The world wasn't black and white. Shirley Carlton knew this. She knew it like the back of her hand. In fact, she may know it better than most people, being a police officer and all.

Working so closely with some people that happened to be the scum of the earth had given Shirley an insight into how they work, how they think. Shirley had found they had to be dealt with in a certain way, and each one was different, with their own special motives and desires and fears and reasons. The thing that Shirley hadn't found was how the rest of the world hasn't figured this out yet.

Now, Shirley wasn't big on history, she wasn't too knowledgeable about it, but the thing she had learned is that everyone seemed to go about punishing criminals wrong.

It used to be too harsh, in Shirley's opinion, where the line blurred between actual criminal activity and simple disagreements. If one person did not believe what their friends, family and community believed, they would get severely punished.

And that clearly wasn't right.

But now, it has gone to another extreme. Now, all criminal activity is punished with a weak slap on the wrist, even murder, apparently.

All that a person would need to do to right there wrong, apparently, is go to school. Shirley hated that school. She hated what it stood for, and she hated what it held. She knew these were teens that she was talking about, but even teenagers should have an idea of the law, or at least an idea of right and wrong.

Besides, putting them all in a school, together? To talk, to learn from each other, to say their twisted worldviews? Denaro wasn't a place for rehabilitation, it was a factory for even worse criminals.

Take that girl, Veronica Sawyer. She was arrested for attempted murder, and what does she get? An extra school year with more criminals to rub elbows with.

And it seems like Denaro wasn't even doing its job correctly, because, once again, Sawyer was in jail, charged for murder, again.

It was just like Shirley thought would happen. They go in bad, they come out worse.

Maggie was lucky to have a mother like Shirley, who understood exactly what the world was like and how to get through it. The world was filled to the brim with bad messages and people with violent and terrible ideals, but Shirley would give her daughter a brighter world to look forward to when she was an adult, and hopefully working towards justice like Shirley was.

A world where criminals are locked up, away from the good people, where the punishment firmly fits the crime. A place without third and fourth chances for people to use and abuse.

And Shirley promised that if Maggie, Shirley's impressionable little teenage daughter, ever learned from these people, and succumbed to their level, then Shirley could not show bias. Maggie would become a better person through Shirley's better world, where criminals are punished, no matter what.