Are Sheriff Grady Judd’s sting operations effective in reducing sex crimes in Polk County?

Polk County has announced that over two dozen arrests were made in an undercover sting operation.  Detectives posed as children on social media platforms and online dating sites.

Could there be a better way to reduce the number of future sex crimes that would be more cost effective and not destroy so many people’s lives?

According to a National Institute of Justice study, “Five Things About Deterrence”, “Research shows clearly that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent than even draconian punishment.”

“Prisons are good for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, but prison sentences (particularly long sentences) are unlikely to deter future crime. Prisons actually may have the opposite effect: Persons who are incarcerated learn more effective crime strategies from each other, and time spent in prison may desensitize many to the threat of future imprisonment.”

As Tallahassee is taking more and more control of what is being taught in our schools, our leaders should require that all schools begin to educate students on the following issues:

• If you commit a sex crime, you are most likely going to be caught.
• Victims truly do suffer from the harm that is done to them.
• Law enforcement has many traps set up to catch people, even on adult-only sites. Do not let yourself get lured into them.
• Rather than remove CP pictures and videos on the internet, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is tagging them. You will be caught if you view/download them.
• Just because you are in the privacy of your own residence does not mean that you can do whatever you want on your devices.
• Just because something is on the internet does not make it legal. You are the individual who has to make sure that you never cross the line from legal to illegal.
• Make sure that students understand what actions constitute a sex crime.
• Make sure that students fully understand the perils of incarceration.
• Make sure that students understand that being on the registry will ruin their life.
• Always follow the law.

Grady Judd and his deputies have pulled some people off the streets who never set out to commit a sex crime and probably never would have consider the thought of committing a sex crime.  But because detectives knew all the right buttons to push to lure them, they did something they never would have done on their own.

Rather than spend so much time and money on entrapments/stings, research shows that it would be more effective if students in Polk County were educated on the consequences of committing a sex crime and the entrapments that are commonly being used to catch people who did not set out to commit a sex crime.

Deterrence has been proven to be more effective than punishment.

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