This came up on another forum, but it didn’t go too far. I thought I’d bring it here to see what people had to say about it.
In legal philsophy there are two basic schools of thought regarding why we punish: retributivism and deterrence. I believe the legal system focuses mainly on deterrence and one lawyer I know described retributivism as “a fancy name for revenge.”
So here is the question I’m toying with.
Does Dateline’s “To Catch A Predator” actually deter crimes (deterrence) or does it manufacture them for the sole purpose of seeing criminals punished for their moral reprehensibility (retributivism)?
Now there are strong arguments in favor of deterrence. But it seems logically inconsistent to enable a crime and deter it at the same time. And some critics claim the show is exaggerating the real problem.
Not to mention that the show needs these crimes to sustain its ratings. And its based upon the voyeuristic desire of its audience to see people squirm. No one can argue that the crimes aren’t morally reprehensible. But it could be argued that people are more focused on the punishment itself rather than the reasoning behind it.
I don’t watch the show, but it does sound voyeuristic. and done with retribution. If its on regular TV chances are its not really designed to be socially helpful except as a by product. America’s most wanted was designed to help but, then a whole slew of shows followed that were voyeuristic and brought down the detterent legitimacy of AMW.
dateline exploits criminals for ratings (which they cannot get because of nbc’s liberal bias…)
holier than thou news casters reporting the “facts” which inflame and incite to fatten their wallets while preaching the merits of being a socialist slave and eschewing the capitalist system that they themselves exploit…
I seem to have no problems with entrapment as a deterrent for pedophiles. Actually one is suing “Dateline” for slander! Exposure of wrong behaviour is a deterrent to that behaviour. Getting on computerized lists of known sex offenders is no personal trophy. It is a stigmatization more and more communities are paying attention to in matters of housing, hiring, etc.
Now, when it comes to the oldest profession, I don’t think entrapment of a “john” by a policewoman disguised as a prostitute is the same as is that of pedophiles. Prostitutes, at least those in our city, are young girls, addicted to drugs, usually by their pimps, girls who sell their bodies in order to afford their habits. Trapping the “john” does nothing to deter the pimp, whose crimes are so much more socially reprehensible than are those of some horny old man. I see nothing of either sort of entrapment as retributive. Both are deterrents.
What about criminals who have egos that feed off such noteriety? If you are going to televise a deterrent let it be executuions in all their grisly aspects. Hig def, TV will bring most of the aspects home except for the smell. let it be the sentencing of criminals that is televised. The court cases.
Not the chase and the crime. Hollywood has made that part entertaining.
This show, in particular, is a sort of social censoring and behavioral altering filter.
It exposes the individual’s natural desires to the wrath and shameful castigation of cultural ‘normality’.
It’s a warning to the mind that it should repress those socially unwanted desires further, and to pretend and seem like a ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’ citizen.
But if deterrence is really the goal, which is better partial deterrence or maximum deterrence? If maximum deterrence is the goal wouldn’t it make more sense to bar children from the internet in the first place? Restricting a child’s access to information isn’t exactly a revolutionary idea. Parents do it all the time. We don’t let children drive before they come of age – because it’s dangerous. If we are to believe Dateline than we must conclude that the internet is dangerous as well.
That way instead of enabling a crime to deter it, we could address the problem more fundamentally by deterring it entirely. Also consider that Dateline may enable other kinds of crimes as well by interfering unnaturally with due process. One person has died as a result and it is currently being tried in cival court. Not to mention that it may be producing a new kind of potential criminal – the journalistic predator.
Perhaps, however, this wouldn’t provide society with the moral lesson it is craving…
The government statistic only covers three years. The blog reference stated “over time”, which is ambiguous in having a terminating point.
They admit they were unable to track all of them accurately.
Not to mention the victim percentages:
That’s the major problem with the justice in this country, it’s an idea, given by the media. Justice means “making the punishment fit the crime”, deterrence isn’t an option, because it just plain doesn’t work.
Interesting. Taking Kriswest’s assessment of the media as voyueristic, one can see that even our news programs must be entertaining or lose viewers. Deterence, then, is not thwarted by pedophiles getting news coverage, it may well be invalidated by viewers who, getting their daily doses of sound-byte excitement, become immune to any urge to do anything beyond opening another bag of chips.
Not how the brain works sir. Once it becomes “desensitised” to an objective action, any of the abstractions used to deliberate on “moral” or “ethical” concerns lose value, making the possibility of engaging in unacceptable behavior higher.
That’s a great deal of the problem with this society currently, so bombarded by media depravity, we are losing the ability to find socially destructive behaviors objectionable, more at finding them enticing and enthralling.
I concur, but only with the stipulation that aggressive tendencies in people can be desensitized to the point of inactivity, not necessarily sublimated to bad behaviour. Oh, geeze, my Freudian slip is showing.
While I do not want to defend adults who go to a house to have sex with 13 year-olds, I always felt like the show provoked and enticed the people to come to the house. In normal circumstances I think that some of these people would never do something like that, but the show presented them with an offer and circumstance too good to refuse…
I don’t know ellis, I think the predatory instinct in these people is just what it is … a desire to prey upon the weaker.
Right up the road from where I live is Xenia, Ohio which has used chat rooms for years to catch sexual predators … and EVERYONE knows it … yet still, every month, they catch some.
Some are just so aberrant that even in the face of knowing they are more likely to be caught, they still go.
Yeah. I see your point and recognize that there are a lot of twisted people out there. But I still think that a few of the people on the show only went because they were present with a situation that to them seemed too good to pass up.
The other thing that gets me is that those people’s lives are ruined the second they are on that show. Most of them deserve it, but imagine the embarrassment of being on that show. At least if you got caught and they didn’t put it on tv, you have the chance of going back out and try to move on with your life. Not with this show-- your family is disgraced because they put it on tv. If anything, it is not fair to the families; not the caught predator. It’s really not fair to put the family of the victim through that, when they had no part in the decision.
With that said, a lot of these guys deserve what they get and the show does a great job at catching these guys.
