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Recruiting the Criminal: Difference between revisions
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* [[Spider-Man]] employed the use of the villain Sandman a few times in order to catch up to his old teammates in the Sinister Six. This eventually led to a [[Face Heel Turn]] but he eventually returned to a life of crime. This setback didn't stop Spidey from once again asking for his help in tracking down an alternate reality version of his Uncle Ben who was linked to a crime (long story).
** Spidey also asked [[Venom (Comic Book)|Venom]] for help almost every time he had to face Carnage since they both had related alien symbiotes.
* In the ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' story "The Cursed Earth", Dredd needs to recruit a second biker to deliver a pack of vaccines to Mega-City Two. Though plenty of Judges are willing, Dredd recruits convicted criminal and mutant Spikes Harvey Rotten, who is the best biker in the Big Meg and knows the Cursed Earth very well.▼
== [[Film]] ==
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* In ''[[Kiki Strike]]'', Kiki hires delinquent Girl Scouts.
* This is basically how the Special Corps operates in ''[[The Stainless Steel Rat]]'': they recruit non-homicidal criminals to catch the more dangerous ones.
* In ''[[Discworld]]'', Lord Vetinari recruits [[Con Man]] Moist Von Lipwig to reform [[
{{quote|'''Von Lipwig:''' I've robbed banks!
'''Vetinari:''' Precisely, just invert your thinking. The money goes in to the bank. }}
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* In [[Castle (TV)]] ''Deep in Death'' Rick buys into a mafia poker game to look for a murderer and uses that as his excuse; he is supposedly a rich mystery writer getting a hands on taste on a future setting.
==
* The standard Thief in a traditional ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' adventure party. Turns out the guy skilled in picking locks and pickpocketing tends to do that for a living, who knew?▼
▲* In the ''[[Judge Dredd]]'' story "The Cursed Earth", Dredd needs to recruit a second biker to deliver a pack of vaccines to Mega-City Two. Though plenty of Judges are willing, Dredd recruits convicted criminal and mutant Spikes Harvey Rotten, who is the best biker in the Big Meg and knows the Cursed Earth very well.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* The [[Sly Cooper]] games will invariably have [[Interpol Special Agent|Interpol Inspector]] Carmelita Fox enlist the aid of the titular protagonist (a thief who only targets other criminals) to take down the [[Big Bad]] at the climax of the game. Also occasionally inverted in that Sly and his gang will manipulate her into unwittingly helping them out now and then.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* In two episodes of ''[[Justice League]]'', the League faces off against [[Knight Templar]] counterparts called the Justice Lords who are willing to kill. In need of a counter-tactic that the Lords don't also have and can't replicate, they recruit Lex Luthor.
==
▲* The standard Thief in a traditional ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' adventure party. Turns out the guy skilled in picking locks and pickpocketing tends to do that for a living, who knew?
* [[Truth in Television]] - Reformed thieves and conmen are invaluable to people designing security systems.
** The police also sometimes hires them for training the recruits. This tends to be only the case with non-violent criminals however - thieves, pickpockets, burglars and frauds.
** Plus many large corporations will hire hackers to try to break their systems and advise them on how to beef it up.
** Part of the thing is that cyberwarfare is so young a phenomenon that for a while there was no other way to get a White Hat but to convince a Black Hat to change sides. This may already be changing.
* During [[World War II]] the [[OSS]] obtained a number of skilled criminals from prisons to train its agents for specialty skills; most agencies maintain a number of state-sponsored safe-crackers, pickpockets, etc. Of course when you think about it, those criminals recruited were the criminals that got ''caught'' but they presumably had to make do.
** One notable case was "Operation Underworld", where the likes of Lucky Luciano were solicited to cooperate with authorities and aid with countering Axis spies in exchange for reduced sentences.
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* Snitches are 'hired' by wardens and policemen to rat on their underground friends, whether for creature comforts or being left to their menial thievery.
* According to one [[CNN]] documentary, convicted drug dealer Jimmy Keene was recruited by police to befriend convicted kidnapper Larry Hall and get him to admit to a string of serial killings that police had been unable to solve on their own, with Keene getting a reduced sentence out of the deal.
* Same as how medical shows hire doctors and military shows hire former service personnel, [[Crime Show
* Pirate [[Wikipedia:Jean Lafitte|Jean Lafitte]] in [[The War of 1812]].
* Subverted with Onel de Guzman, the author behind the infamous [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOU ILOVEYOU] virus. Popular rumour in the Philippines has it that de Guzman was hired either by Microsoft or international government agencies for his hacking skills, but it was revealed in 2020 that an investigative journalist found de Guzman working at a mobile phone repair stall in Manila, a stark contrast to the arguably high-profile job offers supposedly made to him.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Criminals]]▼
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
▲[[Category:Criminals]]
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