Since the grand mayority of child abuse comes from family or close friends trying to stop child abuse by entraping random horny idiots of the internet really is very comparable to “Reefer Madness”.
Their intent is to have sex with someone who does not have the capacity to consent. Therefore, it’s rape. They are obviously intending to rape someone. Sounds like a crime to me.
No, it makes them sick perverts. Sick perverts who happen to be men.
I’m a grown man, and if a 14 year old girl approached me and said, “Hey sailor, it’s party time!” I wouldn’t say, “Alright!”, I’d be interested in protecting the girl’s mental health. Therein lay the difference between a decent human being and someone with a serious illness.
Y’know, in Canada there’s nothing wrong with this scenario, yet we’re a pretty decent nation.
Oh, ok. And these are different guys then, those who abuse family/friends and those who troll for strangers? As far as I’m concerned, one less rapist is better than not.
What’s so bad about entrapment anyway? That is an honest question.
Just because we as a country decided 14 year old girls are just to stupid to make their own decisions doesn’t make anyone a sick pervert. Theres plenty of places were 14 is the legal age and they seem to be doing just fine. One of the dateline shows used freaking Miss America as bait, is anybody whos attracted to her a sick pervert?
Because you’re not catching criminals-you’re creating new criminals, then playing gotcha.
I see noone has answered my question yet: why not nine year olds instead of fourteen year olds? Just as illegal but infinitely worse.
What **Czarcasm **said.
Also, it places a lot of emphasis on “people on the outside are out to hurt my kid!” and the legislation that results from that sort of mindset. There is no attention paid at all to familial child abuse. People get into hysterics over the outside world and don’t realize that ugly shit happens in the family, too. So maybe it gets ignored, or the kids don’t get educated about tactics for dealing with someone who is grooming or threatening them. Or they think “only strangers want to hurt me, no one in my family would”. There’s already a huge stigma for victims of familial sex abuse to step up and speak out; now it’s like they don’t even exist.
In other words, it’s more about doing things that the public can feel all good about rather than a real solution.
WAG: pedophiles don’t troll for nine year olds on MySpace, so it would be bad TV. It’s about sensationalism, not justice.
I think the idea behind ‘entrapment’ is that intentionally enticing someone to commit a crime is an illegal thing for the government to do. A person may not be a criminal, and then the government works to persuade that person to commit a crime, and then arrests him/her.
The idea isn’t that the person didn’t end up committing the crime, it’s that the person might never have committed a crime if the law enforcement officer didn’t encourage him or her to do so.
Since a police force that encourages people to commit crimes is, shall we say, undesirable, entrapment is illegal.
Anybody have any thoughts on whether this is entrapment or not?
MSNBC aired that sting over and over for entertainment value. It was salacious and seemed more intent on humiliating the men than protecting children from predators. BLAH!
Yes. It implies that
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Some powerful anti-children/pro-predator lobby actively sets out to weaken our protection of children from sexual predators and/or
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The people in charge of protecting children would do an adequate job if only they cared more, which in turn implies that
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Nobody except you cares enough about children.
Which is patently absurd, and brings us right back to square 1: “Won’t somebody think of the children?”.
There’s a (Spanish?) proverb that goes something like “When the lock is open, the honest are tempted”. The problem with entrapment is that it carries the very real possibility of ensnaring someone who would not have committed the crime in the first place, even if s/he has thought about it. For example, your average cocaine user would probably never sell coke, but if they’ve never sold so much as a line in their life, they happen to have a bag on them, and an undercover cop walks up and tries to score, and maybe the guy has a high energy bill this month, or he got laid off right after he bought the bag for himself, or he’s been thinking about quitting and this suddenly gives him quick and easy means to do it, he might sell that bag–even though he would’ve never sold it otherwise.
I, for one, didn’t respond to it because I would’ve just been repeating myself. Unfortunately, what you quoted is a textbook example of entrapment, but AFAIK there’s nothing illegal about private citizens doing it. (After all, if entrapment by private citizens were illegal, someone could go to jail for introducing pot to someone who later sold pot to kids, which would be pretty fucked up if that guy was just a college roommate with an extra bowl or something.)
Ok, I get what everyone is saying about entrapment. But still, I’m kind of inclined to say, “So what?”
I mean, the process serves well to identify those who would commit grievous harm upon children. Surely the process reveals a trend in nasty thinking and behavior more than it “entices” someone in a “one-off” scenario, no?
Sure, keep it off TV because it is sensational, that’s fine, but if the authorities can identify these people, then maybe they can get the help they need?
I think you are reading too much into it now.
[emphasis mine]
We don’t jail people for their thoughts or stuff they *might *do here in the free world.
And more about entrapment. When you have a mouse problem, you set some traps and bait them with cheese. And you catch a mouse. But hey, wait a minute, maybe that mouse never intended to steal any cheese. Now his head’s in a trap even though he didn’t do anything wrong. But nobody cares about that. It just a mouse, just an animal. What’s the difference?
Sure, you’re not going to trap every rapist by baiting them one by one in a TV sting, but hey, who cares? One less rapist is better than not.
Except they aren’t guilty of rape. They never raped anyone. Surely you understand this distinction?
I saw this show for the first time last night. I think they should replace Chris Hansen with William H. Macy, in Fargo character. Also, the little Asian chick was really cute.
Ok, that’s true. But do we jail them for stuff they intend to do, things that they would have done if they had not been thwarted by law enforcement, bad aim, or sting operations? Well, in the case of murder, we do. Same with Breaking and Entering (depending on legal code).
And here in Canada, there are laws in place which preemptively punish those who are considered a likely risk to offend. If a rapist is due for release and the authorities decide he presents an imminent threat to society, they keep him locked up beyond his original sentence. He’s being punished for something he hasn’t done yet. <–Canadian legal experts: correct me if I got that wrong.