You make a great point. This is definately a low point! We should all boycott the episode, so ratings don't climb and we actually could get your celebrity T.V. Show! Right On! Spew that coffee, it's worth it!

Sure, why not? Make it a contest! The person who catches the most child-molesters wins... I don't know what. The chance to be the one to stick a needle in their arm(s) and end their abortion of an existence?

Sounds good to me.

these guys are charged with a crime. I'm no law expert, but I'm sure someone around here is. (LeCastor?)

Unless I'm wrong, these guys aren't sending pictures or engaging in sex chat with underage girls (and why don't they ever pose as boys?). They're doing these things with adults posing as girls. So how is that a crime?

I get that you can charge people for intent (don't get me started on that), but the possibility of these guys talking or meeting a girl is less likely to occur in these cases because it is entirely orchestrated by adult law enforcement. I mean, if they're charging them with intent, isn't law enforcement creating the very conditions under which intent becomes possible?

Do these guys just have bad lawyers or am I missing something?

the attempt is the actual crime, which supposedly avoids the problem of "thought crime" because the attempt itself it a tangible act. This reasoning seems problematic because intent can only be inferred but it is apparently well accepted legally. The police can sell people fake drugs and arrest them, a person can be prosecuted for possiessing child pornography which is entirely computer generated (which seems to me to be like prosecuting a thought) especially since it is a crime even if they don't show it to anyone.

Having just finished a first-year course in Criminal Law, I feel rather well-informed on the subject. Yes, you can charge someone with a crime for making an assignation with a person they think is a child - even if the person is not actually a child. Similarly, you can charge someone with a crime for agreeing to buy drugs from a person they think is a drug dealer, even if the person is actually an undercover cop and the "drugs" are actually talcum powder. What counts is the subjective intent to commit a crime, but not just that; also the willingness to turn that subjective intent into action.

This is a new development in criminal law - the Model Penal Code only came out in the 1960's. Prior to that, the law required bilateral agreement - i.e. if the other party to your criminal plans was actually an undercover cop and had no intention to commit a crime, you got off scot-free. This, understandably, led to some problems in crime prevention, which I think is what the Model Penal Code was designed to address. Especially when it comes to catching pedophiles - how else are you supposed to catch them? Get actual kids to serve as decoys?

Assuming that they could show that the police conduct in that case was designed to increase the risk of the criminal conduct it was supposed to prevent (different states formulate the entrapment defense differently - some phrase it in more subjective terms, i.e. "increasing the likelihood that a person not otherwise disposed to commit a crime will commit it due to this police action"). If they can prove entrapment, they get off scot-free.

for instance there can be no prostitution if there are no prostitutes so if all prositutes are decoys then they increase the propensity to crime and if any percentage of them are then they increase the propensity to crime by whatever percentage of the prostitute population the decoys constitute, more or less. The fact that this is not legally considered entrapment suggests that the entrapment defense requires some sort of proof of purity which is unlikely ever to be obtainable.

"Publicly humiliating mentally ill individuals seems to satisfy the general public's sick desires more than it does anything to deter would-be pedophiles."

That little quote encapsulates Salon's perverse fetish for victimhood. For only Salon could be so out-of-touch with society that one of its writers is uncomfortable with attempts to catch and deter paedophiles.

Notice how Clark-Flory states matter of factly that paedophiles are mentally ill as if that were like saying the Earth revolves around the Sun. Does she offer any evidence for that view? Is she really incapapble of considering that paedophiles are simply perverse, depraved people with a normal psychology (especially when they pursue undergae, post-pubescent girls)? Is all deviant behavior the result of metal illness? Does that view taken to extreme not absolve paedophiles of moral responsibility for their crimes?

But to Clark-Flory the real bad guy here is "the general public" with their "sick desires". Society is the real criminal when hunting down paedophiles...hmm, is this some unconscious self-parody?

Finally public exposure and the resultant shame can have a tremendous motivating capacity and in this is a case where the crime is so extreme in its effects on victims that public censure is necessary and just. Again though Clark-Flory can only think of the poor, mentally-ill paedophile. I guess I just expect better from a Broadsheet Chick.

what exactly the crime is here - an adult male meeting a (supposed) underage female? Is just the "meeting" or "intent to meet" illegal, or, do these sting operations wait until some illicit intent has been proposed?

No, I'm not one of these characters seeking advice on how best to proceed, I'm just asking a question. But, for reasons of paranoia, I will publish this one anonymously.

I find the whole topic distasteful. Men trying to have sex with underage teenagers, and television shows that exploit them. I even find Victoria L's acceptable but pretentious spelling of the word pedophilia distasteful.

Those ain't natural busts.

If it's just some random beauty queen, no defense. Sorry.

But entrapment aside - there are predatory pedophiles on the Internet. I know firsthand. I was 14 years old (this was pre-Internet actually, on a local BBS). I imagine I could have reported the pedophile in question to the cops, but I was only 14, and a very innocent sort of 14. He was much older. I wanted to meet him. I thought he was cool. I was lonely and had no friends and he took a real interest in me. The classic pattern. I picked up a book at the bookstore a while back, written by a rape survivor who was not as lucky as I; her story was nearly identical to mine in its antecedents.

So, presuming that there are such predators out there (and I know there are), how do you propose that they be caught? By finding 14-year-olds who will volunteer to be raped so that the pedophile in question can be charged with a crime?