To Catch a Predator is a Good Thing

If you have never seen MSNBC's To Catch A Predator let me break down to you what this show is about. The people from watchdog group Perverted Justice linked up with NBC's Dateline series to showcase how they catch online predators. What are predators you say? They are grown men who search for children to have sex with. Yes there are disgusting bastards out there that do this. What Perverted Justice does is post up in chat rooms and pose as underage children while these perverts try to talk to them. They usually pose at kids between the ages of 12-15 which is under the legal age of consent in every state in the US. They set up adults to message or email the decoy and begin a dialogue. If the conversation turns sexual in nature (the content in question initiated by the adult), the decoy will not discourage this, nor outright encourage it. Now after these persons attempt to make contact the underage suspect thats when they bump into Chris Hansen who asks them a serious of questions about their intentions.

Now when these people are confronted Hansen they usually deny their intentions even after the host shows them with them their chat log of all of the perverted things they were saying to what they thought was a child. I actually find a lot of comedy in the show. You can say whats funny about sexual predators? Nothing except for how they act when they get there. After this sting operation these gentleman are apprehended by local law enforcement officials and booked on charges.

It appears that everyone does not share my enthusiasm for this show. People in the local communities feel that these sting operations bring pedophiles to their neighborhood. I can see how this might be a scary concept but look at it like this. To Catch A Predator is exposing the creepy people in your local areas. These men would are scrolling the internet looking for little children to victimize. As opposed to getting in touch with a real child they end up in jail where they belong. Actually your neighborhood is safer when Dateline is in town then ever before because of the amount of law enforcement presence is overwhelming when these stings are taking place.

Some critics argue that what Perverted Justice does is entrapment. Let me breakdown what entrapment actually is by definition. Entrapment is the luring by a law-enforcement agent of a person into committing a crime. These men are not speaking to an actual law enforcement agent and they are not being lured into committing a crime. They are actively seeking the crime and drive as far as four hours away from their homes to try to commit these crimes. Entrapment is a strategy that the defense attorneys for these men try to use to justify their actions. Even if Perverted Justice were encouraging these men they are still wrong because they are the adults in the situation. These people do not take into the fact they are hurting some many others by trying to go after these children.

Official Page for Dateline
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10912603/