Perverted Justice

I must admit to mixed feelings about MSNBC's "To Catch a Predator." While entertaining and also successful in casting a spotlight on some dangerous and despicable people, I question whether this exercise is just. They work with an organization called "Perverted Justice", a forum that tries to lure predators by pretending to be 13 year olds. Their FAQ tries to answer two of my main objections, that first, a crime does exist that secondly it is not entrapment.

http://www.perverted-justice.com/index.php?pg=faq

How is this a crime? There was no actual minor!

Let's put it in terms we can all agree with. If I go to what I think is a hitman to order a murder of my wife, I've committed a crime. Even if that "hitman" is an undercover person posing as one for the purposes of catching people conspiring to murder. So why would anyone believe there needs to be an "actual minor" when it comes to solicitation? All that needs to exist is the record that the solicitor was informed that the person was a minor. After that, conspiring to have sexual relations with a minor is applicable. Just as the charge is the same for a person conspiring to murder with a "fake" or "real" hitman, the charge is philosophically the same for conspiring to have sex with a "fake" or "real" minor.

Is it entrapment?

Not on any level. First, entrapment is a term created and judiciated against law enforcement officials. We are not law enforcement officials. Secondly, these people IM our names first. We don't IM them. They choose to say the things they say, to agree to the things they agree to, and to give their phone number for the verification call. Entrapment is a situation where you go out of your way to entice a citizen as law enforcement to commit a crime they otherwise would not commit. For example, if a department sent around female police pretending to be prostitutes to knock on the doors of private citizens offering sex, that's entrapment. We don't do the figurative "knocking on doors." Rather we sit, wait, and allow them to knock upon our online "door." And when they do, they're in for a surprise. As the law states regarding entrapment, the defense fails when it can be shown that the person being charged had a predisposition to the crime in question. Dozens and dozens and dozens of convictions... zero successful entrapment defenses.

I'm still not persuaded. To combine both objections into one, it's a bit like scattering counterfeit dollars on the sidewalk and then arresting someone when he bends to pick them up-- surely a good way to rid the community of potential thieves. Proof, PJ/MNBC says, of the predisposition to commit the crime lies in the willingess of these people to travel sometimes hundreds of miles to have a relationship with this phony 13 year old. But it seems to me that much of the predisposition was fueled by the racy interaction of the pretend kid and the perp, which, in the case of PJ, is a middle-aged man, where as an aside the information that the kid is 13 is disclosed. Given that much of the banter that preceeds and follows that is sexually-charged blarney, why should the perp give credence to a single statement of claimed fact which is not fact? It all seems kind of perverted to me.

I have my reservations about the group as well.

My problem lies mainly with the fact that this is an untrained and unprofessional group of volunteers, answerable to no one, highly secretive about their own identities, and most with a very serious axe to grind. I think they rely on the fact that no one is going to defend someone chatting up an apparently underage person and use it as an excuse to engage in what is to them a very satisfying persecution of any such person.

Unfortunately, they don't know how to conduct a sting or how to gather useful evidence---they do not always seem to realize what is and isn't criminal activity, either---which means that from a practical standpoint, they do not preserve any evidence of a crime for law enforcement. Worse, they very well could be tipping off actual criminals and giving them ample time to destroy evidence before law enforcement can do anything.

I hate vigilantism for precisely the reasons above: average citizens substitute moral outrage for policework and wind up making it hard or impossible for real law enforcement to do their job.

I agree that the entire exercise strikes me as extra legal fantasizing-- Captain Underwear rescues the children of Ameica. There's also a dangerous civil liberties aspect, somewhat like as portrayed in Speilberg's Minority Report, where crimes of the future are prevented before they occur or in Orwell's 1984, where the thinkpol punish thoughtcrime. Of course, the ultimate example of this is Bush's preventive attack of Iraq under the Bush doctrine where presumed intentions are given as much weight as actual actions in determining war policy. Stalinist Russia thrived on this conflation between thoughts and deeds, where dissent was traitorous sabatage and two dissenters was a conspiratorial center of terrorism.

We could argue 'till we're blue in the face about whether attempted solicitation of a minor should be considered a criminal act or not, but, legally, most jurisdictions in the U.S. do. That's not a matter of opinion; it's simple fact.

That's not my argument at all. I think the attempted solicitation of a minor should be considered a criminal act. I just have my doubts that the attempted solicitation of someone who claims he is a minor but is not a minor should be considered a criminal act, especially when that person who claims he is a minor takes an aggressive effort in soliciting someone who will solicit him.

The particular actions in question, however, do not fit into the traditional definition of a "thought crime". A "thought crime" is usually taken to mean one in which no action at all has been undertaken.

But I don't think any criminal action has been taken. Let's break it down. At what point has the criminal act occurred? At the point where randy intranet postings are sent and received? No, as that would fall under the protection of the First Amendment. At the point when the perp gets into his car and drives to what he thinks is a tryst? No, since his driving is not illegal. At the point where he enters PJ's house? From what I can tell, in most times, he is waved in or invited. This isn't criminal trespass, so that cannot be the crime. The only reason that person has been arrested is because of his intentions-- his thoughts. But his twisted notions are directed against a phantom, a falsehood, a non-existent being. It's like something you would find in the Sharia or the Salem witch trials. Like the Nazis in Skokie and the pedophile web designers in California, these people are as far from my values as night is from day. But a line is crossed when you start arresting people-- not for criminal conduct-- but for criminal thought, for perhaps someday the arrests will be for political or religious thought.