Missing Dead or Alive

 I just read the featured review, and it was claiming that the show was staged. Unlike the featured review, watch the whole series and I do not think that it was staged. I think Netflix went to this little town and said, we will give you x amount of money if you allow us to insert ourselves to a ridiculous degree into the criminal justice process. If it was staged, I don't think this would have been so egregious. But they do film people who are having the worst moments of their lives, some of whom are the subjects of criminal investigations, so it seems like the presence of these cameras does little to increase the chances of objectivity and the law being followed. The filmmakers want us to feel compassion for the people who undergo the situations and the law enforcement officers who have to try and solve these cases and the mental and physical toll it takes on them, however it would have been much less ethically problematic if they had indeed done re-enactments. It did get me to thinking about one question, which is in a lot of these cases charges are dropped because the victim doesn't want to press charges. And for me, that doesn't make any sense at all that the victims would be given such power in the criminal justice system. For the simple fact that two of these charges that I mentioned are quite serious, kidnapping, and the other is an attempt to defraud someone out of their property. And that last episode ends with this sort of optimistic music and the feeling that everything is okay, but the person who tried to sell the property is still in control of the property and has not been charged of any crime, so you get the feeling he's just going to find a different way to do this. I just went down a rabbit hole trying to see if victims can drop charges against people who have been accused of crimes, and apparently in the United States they cannot. The prosecution, who decides whether a case will go to trial, and usually it's based upon the ability for witnesses to be called. In the two cases I mentioned, the primary victims would not have to testify at all, because facts of the case could be established without their testimony. So this documentary series tries to advocate for victims and the law enforcement establishment and ends up confusing people who watch it about the law which I don't think is a great look.

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