Fantasy sports leagues have long given sports buffs a way to "get in the game," by allowing them to play imaginary games based on the stats of actual players. Two new leagues take that concept a few steps — and ethical dilemmas — further by swapping athletes for convicts.

Both www.fantasydeathrow.com and www.fantasyfugitiverecovery.com turn fantasy gameplay into a life-or-death matter. Borrowing the standard fantasy sports league formula, competitors choose "players" and score points based on their performance.

But while participants in traditional fantasy leagues scour box scores and scouting reports for their draftees, members of www.fantasydeathrow.com and www.fantasyfugitiverecovery.com are more likely to pore over mugshots than the sports section.

Each game puts its own spin on the formula: www.fantasyfugitiverecovery.com is concerned with catching the "players," giving participants points whenever a wanted fugitive is captured, while www.fantasydeathrow.com is all about killing them.

Not surprisingly, the sites, which draw thousands of visitors per day, have garnered criticism for handling serious issues like prison breakouts and executions in humorous ways.

But regardless of tact, say the creators, their sites help advance the ever-present debate over how the U.S. treats its criminals.

The creator of www.fantasyfugitiverecovery.com, Jeremy Juenger, says his site, which includes mugshots and links to the states of more than 400 escapees, is in fact the only database that exists of escaped convicts.

"What the master list ends up being is probably the easiest place for law enforcement to find a list of escaped convicts," he said.

The idea for his site, says Juenger, came from a game put out by Maxim magazine called "Fallacy Baseball." In the game, participants scored points when their players performed poorly, instead of well.

Juenger chose convicts, he said, because it was easy for him to collect the information. "I figured the best game would be one that anybody could play, which would be one that dealt with the public domain."

The site launched in November 2001, and the action kicked off when Clayton Lee Wagner, an anti-abortion extremist apprehended on Dec. 5, 2001, was the first inmate Fantasy Fugitive Recovery tabulated, giving a participant named "Lecter's Last Stand" four points.

Fantasy Death Row, which bills its site as "Capital Fun-ishment from the heart of Texas," is a different sort of contest — quite literally a game of life and death.

Participants select "players" from a list of death row inmates, then accumulate points based on the progress of their cases. Pardons are worth 50 points, clemency 25 points, and players lose 10 points if an inmate is executed and another 50 if the executed inmate is proven not guilty after his death. The player with the most points as of Dec. 31, 2002, wins.

Wins what? According to the prize list, the first place winner gets a ticket to Huntsville, Texas — home to the state's death row — and a press pass courtesy of Fantasy Death Row. Second place: "Probably something cheap. Something cheap and sh---y."

The site takes a Vegas-style view of betting on the inmates, and even provides an elaborate handicapping system and scouting report section designed to help players choose the right inmates.

The site is not without its dark humor. Consider the way it reported that Rudolfo Hernandez — considered a Fantasy Death Row "Superstar" for evading death multiple times — was executed by the State of Texas last week. "Sadly, like so many one-legged diabetics who lie about being serial killers he was taken from us in his prime," the site quipped sarcastically.

Executions aren't generally a laughing matter, however, and Fantasy Death Row has received a fair amount of criticism for its sometimes light treatment of one of the country's most contentious issues.

"Pro or anti-death penalty, this is dirty, playing games with humans life... My God, what kind humans are you?" writes Reiner Stensgaard Goldau of Denmark's International Bannister Foundation in a letter posted on the site.

"If you were falsely accused and on death row, or one of your family members, I don't think you would find this tasteful," writes a detractor named Cindy.

But despite the criticism, the site which has more than 1,000 players, is not without poignant insights into the larger death penalty debate.

For each sarcastic quip, the site offers a serious observation. "For while it is a man we kill, in a larger sense it is a bogeyman and as such, the history of capital punishment is an autopsy of societies fears," it states.

A case in point: In reporting the execution of convicted murderer Napoleon Beazley, who was 17 when he committed his crime, the site lays out the fundamental issues.

"Should juveniles be punished with the same inelastic severity as adults?" it asks. "He had no prior convictions. In fact, he was senior class president, graduated 13th in his class and was signed up for the Marines... Has been a model inmate... A white judge presided over his trial by an all white jury for the killing of a white man..."

"There are so many different types of games that you can be involved in," said James Serra, a board member for the Fantasy Sports Player's Association who sells league-management software and has been a fantasy sports player for 11 years. About 30 million people play some sort of fantasy sports game, he says. "Football and baseball are the most popular, but it's broadened to NASCAR and golf lately. I even saw fishing — but I think these [crime] sites may have topped it."

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