Taking over the family business spells bad news when that business is breaking the law, according to the U.K.'s Minister for Policing. Hazel Blears, who believes that children with a daddy in jail are bound to pick up those criminal inclinations, has a solution: track the buggers from birth.

Of an estimated 125,000 U.K. kids with a father in prison, Blears thinks about 65 per cent are destined for the same fate. Her plan has authorities tracking the children of convicts from the time they're toddlers on through their teen years. Authorities would lay in wait for "disruptive behaviour," then intervene with "extra support" at school and in their extra-curricular activities.

"I don't think it is stigmatizing those children by targeting them," Blears insists. "If you go to school every day and everybody tells you you are rubbish you are never going to succeed."

Supposedly, telling children they're genetically predisposed to a life of crime isn't the same thing.

» Scott Saxon