it’s just I’ve severed those ties. I credit Adderall for my undergrad graduation, though. My friends and I were fuck ups. Smart fuck...

I consider myself a pretty open person, but when I heard about this project, I thought, how dare they say that? I purposefully don’t do anything wrong. But I suppose if you count the time on a dare I stripped down naked on a fairly highly trafficked street and made...

When I got to college, I was one of the few freshmen who both smoked and knew someone who sold weed. I started buying for friends, and then friends of friends.  A few months in, I was buying ounces at a time, and then expanded to acid. I’m not really in the...

It was a warm summer night, sometime between 1999 and 2001. I don’t remember exactly when. The good people at the city were changing the fire hydrants in my neighborhood. They had left the job half-finished for the night, leaving detached fire hydrants on the...

Generally, my offenses aren’t that big of a deal. I drank underage in high school and college. I went to bars with my sister’s ID. I’ve smoked pot, but never bought it. I guess I’ve illegally downloaded music; that was huge in the dorms. Let’s see. There was a...

I was 15; I was lost. All the worst things had happened at the worst possible time: the girl my foolish 15 year-old self thought I loved left for Europe, my best friend had come back from an extended vacation with a crippling addiction to cocaine. Life was not...

I had been the straight kid who enjoyed the company of delinquents. But I knew my limits: anytime cocaine showed up at a party, I would leave, or if it was my place, I’d kick everyone out. But pot isn’t the end of the world. In high school and college, my friends and...

I think I stole books from a library when I was young, just into my teenage years. Our school library had some stupid policy where we could only check out one book at a time, and only two a month. I thought it was outrageous, so I’d toss them out the window, stuff...

I grew up in northern Minnesota but went to college at a private school in Wisconsin for my freshman year. Sophomore year I transferred to Duluth, moving in with my old high school friends. It didn’t take long to figure out that they were no longer just smoking pot;...

There came a point when we were just really bored. At 14, we stole tennis balls from the local court and pelted cars at stop signs with them; we called it pegging. Three to ten of us would jump out of the bushes and just boom boom boom dent up their cars. Our...

What have I gotten away with? At first, all I could recall was underage drinking, although not a lot of it. But then I thought about it some more, and as I continued to think about it, everything got bigger and bigger. Reckless driving? Yes. A lot. Marijuana? Yes....

Freshman year, I started drinking. Sophomore year, I was a go-between for a dope dealing friend and the football team. He sold more than just pot — ecstasy, sheets and sheets of acid — but I never ran more than marijuana. Junior year, I spent Tuesday nights loading up...

Before my husband died, when the pain and cramping was so bad he couldn’t shampoo his own hair or grip a pencil, I baked. I have asthma, so we couldn’t smoke — so the marijuana went in the butter, then in the brownies. He probably did it ten or eleven times, four...

I was thinking about all of the things that I had done – Have I done that? Yeah, I’ve done that. Yeah, I’ve done that. Yeah, I’ve done that too. I hadn’t really thought about any of it much until I started writing it all down. Once I started tabulating everything, it...

I was shy in college. Painfully shy. When I left home for college, I left behind the few comforts that in high school seemed to keep me grounded. But that feeling of being cast adrift changed when two things happened: 1) my student loan check came and 2) I met Luke....

I was a kid. Sixteen maybe fifteen. It was the middle of summer, and I was bored out of my mind. I was a dork and the slapdash summer group I hung out with was mostly harmless, too. Once or twice a week, we’d find ourselves in the house on the cul-de-sac, draped over...

I have a rap sheet of uncaught crimes, most pretty insignificant. We were naughty kids—pulling fire alarms, smoking pot, and bolting from our private school to drink beer by the lake in our uniforms. But I suppose the thing that I feel the worst about happened on...

Hopefully I’m not wasting your time; everyone thinks their history is more dramatic than it is. I got into trouble constantly as a kid. In high school, I started experimenting with alcohol, marijuana, whatever I could get my hands on. I was still in school when I...

Let’s just say I’m never going to be president. I was a horrid child. I’ll list the types of offenses and you can choose which you’d like to talk about. Alcohol? Marijuana? (Smoked, baked, and supplied.) LSD? Shoplifting? (Make-up, perfume, eyelash curlers, fake...

I’d say the majority of my crimes were motivated by getting fucked up when I was young and stupid and didn’t have legal access to anything. I started drinking recreationally the end of my freshman year in high school. My friends and I destroyed a bottle of Green Apple...

| Bank teller’s shelf |   It happened in college in the women’s bathroom in the student union. I was washing my hands when a woman walked in, plopped her purse on the shelf next to the mirror in front of me, and disappeared into a stall. Before the toilet even...

It was habit, it was ritual, it was my own private firework display. Up and down 169 to 60 to 90, the stretch of road reaching from my apartment in Minneapolis to my parents’ front drive in Sioux Falls, you can find seven years worth of discarded cigarette butts from...

Here’s what happened: I purchased alcohol once for a family friend. I was thirty and teaching at the time. She was underage and in search of a drink. She was also depressed. I don’t know if I knew then that she was drinking quite as much as she was. But I was old...

For me, I was in a place. I wasn’t lost: I was floating. There was nothing holding me, there was no stability. One of my parents had a few interesting mental conditions, and I didn’t leave home unscathed. During my formative years, a normal day was a great day – and I...

I should preface by saying technically, it wasn’t illegal. Or at least all of it wasn’t illegal—unethical, yes—but not illegal: I don’t think law had caught up with technology at this point. I was an awkward, overweight, pimply teenager who was into computers. In the...

I was a nice boy and then sometimes I wasn’t. We stole little things candy, trinkets, stuff you could hide in your pocket and big things auto parts from a nearby junkyard (we called it the “midnight auto supply”); the steering wheel of a parked car at a filling...

The summer before I left for college I worked as a lifeguard at a public park. I was the youngest in a pool of young, inexperienced, and decidedly uncool lifeguards. It was a poor park. Racially integrated, but pretty poor. It was crowded, the summer was hot, and...

I’m trying to think of things I’ve done. Yeah, I smoked weed – but that’s boring. Yeah, I stole stuff – but that was when I was younger. I’ve drunk underage, and I’ve used someone else’s ID. I’ve downloaded music illegally, probably a couple thousand songs – but I...

I asked my husband, what should I talk about? I’ve done the normal things: drugs (used, participated in the sale of), theft, and so on. My husband said, you musta forgotten about that arson and insurance fraud. Oh, yeah… So this was before he and I met when I was...

It started with stolen six packs of Mike’s Hard Lemonade from the Rainbow on Larpenteur Avenue. I was 15 and believed that anything was palatable if pinched, and what was already good got better. Once the self-checkout lines were installed my sister and I would hit up...

I made a list because I couldn’t remember everything. Mostly it’s shoplifting and drug crimes. So there’s filching from the big-box stores. (Only national chains; I have a great deal of respect for local businesses.) I never really felt comfortable until I read about...

When I was in middle school, I got into graffiti. I did it for several years, tagging under bridges (dodging vigilante bikers), on the backsides of stores (climbing concrete blocks to do a piece), and down in the sewers. One time I went to the playground near my...

I was a senior in high school and lived in a small town. A very small town. Each class only had about 30 people in it, just to give you an idea. A one-stoplight kind of town. Getting booze really wasn’t a problem: my friends and I all had buyers. But we wanted more....

Teachers, social workers, artists, and others gathered around one cold night in a warm living room, telling tales of uncaught crimes. More than one storyteller wondered, if I had been caught, where would I be now? The photographs here show a handful of the quotes...

I was about twelve to fifteen at the time. My cousin Bobby and I used to steal my grandmother’s boxes of matches and light things on fire between her house and her neighbor’s house. Well, there was an old man next door. You could hear these sounds come up from his...

My friend’s a photographer—and on cold and rainy days we used to explore abandoned subway tunnels, documenting graffiti and life underground. There was one time we got caught. We had taken a train to West Harlem, climbed a fence and ran along the highway till we came...

He was 14 when his family moved to the neighborhood. The six-by-five block radius was rough, but not the roughest in town. That said, when J found himself befriended by two older guys from around the corner, things got noticeably better. There was Junior, a man who...

Teacher’s cabin   There’s not much to tell. That is, it’s all a bit fuzzy. Let’s see. This was many, many years ago—I’m retired now—but at the time I had just started teaching high school. The weeks were long, longer than weeks seemed to be before. There was so...

Media manager’s living room   It happened over a decade ago. I was in grad school in a small town. The people were predictable, and I was bored. Most days, I would leave school by five and be at the bar by six. Sometimes I talked to people, sometimes I brought...

When I was going to grad school, moving to one state from another, amongst my beer and personal items I packed in three pounds of really high-quality marijuana. Each pound of marijuana was in a large Ziploc bag, kind of like a nice decorative pillow one might see on a...

Manager’s living room I was a manager at a comics store in the mall and I’d been there for a while. My friends and I were working when the liquidators came in. Congratulations! You’re going out of business! After a company has been liquidated, it tends to only stay...

In our last two summers of high school, my best friend Mike and I wanted to be the next Stephen Spielberg. This was back when he made good films. The first movie was a mock up of Dirty Harry that we called “Clean Clive.”  The alley and parking lot across from the town...

Where do I start? You’ll have to bear with me, it’s a long journey. I suppose the statutory is as good a place to begin as any. I was 19 and my girlfriend was 15. The age gap was bigger than the magic 24-month difference. She and I had been intimate often. One night,...

So once, I’d have to say about three or four years ago, I was in a bar and this guy was just being a real jerk to one of my friends. My friend was talking to one of his friends when they were interrupted. Apparently, the jerk wanted to leave. So he said, Hey, stop...

I celebrated my graduations in style. At the end of my senior year of college, my friend and I went bar-hopping and got pretty drunk. On our way home, we made a pit stop to pee right in the middle of the main quad. Three years later, I finished grad school and visited...

Graduate student’s bedroom Pretty much every crime that I’ve committed is something that I morally justify to myself. Here’s a small list. There’s drug use, buying, and trying. I also have some sales (very small, maybe buying marijuana from one friend and selling it...

I was working at a retail shop in the mall and saving up for my summer wedding. My boss asked me to work overtime and my fiancé and I were happy to have the extra cash. With double shifts, the days were long. I cut out early one day in need of a break. My fiancée was...

Driving intoxicated wasn’t just a one-time thing. I haven’t done it for a long time now, but in college, I did it a lot. We drank a lot then. It was the culture. Probably four weeks out of the night we were drinking. We lived by a Taco John’s my sophomore year,...

We were 14, maybe 13, and had just finished basketball practice at our Catholic school. There were at least five of us culprits, I guess you’d say. We let ourselves into the nuns’ kitchen while they were off praying and grabbed whatever we could carry. Carl snatched...

Back in the 90s, I worked in a coffee store that started by a man whose dream it was to own a coffee shop (he had worked at Dunn Bros and places like that for a really long time). He had got his dad to come in with him and they’d used up all his dad’s retirement money...

When I was 15, my mother died. I thought that that didn’t have much affect on me. As a fifteen-year-old, I couldn’t let it. But what I found myself doing was leaving school, from which I had no friends or acquaintances really, going over to the shopping mall that was...

I picked up hundreds and hundreds of dollars of drugs and held them at my house until I was able to sell them. And I may have kept a little for myself and charged people much more than they needed to be charged.

This one’s still fresh. A while back, I was kind of an escort. It was in college, and I wanted the money—sometimes for something I needed, one time for a spring break. But you know there are always those sting operations going on? What if…? I was a shell of myself:...

Okay… I have drugs in my purse.

I had been kicked out of the college dorm after a night of video games and Parrot Bay rum (don’t ask) and eventually moved in with my friend James. Around that same time, James started dealing drugs. He needed a ride to pick up the goods and I had a car. James would...

When I was in college, I was working in a café. My sophomore year I had to get knee surgery, which meant I had to stop working for a while. My parents were still giving me money, so I wasn’t lacking, but I thought this would be a good opportunity to make money...

It wasn’t the day after I got my license, but it was close to then. It was homecoming weekend, and the night before I had hit a car in the school’s lot so I was already nervous. I was in a mall lot and they had those diagonal slanting lines. I pulled all the way...

My uncle gave me a thirty-aught-six rifle, and he told me when he gave it to me that I’d have to get at least one deer with it, so I took the gun and didn’t really think about it. I went to school, and the house I lived at – we were kind of notorious for having a...

My confession is that I still do do drugs and sell drugs, even as a functioning member and respected member of my community.

I was 19 years old, and I had just dropped out of school. I had actually been working at a bank in collections, and I decided that I wanted to do something more fun, I guess. So I became a barista at a coffee shop – and I wasn’t making a ton of money at my job. We had...

When I was in elementary school, I had a friend named Stacy and a friend named Heather. Heather was trouble. She taught me how to smoke a cigarette. My parents didn’t like her and she didn’t like Stacy. One day Heather and I left school early, went over to Stacy’s...

It was the mid-60s. I was a reporter and she was the most sophisticated woman in the room. I was on assignment, picking up the local color at a cocktail party for a big show that was about to hit Broadway. There were dozens of beautiful women in the room, each vying...

Elected official’s lunch spot I was 17, maybe 18. Not 19 because that’s when I moved out of my parents’ home. I was with a friend, Michael, dropping him off in my mother’s car. At his parents’ house, Michael got out and stood by the driver’s door. It was July and my...

When I was in sixth grade, I had a friend who wanted to blow up frogs with firecrackers. I wasn’t interested until I saw in Popular Science and that scientists experiment on rats and I really wanted to be a scientist. I thought, Okay, let’s do this. So we made tables...

In the late 60s, I was a junior high teacher by day and by night I was a dope dealer’s assistant. I never actually sold anything, but he would fly out to the west coast and come back with suitcases full of pot in kilos. We would take big strainers and break ‘em down...

I had a very orderly childhood. I rarely drank, rarely smoked, and rarely went out. I had friends over for tea parties – that was the kind of thing we would do. I went to college and something just clicked: I started drinking Robitussin, started buying acid, and...

Student One: I actually did get caught once at school ’cause I was, like, torrenting, and the whole thing–I don’t know if you guys are familiar with torrenting, but you can download it, but you’re not supposed to “seed,” which means putting it out there so other...

So I was 27 and on a mandated vacation with my friend to Jamaica. We flew first class over and were excited to spend our first grown-up trip at an all-inclusive hotel. We envisioned fraternizing with some local Jamaican men or perhaps some other people enjoying...

It was that realization of Holy shit, what did I just do? I was super drunk and now suddenly I’m not. I’m not drunk. Next thing I know it’s just dust and people falling all over each other.

We did a lot of kid stuff, TPing trees, littering front yards with White Castle burger boxes, breaking raw eggs on someone’s car. One night we saran-wrapped a friend’s Toyota with industrial-sized clingy plastic as he watched through the grocery store’s sliding glass...

When I was 14, I picked up a fast food job working with older kids. One night, they thought it would be funny to get me, the weird nerdy kid, high. Soon I went from occasionally to enthusiastically smoking, then to selling. By my sophomore year in college, I had more...

When I was 12 we would go to the 7-11 near my parents’ house to spend our allowances. I had a decent baseball card collection and wanted more. My allowance wasn’t great, however. So I came up with a plan. I went into the 7-11 and bought as many baseball card packs as...

When I was younger, I went through a bit of a theft phase. My brother and I used to go to a grocery store, ironically called Cops, and we would steal fishing lures and all kinds of stuff. We’d stick the lures down our pants. No one said criminals were smart. We would...

I produced a television show that dealt with obscure movies. As a result of this, I realized that there were a bunch of films that you couldn’t get in the US that were very easy to order on the internet. So I started a pretty successful bootlegging operation for a...

I love to light stuff on fire and watch it burn. I understand the morbid fascination with fire and explosives when people say, I just wanted to see what it was like. Yeah, I completely get that. Especially with fireworks. Fireworks are illegal in Minnesota, so my...

When I was little, maybe ten or eleven, my sister and I went to the grocery store with my parents. While they were shopping, she and I stole these temporary tattoos that were on the yogurt container lids. There were so many tattoos (butterflies and rainbows!) so what...

In my early twenties, I worked at a Pizza Hut restaurant. It was my first food service job, and when I started I wanted to do a good job, I wanted to be the best pizza server guy that I could be. I followed the rules, trying to be a great server, and trying to get as...

Sales representative’s good luck charms   Before going to college, I worked for a while as a debt collector. You probably know this, but collectors have access to your personal information like your social security number. Among other things, I’d use social...

I have two. Since I was in high school I’ve been stealing books from Barnes & Noble. If I’m having a shitty day, I just go to Barnes & Noble and take a book. It doesn’t have to be a book I’m all that interested in. It has something to do with corporate giants...

I break the law all the time. I drink and drive sometimes, which isn’t the best thing. But when I’m sober I don’t want to do it, and when I’m drunk I feel like driving. I steal stuff, when it’s available. I don’t go out of my way to do stuff like that, but if I don’t...

I work at a school. I’m not a teacher, but I interact with students a lot. I’ve worked there for a long time and built up a lot of trust. And I’ve started stealing things. It’s money sometimes, it’s office supplies sometimes (but who doesn’t do that), and sometimes...

A few years ago, my significant other and I were visiting a friend at a university. There is a very old building on campus that was once upon a time used as a psych ward. The university had reclaimed some of it, but a lot of it was still unused. The exterior still had...

Last night, I started thinking about all the things I’ve gotten away with, counting them off on my fingers. There was that, and that, and yep, that too. The one I wanted to tell you about was something my buddy and I started doing when we were in high school, and...

I don’t have too many singular, amazing stories. In general, I was an average suburban kid. But that was not inconsistent breaking the law: my criminal acts were almost culturally mandated, like rites of passage. For example, trespassing was a necessary part of my...

In my growing up, the whole social attitude toward juvenile behavior was very different than it seems to be now. I mean, I’m confident that some of the stunts that we pulled as kids—if we did the same things now, we would be in the court system and probably...

Everyone has a story. What’s yours? If you’d like to start the We Are All Criminals conversation in your town, send us a note!

Let’s see. I smoked weed for the first time the summer after eighth grade at the town water tower with my best friend and a couple of crushes. I continued to smoke on and off throughout high school. It was a small town, so at times the only real options were weed,...

My friend and I got into a lot of mischief the summer between high school and college. I suppose it was sort of a bucket-list before leaving town. One night we shot cats. Well – I didn’t shoot the cats, but I did drive, I did roll my window down, and I did shine the...

The only thing I can think of is underage drinking. There was one particular incident a while back. I was visiting my girlfriend at her college, about an hour away from where I was living. I drank to loosen up. I’m straight-laced and socially uncomfortable—but I was...