Radley Balko provides a
link to a Texas newscast covering a "
to catch a predator" sting that went horribly wrong. I make a point of ridiculing
To Catch a Predator in my Criminal Justice course. Programs like this paint an inaccurate picture picture of sex offenders. If you consume a steady diet of television programming like this, you might be inclined to believe that there are perverts everywhere ready to snatch your children. While there are some people in the world who will engage in sexual activity with minors, they are not nearly as prevalent as Chris Hansen would have us believe.
No matter, I always assumed that the television program followed general legal principles in their stings. The video linked above suggests two questionable practices:
(1) By definition, if the government engages in entrapment when its agents persuades someone to commit a crime that he or she would otherwise have not committed. The classic case on this is
Jacobson v. United States, (503 U.S. 540).
1 Briefly, in this case, Mr. Jacobson had purchased child pornography through the mail when it was legal to do so. After the law had changed, postal inspectors began sending Jacobson catalogs and other materials. Eventually, he ordered more stuff. They then arrested him and raided his home, turning up no child pornography beyond what he had previously ordered. The Supreme Court ruled that this is a clear case of entrapment. Jacobson was baited into breaking the law.
I always assumed that the Dateline show followed this convention in not baiting the predators. That is, while the activist group
perverted justice, does impersonate juveniles on online discussion boards, I figured they always let the target initiate face-to-face contact. [It's a legal question as to whether typing something sexualized onto an internet chat service is illegal or free speech... but that's not really what this program targets for their stings. They want to capture the attempt to make face-to-face contact, presumably for the purpose of sexual activity. The video shows a member of perverted justice explicitly asking the target, "so when are we going to meet?" To me, that's baiting & constitutes entrapment. Online activity is not the same thing as action in the real world. Maybe this guy was just living out his fantasies on chatrooms. [Not that I'm condoning that. I'm arguing that to flirt online is a different magnitude from meeting someone face to face with an intent to engage in sexual behavior; since the target is actually e-chatting with another adult, one could argue this is simply a mutually consensual activity between
predators of a different stripe. I'm not sure a police department will allocate lots of resources to roundup inappropriate e-chatters. Then again, maybe they will; not a wise use of our public resources in my opinion]. The point is, if this target did not initiate the face-to-face meeting, it's hard to argue that he wasn't entraped. The sting operation baited him out by making the first move.
(2) Relatedly, I thought that they always set up their cameras at a phony house and had the target come to them. That at least covers intentionality. If the target comes to the house for a purportedly agreed upon tryst, there's little question that the person intended to commit a felonious act. (Well, there might be a question, but it seems to me to be disingenuous.) But in this case, they went to the target's house. He did not respond to efforts to get him to come out. That again reflects entrapment. He is not participating in the exercise; he has not committed a guilty act (or at least, the guilty act that they want to capture on film for NBC's ratings).
Then they forced entry to serve a search warrant. As the video shows, they used a SWAT team to serve this warrant. WHY? Balko has done extensive writing on inappropriate use of SWAT and aggressive house entries. Now, we might be missing some information, but there does not seem to me to be any legitimate reason for forcing entry into that house to serve the warrant. They had probable cause for the search, otherwise they wouldn't have a warrant. But, as I understand the law, home entry is only to be used if they believe that evidence is being destroyed or that someone is in danger. When they entered the house, the target (a local assistant district attorney) killed himself.
I'm reading
Philip Jenkins's Moral Panic right now. Jenkins is a historian with a social constructionist bent. In this book, he shows how moral panics about perverts and sex predators cycle over time. But a common denominator of this concern is it is out of whack with the actual dangers. This leads to strange public policy that at the end of the day is counter-productive and wasteful.
Why do I care about this? Well, it seems to me that paranoia of about these sorts of crimes creates misery and fear. As someone with the luxury of a job that encourages and rewards me investigating these sorts of things, I feel a responsibility to try to clarify where there is confusion and perhaps reduce unnecessary fear. I note that on their website, the editors of
To Catch a Predator insist they are doing a public service. On the contrary, I think they are doing a public disservice by skewing perceptions about a real problem. I'm going to do some more writing about this television show and crime in the future.
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1. Note, for the record, I am not a lawyer; just a layman who has read quite a bit of case law. Should a lawyer stumble across my blog and wish to correct me on interpretation of law, I am happy to be so guided.
