I've expressed my undying love for the tube before, but in the hours that I should usually be studying/doing work I usually find myself watching "To Catch a Predator" when ever it's on. I don't know what's so unusually interesting about this show but I've spent many an hour sitting around with my roommates watching the ridiculous situations that Chris Hansen continues to find himself in. It's in the details where I am most interested; the things like how they set up the sting operations, the fake screen names that "Perverted Justice" comes up with for their decoys and the final arrests that the local police make (on one episode, an officer dressed in a Gilly suit jumped out of the bushes to tackle a fleeing suspect, the suit might have been a bit much).
While I feel absolutely no sympathy for the men that get caught in these sting operations, but I read an interesting article regarding the publication and documentation of these men's very visual arrests. It said that it was more difficult for men to reenter society after their rehabilitative prison sentences because they have been so publicly identified and arrested (makes sense). While these men are essentially at the bottom of society's totem pole of upstanding citizens and rightfully deserve to be publicly humiliated; they also deserve a second chance. My neighbor happens to be a registered sex offender and living in a quiet suburban neighborhood, he has managed to regain some semblance of a normal life. While this man was publicly arrested (the FBI broke down his door with shotguns drawn and took his computer in as evidence), he was not publicly dragged through media mud. We all make mistakes, some more gruesome then others, but I guess my Catholic back ground has taught me that all people deserve a second chance in life after they fall. There was an incident on the show where an assistant district attorney in Texas was caught in one of these sting operations and subsequently killed himself. Now, jusitice should be served but if he has not been so publicly arrested, who he have killed himself? I cannot say.
But I also see the show as a way to inform and educate people about a growing epidemic of internet crimes. Before I began watching the show I had no idea as to what extent this problem was. It showed me that people, behind the masks of appearing as upstanding citizens, can have deep perverse tendencies. Maybe I didn't need Chris Hansen to shed light on this but it certainly made me more aware of it all. Essentially anyone can lead a double life on the web, unknowingly to people around him. These men could be doctors, lawyers, priests, teachers and the list goes on.
Well all I know is it makes for interesting television, and uses technology and the media in interesting ways.