Science Forums 2

[Boerseun]

So, I had a chat with my sister the other day, and a quite unexpected dilemma surfaced:

She's a senior prosecutor in the Northern Natal province in SA, and part of her portfolio is prosecuting child abuse cases, which inludes a surprising number of kiddie-porn cases. Problem being, of course, that in South Africa kiddie-porn cases ranks very low on the State's priority list. With violent crime being what it is, a lot more resources are allocated to other cases that to kiddie porn, with the rationale that there's no blood and guts and nobody died - obviously not the Government's public stance regarding the matter, but with tight budgets, that's what it boils down to.

In any case, I thought about the problem, and discussed a possible solution with my sister. What we do, is take some of the evidence from her prior cases, kiddie-porn .jpg's and the like, and put it up on a website. Make the website look like a bona fide underground kiddie-porn website, and we start off with the softer stuff, making it more and more "hardcore", up to the point where the visitor is asked to pay a certain amount to get to the real "hardcore" stuff. So once the guy paid his money, he gets told that he's just been suckered, and a stern admonition as to what a sick bastard he is. Then, his IP gets recorded and the money gets paid to the child abuse prosecution squad, specifically for the use in kiddie-porn cases.

I thought that this was such a brilliant solution, I mean heck - you get the kiddie-porn perps to pay for prosecuting kiddie-porn cases! Saves the taxpayer a load of dough! Imagine! It's like getting murderers to pay for murder prosecutions!

...but here's the dilemma my sister pointed out to me:

The banks won't allow this, because they'll participate in fraud - the kiddie-porn surfer pays money in good faith, expecting a product, which fails to be delivered. If we did this, we'd be committing fraud, and would be up for prosecution ourselves! Regardless of the fact that the surfer was breaking the law in the first place. Also, entrapment issues comes into play. Long story short, we're not allowed to do this because it's "unethical".

I thought it was such a brilliant idea! Do I not completely understand ethics, or have I got the cat by the tail somewhere? Kiddie-porn perps are out there, and they are surfing the net. We might as well haul a few of them in and get them to pay for their own cases.

Whaddaya say? I still think we should do this.