Is Chris Hansen A Vigilante?

[Jason Tandro]

Okay, we all know about To Catch A Predator. But it got me thinking. Does Chris Hansen really have the right to be doing that stuff? He works in tandem with Perverted Justice, which could not be more perfectly named as they pervert justice by essentially taking the law into their own hands in their methods to hunt these guys down.

And then there are scenes like This


Now that being said, I have to be perfectly honest and say that I don't particularly care that there are a few less child molesters in the world. But do the ends justify the means?

I also found
this (although apparently this actually isn't To Catch A Predator. Not sure what this is. All I have to say is 0:36 is awesome. The dispatcher saved that cop's life.)

[psychokind]

can't watch the video at work, but overall the idea from chris hansen is pretty good as long as he stays in legal grey areas.

just on saturday i was on a towns festival when my friend showed me a guy from his hometown. he looked kinda childish, skinny and a bit retarded.
he told me the guy was recently beaten up by a father of a 11 year old boy he wanted to meet at a train station. he got kicked out of a soccer team as the trainer for the childrens team, because he tried to "seduce" some boys. he got caught chatting with little boys over the internet trying too meet them.

this guy is a freely walking ticking time bomb. there is no real way to constrain him in germany. if we had someone like chris hansen i would have called him to give him the lunatics name and adress the second i heard that story.

[inferiare]

It... kind of depends. Like, I'm glad for the sort of things that he's doing? Since I know most undercover cops don't do this, and while it's the law to have any known sexual predators register their new address and they pretty much have to tell their neighbors "Hi, keep your kids away from me because I'd like to bring them into my house and do things, I"m a sex predator!" not... all of them are going to.

Of course, I also believe that their jail sentences should be a hell of a lot longer than they usually are (like 1-2 years WHOOP DE DOO) because of their crimes, but lol when is that going to change?

[Jason Tandro]

I worry about that though because "Sex Offender" is way too broad a term in this country. Teens who have sex and get a statutory rape charge or people who visit prostitutes are being shuffled into the same deck with rapists and child molestors.

Then when some overzealous vigilante decides to take the law into his or her own hands and starts using this list as a hunting guide (which there have been numerous documented instances of) they could wind up killing people who committed (in my personal opinion) a pretty harmless crime.

And then you've got these legion of morality douchebags who continue to harass these people after they have served their time. I'm no fan of child molestors or rapists, but I also believe that under the right set of circumstances a few of them CAN be rehabilitated; rare though it may be.

While I'll admit that I've often had fantasies of going vigilante on certain people, I will be the first to admit that it is not the job of Joe Citizen to go seeking "justice" against other people who have already served their sentence, bullshit though some of these sentences may be (5 years for child molestation? REALLY????)

[SoulBlazerFan]

You get more time in jail for dealing pot, stealing music or being a hacker, than you do for kidnapping or rape. What the hell happened the US justice system? We're so focused on nailing digital thieves or pot heads than we are with real monsters who deserve to go to prison, the rapists and murderers and what have you. It's insanity to see how different less heinous crimes are judged far more harshly.

[Jason Tandro]

SoulBlazerFan wrote:

You get more time in jail for dealing pot, stealing music or being a hacker, than you do for kidnapping or rape. What the hell happened the US justice system? We're so focused on nailing digital thieves or pot heads than we are with real monsters who deserve to go to prison, the rapists and murderers and what have you. It's insanity to see how different less heinous crimes are judged far more harshly.

And there is the true nature of our justice system. Whch of the above crimes hurt the US's finances?