Is This The Correct Way To Go About Things?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2774429/Documentary-paedophile-hunter-vigilante-force-police-devote-time-covert-operations-catch-offenders.html

[ludwig]

As long as they're reporting their evidence to the police and not dishing out their own justice or otherwise taking the law into their own hands, I don't have a problem with it.

[youngmafbog]

Vigilante:
A member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate.

Is he doing this? I think not.

[youngmafbog]

Of course, if plod got their finger out ........

[Old_Geezer]

Enticement tactics ? Always dodgy, and I'm unsure how legally useful it is or the cops would already be doing it. Have no sympathy for those caught assuming they were caught fair & square but no, I don't think it is the best way to go about things. The law should be about minimising bad behaviour rather than encouraging it.

[andy-hughes]

I have serious reservations about self-styled 'vigilantes', not so much for what could be argued is a public service - as would be a potential point of view in this instance - but for the slippery slope that lies ahead of such behaviour.

Without law, the vigilante attitude will always get out of hand, slowly or quickly, as self-righteousness clouds moral judgement.

As Dirty Harry memorably expressed it when discussing the vigilante police cadets in the film Magnum Force, "next thing you know, you execute your neighbour because his dog *** on your lawn ..." which had its finger on the pulse of the problem of vigilanteism as far back as 1973.

So no, I don't believe this is the right way to go about things, although I entirely understand the thinking behind the concept - if these are the new 'law makers', who advises them, who holds them accountable?

Where would we go from here?

[Obiter]

This Stinson Hunter, seen in full profile on the thread, looks a particularly unpleasant character. I wonder what his day job is, collecting benenfits?

[cassa333]

As expressed in the article the police could (and perhaps should) be doing what he is.

Enticing or 'entrapement' isn't encouraging this behavour it is showing the behavour as it is albeitin a 'safer' environment. These (mostly) men are 'enticed or entraped' simply because they thought they were talking to actual children.

I find it hard to believe that a man that would not or has not done something like this would do it because the child, and lets face reality here they think it is a child, is actually a 30yr old man.

I wonder how many men thinthey are meeting a child but are 'enticed' by another peadophile. That could be dangerous as well!!!

[Kromovaracun]

"entrapment" is sometimes used by police - most publicly in the Colin Stagg case in the 90s (which did result in a wrongful conviction).

I'm not sure I accept the "slippery slope" argument. As ludwig says, Mr. Hunter appears to be handing all the evidence he collects to the police. That's fine by me.

[andy-hughes]

YOUNGMAFBOG - "Vigilante:
A member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be inadequate.

Is he doing this? I think not."

I think that is exactly what he is doing.

The justification for Mr Hunter and is associates' actions is that what they do is necessary, but the function is not being completed adequately by the police and legal system, therefore they feel compelled to step in and act.

I think the word vigilante sums up Mr Hunter and his ideology and methods completely.

And if that word conjours up images of roving mobs of unsupervised self-righteous men with self-appointed anger and potential violence in their minds, then that word is performing its task perfectly.

[andy-hughes]

Kromovaracun - "I'm not sure I accept the "slippery slope" argument. As ludwig says, Mr. Hunter appears to be handing all the evidence he collects to the police. That's fine by me."

If you re-visit my post, you will see that I wasa careful to point out that it is not so much Mr Hunter and cohorts' actions that are cause for concern (yet!) - but the inevitable bandwaggon that will be jumped on by people who simply like to bully and hurt those people whom the jumpers feel have offended their very individual references of correct and incorrect behaviour.