You would have to be convicted of the crime. I am not a lawyer, but I’m sure there are many crimes that include or are solely based on an intent to commit a crime–possession with intent to distribute drugs, for example. Yes, the drugs were in his possession, but how do we know he intended to sell them? To be convicted of that crime, it must be proved in a court of law.
Small nitpick, but “possession with intent” is far from “solely based on intent”. You are correct that many crimes included an “intent” element. But even conspiracy or attempt charges require some overt act. There are no thoughtcrimes ala 1984.
I would be glad to know that men willing to pursue children for sex are being thrown in jail, but I find the packaging of such stings as “news” or “entertainment” distasteful.
I suppose the argument can be made that the broadcasting of such shows acts to deter, and so does public good.
I just find that, in the average person not tempted to be a pedophile (which I assume is the vast majority of viewers), the real purpose of watching such a show is to derive pleasure from the humiliation of someone who is by definition worthy of punishment.
I do not think, myself, that such an emotion is a healthy thing to indulge. Punished these people should be; but to take pleasure in it, or to derive amusement from it, strikes me as somewhat wrong.
Perverted-justice and their (questionable) methods are currently being discussed over here.
There are many fine young women in phone sex, believe me. For every one that looks like the stereotype, there are five smokin’ alternachicks who have really open minds and just don’t want to sling coffee or cover up their tattoos. The guys I don’t know about, because I was only one of three where I worked, and I’ve never really met any others. The three of us weren’t so shabby to look at either, though. 
Anyway, there are plenty of relatively normal people in phone sex (not counting me, I’m a weirdo); it’s not some ghetto for the insanely hideous and unsocialized.
As for the topic, this show and everything about it just disturbs me. I can barely make it through threads about it here. It’s all just fucked up and sad, from every angle.
How about paying your source $100,000? Is that an important facet of responsible journalism too?
Given your link to the article about the payment of $100,000 I would be concerned that PJ had a strong financial incentive to produce pedophiles and might not be as concerned about entrapment as they should be. It would be easy to produce edited chat logs so how can we be sure it took place the way they say? It might have been on the up-and-up, but maybe not. It certainly raises the creep out factor.
Well, you could… tell the cops you were happy to see them!
Not my point–whether or not there are hot chicks plying the phone sex trade isn’t the issue… My point was that people automatically assume that anyone with a hot sounding voice is hot looking–and I know exactly whereof I speak, since I work in a call center and have for many years. I’ve had guys try to pick me up, propose marriage, the whole nine. I’m running out of ways to tell these guys that the sizzle ain’t necessarily the steak! Heck, I’m not likely to cause a clock to run backwards or anything, but you’d never be able to tell from my voice that I’m pushing fifty and a grandmother.
My boggling place is the nearly infinite ability of the male human animal to convince himself that anything he wants to be true is in fact true. These dumb clucks are not only convinced that hot twelve year olds are lining up to boink them but that there’s not even a chance that they’re deluding themselves–they keep on with the chat room antics and actually show up at a strange house fully expecting to have it off with a kid who’s all alone with no supervision waiting for creepy forty year old guy to show up and have wild monkey sex with no consequences. What the hell are they thinking?