To Catch a Predator

A clip for the US TV show To Catch a Predator:



You can find many other clips from this startling show online - YouTube is full of them. In an odd sort of a way, the clips are quite addictive. It is like watching a car crash over and over again, because the format of the encounters between the annoyingly supercilious presenter and the pathetic men who come looking for teen sex varies vary little. The predators arrive, often coaxed into the house by an actor pretending to be a horny teen. Then the presenter confronts them. He doesn't initially reveal who he is, but he often comes across like a policeman. He asks them uncomfortable questions and points out their feeble lies, before telling them that they are on the TV. They then leave, only to be arrested outside using methods that would make Vic Mackey proud. And that's what happens, over and over again, in To Catch a Predator.

In a wonderful, yet terrifying, example of satire predicting real life, it all reminds me of this:

Don't get me wrong, those who want to hump underage teenagers do deserve the attention of the police. What I struggle with is the fact that the trapping of these predators* has to happen on national TV, and that the manner of apprehending suspects appears to have more to do with making great TV that it does with the needs of justice and protecting the community. And there is a lethal underside to this "entertainment" as well.

Of course, America is nominally a free society, and there is the argument that all the producers of this unpleasant show are doing is responding to the demands of the audience. Put simply, if people didn't watch this, then they wouldn't make it.

But that, in a sense, is even worse than the realisation that some producer somewhere decided that it would be good entertainment to name and shame potential abusers on prime-time TV. Because it is a pretty stunning indictment of any society that the public humiliation of some of its most maladjusted members might become popular entertainment.

This is an extension of Megan's Law, and of Sarah's Law. It is saying that some members of a society are so abhorrent to the majority in that society that they lose the right to be treated as a human being. They lose the right to justice, to the assumption of innocence until guilt is proven. To condemn a To Catch a Predator is not express sympathy with the victims, but rather to express concerns about the corruption of justice and the legal system in order to create exceptionally low-brow entertainment. It is only a small step from this to watching the execution of child killers or serial killers. After all, people would watch that, just as they watch the arrest of predators. So why not show it?

Ironically, there is something very predatory about To Catch a Predator. It nibbles at the darker side of humanity, and works to make the humiliation of other humans OK because of what they might have done had a TV crew not been there to stop them. Police work and the justice system cease to be a necessary but unpleasant part of life. Instead, they become a form of entertainment. And that is depressing both for justice, and a society as a whole.

*On occasion, those producing the show are keen to point out that there is a difference between a paedophile and a predator - something to do with the ages of their victims. It is a pedantic technicality that I'm sure is lost on those who watch with vengeful fury as potential abusers are forced to the ground at gunpoint by the police in front of the TV cameras.