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I think the point is that they refused once, and only under additional pressure from the undercover officer agreed to actually do the illegal thing. If you wou

I think the point is that they refused once, and only under additional pressure from the undercover officer agreed to actually do the illegal thing. If you wouldn't have broken the law without the police's involvement, I think that's entrapment. It wasn't a lot of pressure, and you could say they are likely to break the law under pressure from other people, but I think we shouldn't be prosecuting people for what we think they might do in the future, and instead for what they've actually done. And in some of these cases it looks like the only thing they've done that we know for sure is allow the police to pressure then into breaking the law so the police can arrest them and bolster their arrest numbers.

true_religion 7y ago
That the police have to ask you twice to commit a crime before you do it, doesn’t sound like a very good defense either. A lot of people are implying that maybe the police bullied the contractors into submission, or formed some emotional connection and used that to twist them via friendship. But there isn’t any evidence of that. I think it’s way more likely that the contractors simply saw a way to make more money. They couldn’t refuse the second time because it’s hard to turn down cash that’s sitting on the table. They probably think they do good work, so what is the harm? Now if we think that they shouldn’t be arrested, then we should stop this from being a crime, not castigate the police for actually enforcing the law. Personally, I think this sort of thing is worth a small fine at most, and the law should be changed.