A Thug By Any Other Name …

Anybody care to know the most common first names of Liverpool’s criminals? Martin Rosenbaum, on his BBC News blog, has posted such a list, including types of offenses. Now all someone has to do is cross-index the most popular criminal names with the most popular names in general and break them out according to socioeconomic status, etc. As it now stands, it’s not much more than a curiosity — and a rather troubling one at that, considering that “Stephen” is No. 5 on the list (after James, Michael, John, and Paul, and followed by Anthony, David, Thomas, Lee, and Christopher). At least the typical Stephen was relatively less violent than the typical James; Stephen, it seems, prefers drugs.