The Law and Ethics of Entrapment

If undercover police incite someone to break the law, to make an arrest, this is state entrapment. If a private citizen incites someone to break the law, to report them, we have private entrapment. State entrapment usually compromises prosecution. Private entrapment usually does not. The police and the courts respond to it in disparate, unpredictable ways. The research project is primarily interested in state entrapment; private entrapment is of secondary interest. The focus is on three questions: definition; permissibility; implications. Rather than stemming from innocuous conventional differences, disagreements about entrapment are at heart philosophical conflicts. Philosophy has a key role to play in deepening our understanding of the assumptions that underlie debates about entrapment, the concept of entrapment, and the ethics of entrapment. This project is the first sustained, comprehensive, and specifically philosophical study of the topic. During the research stay at Tours, one chapter of a forthcoming book (Oxford) was written.