According to this article Californian police recently set up a sting operation in which they lured parole violators in with offers of amnesty and then sent them back to prison. This column mentions entrapment by estoppel, i.e. police cannot tell a person that something is legal and then arrest them. I’m not sure if this qualifies as entrapment, as they’re using deceit to get parole violators to surrenders themselves, as opposed to getting suspects to confess. That being said, the state’s actions are troubling in that any future offers of amnesty from the government, including ones made in good faith for an important reason, are not going to be seen as credible.
I wouldn’t consider it entrapment from a moral perspective, as an otherwise innocent person by definition has nothing to worry about temptation wise. I’m assuming they covered the legal aspects, but maybe they stuffed up somehow.
It does seem like a great way to make amnesties and the like less effective in future if word gets out though, and that seems rather shortsighted.
Otara
Finally, something good came from this “amnesty” stupidity.
How can this possibly be seen as entrapment? It’s more like luring fugitives to being captured.
I was going to make a post about this a few hours ago, but decided against it since I can’t really articulate what it is about this situation that bothers me so much.
I think it is like the OP said, nobody has any valid reason to cooperate with the state with the goal of becoming a productive citizen now since the trust issue has been destroyed.
Its like when prisons tell the prisoners ‘come sign up for your GED and you will get time off for good behavior’. Now it seems like fewer people are going to go for fear it is a trap. Law enforcement uses carrots and sticks, but the motive to follow the carrots will go down since people can’t trust if they are real or deceptive.
In the war in Afghanistan & Iraq, the US government has made good faith offers to insurgents. ‘Turn in your weapons and use political means to protest, and we will not prosecute’. And I believed it worked in Iraq. However, why would anyone in the US believe a government offer like that?
I can understand the cops lying with phony prizes like TVs or sports tickets, but it seems like they were telling the parolees if they made a good faith effort to be law abiding, they would be rewarded and instead they were punished for it.
Guess What? In America the cops are free to lie to you.
My problem with the lying is when they’re interrogating a person who could (and often is) truly innocent. In the case of parole violators, by definition, they are already breaking the law.
To my understanding both of these situations do not represent estoppel. Estoppel would only occur if the police/authorities/parole officers were barred from lying (before an arrest/detainment.) Clearly, IANAL so this may be incorrect.
It’s a trap, but it’s far from entrapment. Here, the offense - violating parole either through failing to contact their parole officers or potentially committing new crimes - has already taken place before the ruse even began. Thus, the ruse had no effect on the parolee’s propensity for violating parole or committing a new crime in the first place. Other states and jurisdictions have tried similar ruses. There aren’t going to be any genuine mass amnesties offered by California or any other state that wants its parole system and law and order in general to be taken seriously.
Yet another group of people that claims to be working for justice, but are really immoral shitheads. I can get why undercover cops lie, but when they are representing their state, they are just being assholes.
The ends do not justify the means. And I’m generally the type that says that convicts lose their rights.
It’s bad enough that so many people don’t trust cops. Why the hell add more reasons? The less you are trusted, the more deceitul you have to be to get information, the more you come off as a jerk, and then the less you are trusted or revered. Which is really funny, since so many cops have inferiority complexes.
No entrapment, by estoppel or any other means.
As a matter of policy, I have to say I like the “You’ve won a flat screen TV!” method better than this, but it’s an acceptable choice, legally and morally.
I’m willing to defer to your opinion on the legally acceptable part, but you’re completely wrong about it being morally acceptable.
Well, here we will have to agree to disagree. The legal claim is undeniable because I can point to source of law that we both agree are authorities in this country. Since we do not agree on a source of unimpeachable moral authority, however, the issue cannot be as definitively settled.
Not definitively of course. But I suspect that most people think that falsely offering a gesture of mercy so you can attack someone isn’t morally acceptable.
How is apprehending someone who is willfully fleeing from the law (as well as the debt owed to the community resulting from their criminal conviction) by tricking them into revealing themselves an “attack”? It’s not like felons don’t sign documents acknowledging the general requirements and responsibilities of parole either when they are convicted or when they are released from prison.
In shortest terms; it’s immoral to press an advantage under a flag of truce.
And as previously commented on above, it works against the state’s long-term interests. While this may feel good in the short term, as word spreads and distrust grows, the police–and by extension society–lose a very valuable tool in solving and preventing crime.
This goes beyond fake offers of amnesty; this will make suspects or informants less cooperative during investigations.
If there wasn’t a recognized state interest in the integrity of plea negotiation communications, why do most (all?) jurisdictions bar related testimony from being used at trial?
Homer: Up and away in my beautiful my beautiful motor boat! Da da da da!
Bart: But we didn’t enter any police raffle.
Homer: That doesn’t matter, the important thing is we won.
Marge: I don’t know, there’s something very peculiar about this!
Homer: Sheesh! You’re the most paranoid family I’ve ever been affiliated with.
Cops trick people into telling the truth all the time. Crime isn’t war and there is no “parlay.” If, during hostage negotiations, the police have an opportunity to subdue the hostage takers and rescue the hostages with no loss of life by pretending to negotiate and pressing an advantage, that’s not immoral. Tricking someone into signing a contract that is unjust is immoral (and would void the contract). Tricking someone into fulfilling a legal obligation to the state that they made knowingly and of their own free will (with the incidental effect of potentially making the community safer) is not immoral.
How? It’s already legal for police to lie to suspects, within a certain limit, during questioning. It doesn’t seem likely that criminals (or suspected criminals) are going to be thinking that far down the road about false parolee amnesties when answering where they were at a certain time and date.
These are not innocent cityizens. They are felons serving what should be prison time. To to gain early release, they gave their parole.
Parole is a concept that goes back centuries. These people agreed to be released early in exchange for certain rights. For example, they agree to surrender some of thier usual Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights; parole and probation officers can typically search residences and persons without probable cause.
So framing this as a battlefield, with honorable opponents, miscasts it entirely.
Sorry, it seems as if we’re going to end up talking past each other and that’s kind of fruitless—I don’t care to engage in a game of semantics and squabbling over terms and word choice. If there’s any chance you can see past just the words, maybe you’ll see there’s a distinction between interrogation-related lies (sorry I’m not going to struggle to find better terms) such as “we found your fingerprints at the scene, why don’t you tell us how you did it?” and anmesty-related lies of the OP. I don’t have an expectation of an epiphany or changing your mind—I’m just wondering if there’s any way to move past the semantics and get to an area of shared comprehension.
Here at least you’re recognizing that they can lie “within a certain limit.”
Further, what if a proposed law made all offers of amnesty or immunity, whether offered by a judge, prosecutor, or policeman, on their face invalid? Can you see judges, prosecutors, or policemen opposing the bill? I doubt Arpio would, but the loss of those tools—or in this case the diminishing thereof—is bad for society. That the cost/benefit comes out different for interrogative lies does not entail that the analysis comes out the same here.
If I had heard of this amnesty, wanted to take advantage of it but was suspicious, how could I ascertain it was the real deal? I don’t suppose I’d have recourse to a lawyer at that point?
Couldn’t this be construed as a breach of contract? The state offers a contract: If the violators bring themselves in, the state will grant them amnesty. The parole violators accept the contract, by bringing themselves in. The state then reneges on its offer, and does not grant them the promised amnesty.
Now, I know that any contract for illegal activity is null, but there’s no illegal activity in this contract: The state is legally allowed to offer amnesty, and the violators are of course allowed to turn themselves in. And even though it’s not presented as a contract, it looks to me like it has all of the elements of one: Both sides gain consideration, and the terms are known and agreed to by both sides.