In the movie Minority Report, people were arrested for crimes they had not yet committed, thus preventing the crime from taking place. That may seem far from reality, but it's not. Aside from the obvious moral of the movie, there is an issue that Spielberg and other child lovers want to wake people up to.

What if people today were arrested for crimes that the police believe were going to occur. It happens here in America. What may make this sound even more far fetched is that the police entrap the potential criminals and set them up, just as the movie's main character was set up. Except, that in real life, there is no victim, not even an intended target. The police know full well that the crime could not possibly be committed. How can this be? Why are people not outraged against this injustice? They are simply too busy being outraged against the potential criminal.

Regularly, police in this country entrap criminals in an effort to get them to commit a crime. For example, an undercover officer gets someone to sell him some illegal substance and he then promptly arrests that someone. The idea is that no one knows all the crimes this person could be doing while police are not present. In this case, the "victim" was the officer and the crime was selling illegal materials. He did sell it to the officer, so he did technically break the law. However, there is a crime which needs not be committed in an officer's presence. In fact, it doesn't need to be committed at all. It doesn't even have to be conceived or planned. You need only be suspected of it to be guilty. What am I talking about? I'm talking about undercover officers going online, posing as minors. If a man online over the legal age seems to be attracted to someone under the legal age, the officer poses as whatever would best attract this person. They exchange fake photographs and arrange to meet. If the man keeps refusing to meet, it's on to the next potential criminal to prey on. If they do arrange to meet, police arrest the man as he arrives, sometimes even the moment he steps off the plane. He's arrested for planning to have sex or touch a minor (which is all adults do when they see minors, I suppose). Of course, there was no minor and the crime, therefor, could never have actually happened. There is no way of knowing what he would have done if there were a minor. Most of the time not even the "precriminal" knew for sure. Even if he had planned to have sex with or touch the imaginary minor, the crime could have never really occurred. The idea is that this man is simply attracted to children or teenagers (typically the latter, which accounts for almost all men). If that comes out, no crime needs to be committed. That's enough to condemn him. No jury would hesitate to convict him of the crime if they even suspect that. You see, we are so blinded by our hatred of men that we don't see the crime or even the victims any more. We see a mesh of images. These men aren't humans any longer and, in the words of so many women, "they don't deserve rights." "Children are innocent. Men are not." He may not be guilty of conceiving a crime, but he is a dirty man and that is enough. We judge based purely on looks. In fact, if police are convinced of the man?s attractions, they will often plant child pornography on his computer. The police have easy access to it and it?s by far one of the easiest ways to plant evidence. Police aren't doing this maliciously. They genuinely believe that the good (the potential criminal never acting) outweighs the bad (taking away his civil liberty). The end justifies the means. At least the children are safe.

However, in our efforts to put the metaphysical concept of childhood innocence before all else, we have overlooked the fundamental principle of a free nation. That is, freedom; freedom to make decisions, even bad ones. You see, freedom is not something given to us by our government. It is something endowed upon us by our Creator. We are free to love, to lie, and even to murder. If murder is illegal, we are arrested, yet, even if it were legal, there would still be consequences. There are always consequences to every choice we make. It is the freedom to make those choices that the founding fathers would have never wanted to see taken away. Yet, that is exactly what we have done. As noble as it is to wish to prevent crime, it is simply a noble dream. A child could kill his parents and still "look innocent", but a man needs only to look ugly or manly and he looses his rights. All men who have committed no crime, regardless of age or attractions, should be seen as "innocent" in the eyes of justice. In the moral lesson of the movie, precrime doesn't work. Only God knows the future.