This blog pulls excerpts from ‘Paedophile Hunters’, Criminal Procedure, and Fundamental Human Rights Joe Purshouse, JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY VOLUME 47, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2020 ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 384–411
The police are there for a reason. They have proper investigatory channels. They stick to an ethical framework which has been developed over time and grounded in legislation. “Police conduct in all likelihood would engage the target’s right to respect for private life under Article 8(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (EHCR),67 thus requiring the police, under Article 8(2), to justify their conduct as lawful, and necessary in the pursuit of a legitimate aim. Accordingly, police officers must seek CHIS authorization, as defined by s. 26(8) of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), before engaging in a covert surveillance operation of this kind.”
Vigilant groups operate on their own with no prosecution from the police despite engaging in criminal activity and causing harm to innocent family members of the targeted person.
The problems with this model are numerous and complex as discussed by Purshouse in the Journal of Law and Society (2020).
The Fundamental Human Rights of those targeted (and their families, including children) are threatened.
“Although there are variances in how different groups operate, paedophile hunters predominantly pose as children on social media platforms and in online chatrooms and lure potential child sex offenders to an ostensible illicit sexual encounter. Here, the suspect is confronted by the hunters, who then typically report the alleged crime to the police and post video footage of the confrontation on social media.”
Receiving a fair trial is put under threat because of social media activity. “These consequences can be devastating for the individual, who is likely to be stigmatized in his or her own community and will inevitably become the target of malicious comments (and worse) by followers of the group’s social media pages. In some cases, those subject to such treatment have taken their own lives, and, in the case of a 43-year-old man confronted by the Southampton Trap group in 2017, an inquest concluded that social media activity following the circulation of video footage of his sting online was a causal factor that led to his suicide.”
“Moreover, there is the potential that this extrajudicial stigmatization online will unduly exacerbate collateral damage in the lives of the targeted individual’s family members. Empirical research from Levenson suggests that family members living with a registered sex offender are likely to experience differential treatment and stigmatization as knowledge of their family member’s criminal past filters out into the community.
An internal guidance document setting out the joint position of the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the National Police Child Protection and Abuse Investigation working group acknowledges these risks and suggests that paedophile hunters often ‘have little or no consideration for any safeguarding intervention required for vulnerable adults or children who may have contact with the suspect’. The practice of uploading footage of confrontations will, in all likelihood, accelerate and exacerbate any detrimental impact occasioned by a paedophile-hunting sting, both for the target and also for his or her immediate family.”
In 2017, 150 of 302 prosecutions were vigilante groups posing as children. (BBC). These arrests were made outside the usual criminal justice system using crude and unethical methods that are proactive and intrusive. The way in which evidence is gathered is haphazard and fails to comply with the usual criminal justice rules which fail to stand up in court.
The use of adult images to lure the subject in, a rapport is developed, then the underage revealed. For higher risk offenders this gives them a ‘get-out-clause’. In many cases, people who were lured in would not challenge this at trial and take a plea deal to minimise trauma on themselves and their families.
Furthermore, the lower risk offenders are easier to target and catch. It is the low hanging fruit. Whereas police will investigate higher risk offenders. “Poor investigatory practices such as this might also have the effect of unduly diverting criminal justice resources from sex offenders who pose a considerable risk to the public towards low-risk offenders”.
The publishing on social media is dangerous for the offender and their family. Often, addresses are given even when children are living in the house. In addition, this can affect the outcome of the court case.
Sometimes innocent subjects are targeted and their lives are ruined over a case of mistaken identity.
Engaging in criminality to catch a criminal is in itself a criminal offence. Only the police are permitted to engage in these activities. Vigilante groups however are never prosecuted despite their criminality and threats to the criminal justice system and human lives including children.
[With the exception of the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland). “The PSNI and the Public Prosecution Service have launched a review of paedophile-hunting cases with a view to charging hunters as well as their targets with any offences that they might have committed in the past.”]
Those who are targeted a not given a fair trial as with proper policing channels, “suspects are afforded inadequate protection from entrapment in cases where they are enticed to commit offences by non-state agents.” Police are under rules to offer no ‘unexceptional’ opportunities to offend, but vigilante’s fail to acknowledge this code of practice and entrap by more extensive exceptional means.
“It should not be permissible for procedural safeguards and human rights laws to be bypassed by groups of citizens who decide for themselves to engage in intrusive surveillance, public censure, and shaming exercises. The idea undermines the ethos of these provisions, which exist to ensure the fair trial rights of suspects and to protect against arbitrary abuses of power. Yet English and Welsh law, as it is currently constituted and applied, tolerates these protections and safeguards being circumvented in this way.”