Korean Job Discussion Forums

[proustme]

What do you all think of these shows? Voyeuristic trash? Necessary to the public good for internet education?

Investigators and cops all over the world go after them, capturing them and sentencing them. I've seen NBC's (US) To Catch a Predator and, more recently, iTV's (UK) To Catch a Paedophile.

Basically, police investigators go online, pose as underage children (typically 13 years old) in chat rooms, and then wait until middle aged men try to lure them for sex. The police arrange a meeting for sex in a park or apartment. They're then arrested. On these TV programs the men's names and occupations are revealed for those watching.

The evidence -- chat transcripts, sexual images transmitted from the men to the officers posing as underage girls, and Viagra and condoms in the pockets of the men -- is unquestionably damning. Subsequent house raids on the men's homes typically reveal computer hard drives and CDRs with sexual images of underage girls (sometimes infants) and other evidence on them.

Pastors, university deans, teachers, engineers, highly educated men (Oxford), and scientists have been arrested. Suicide prevention and counseling programs are set up for these men once they're released.

[PatrickBateman]

They're fun to watch.

I do get tired of the excessive force they use on the clowns coming out of the houses and the justification stupid Dateline/Police Department claim.

Other than that, it's great.

[benji]

While those guys are scumbags, none of them will go to jail because they have not committed a crime. Pure entrapment. And I dont even think it can be called entrapment because there is no crime.

[PatrickBateman]

[benji]

[ChopChaeJoe]

Hnnnn, interesting point. It may all be thoughtcrime. At the very least though it puts these guys into the system.

[JMO]

I'm pretty sure it works like this. In the state they go to, to meet the girl, it is illegal to arrange to have sex with/proposition sex to a girl who you know to be under 18. It is pretty tenuous but you notice in the shows, they emphasize that the guy asked her age and then said he wanted to have sex with her.

Also one of the most unintentionally funny shows of all time.

[Goku]

I think we find this shows interesting because we all try to identify predator as bad guys.

I mean, it's so easy to demonize pedophiles because most of us don't have any of those tendencies and we consider it to be heinous. So we can all easily target pedos and call them abominations, criminals and ethically defunct.

The reason I believe it in this manner is because we don't have shows about petty crimes or common ones that are ethical blurs. For example, stealing. Quite frankly a show about stealing would pretty much bore us to death. Why? Because it's so common, and most of us have had thoughts about it. Also, we can't really call every thief ethically bankrupt, despite it being an immoral act. We justify many thieving causes as out of necessity or need. And I don't know about you, but I've thought about stealing at one time or another.

However, for a pedo we find it just so much easier to point fingers at them and call them out on it, we also feel they are bad characters all around and have no redeemable traits. They are just bad people. They think about something that I never have (sexual acts with child) therefore because I have had no temptation to do that, I can say it's bad and that those people are terrible.

It's because we can't empathize with that kind of behavior, we find it so fascinating to blame them and make them out to be some god awful creature. I'm not saying they aren't terrible or ethically bankrupt, but we do have to examine why we find child rapists to be one of the top unethical behavior we see...

Oh and of course their victims are children, which exacerbates it.

[nathanrutledge]

Nope, not entrapment. Lots of them DO end up in jail for what they do. Entrapment is only if the law enforcement agents induce the person to commit a crime they wouldn't normally commit. There are two tests in the US for this, subjective and objective. Subjective looks at the persons state of mind; did they have a predisposition to commit the crime? Objective looks at the conduct of the police. Would a normal person commit the crime because of the action of the police? Using both tests, its clear that these people were not entrapped.

ANYWAY, I really enjoy watching To Catch a Predator. JMO is right on; one of the most unintentionally funny shows ever. I love to watch it with my mother squawking with laughter the whole time.

[mua'dib]

I can't wait until they get some "peder" who is like, 20 trying to get laid with a sixteen year old. that will raise some eyebrows.

Also, while I have seen it and it's funny/great etc. and intervention is good too its just entertainment folks. No one involved with this, the host, NBC, the police, the potential pedophiles, or the viewers can legitimately claim the moral high ground. this is sensationalism, it's entrapment, and frankly nothing about it is right.

That being said, I really like it when the cops are all ghillied up and tackle the perps from the cover of bushes. Hilarious. I bet the cops draw straws for that one!

[tomato]

Too bad they didn't have shows like that in Thailand.
Then we'd get to see Christopher Paul Neil in action.

[kinerry]

In the US it's illegal to do it merely on the intention factor.

You can get prison time for selling oregano if you are claiming it's weed.

[DrugstoreCowgirl]

[Captain Corea]

[Goku]