My fear here is that they are enticing people to commit crimes that they may have wanted to commit but would not otherwise have acted upon.
[WS:] This makes a certain assumption about human motivation, namely that people first conceive deeds in their heads and then go out and execute them. That may work in certain cases, but it does not in a great number of others. In those other cases, motivation is situational - people react to emerging opportunities and engage in activities that they did not plan. Probably most crimes are committed that way (cf. Jack Katz, _Seductions of Crime_) - perpetrators do not have the intention of committing a criminal act, but engage in activities that eventually lead to a crime. This situationist/interactionist approach to human motivation has a far greater explanatory power than the rationalist/mentalist approach (i.e. act being first conceived in the mind and then executed.)
>From that point of view, it does not really matter that much that the
opportunity has been intentionally created by someone else - as most, if not
all opportunities are that way. Would it make any difference if instead of
law enforcement the "sting" were arranged by another criminal with the
intent to blackmail the perpetrator, and then turned him in for a refusal to
pay?
I tend to believe that such sting operations are rather futile form the point of view of crime prevention, because it is the opportunity/situation that leads to crime and these "stings" do little to eliminate these opportunities. I do not think, however, that it matters that much in the culpability of the perp, because most crimes are results of one opportunity or another, rather than conceived a priori by evil criminal mind.
Wojtek