Answer: Playing Cards

Florida law enforcement officials, working with the prison system and the Attorney General’s Office, have found a clever way to tiptoe around the issue of getting information about crimes from prisoners. It’s a very delicate situation: no prisoner wants to be seen as someone who talks to the authorities or rats anyone out, but many prisoners have information about crimes they’ve witnessed or heard information about from other prisoners. How then do you get them to talk without putting them at risk?

The rather clever solution is to print up playing cards with missing persons and wanted information on them and then distribute them throughout the prison system. Prisoners play a lot of cards and will inevitably see the information printed on the card as well as the tips line they can call to share information they have about the crime.

To date, tips resulting from the cards have resulted in two solved cases, the murder of James Foote and the murder of Ingrid Lugo, and will hopefully contribute to more solved missing persons and cold cases.