Some people claim that Facebook makes you easy prey for criminals, good-for-nothings and other unseemly characters. But that's not always true. Sometimes the site helps put people behind bars, as it did this week.

Jonathan G. Parker of some small town, Pennsylvania, was arrested for his alleged role in a local burglary. Why did they go after him? Because someone used the victim's computer to check Parker's Facebook page. And then that same someone forgot to log-out, which gave police a pretty good lead. And now Parker's in prison.

This isn't the first time Facebook has assisted in establishing social order. Up in dear old Canada, police arrested a man who, not realizing his privacy shield hadn't been activated, admitted to an aggravated assault. Meanwhile, Maine police officers tipped their hats to the site after three stupid teenagers posted pictures of themselves trashing a local hotel. And, in perhaps one of Facebook's most successful cases, prosecutors used picture of an alleged drunken driver dressed in a Halloween "jail bird" costume to reinforce their case against him. The driver went to jail for his crime.

Now, we could blame these take downs on brain dead criminals, but we'd rather shower technology with the praise. Because we fear its increasingly God-like attributes.

Image via Johnny Grim's flickr.

Send an email to Andrew Belonsky, the author of this post, at andrew.belonsky@gmail.com.