I knew someone that this exact thing happened to. Literally the casual encounters section with different women (many older) over months, and a bad choice /poor judgement one day that lead to arrest and conviction. For him, ultimately it added up to a huge pain in the ass for years but he didn't do prison time. It appears that many aren't as lucky or resourced.

It's easy to judge harshly based on the topic, but all I can say like TFA is that many of these people have no prior history and this type of police activity likely leads to just ruining as many lives as are being protected. Its similar to living in a gated community or such; a false sense of security with questionable effectiveness.

A lot of the harm for those who get caught up in this came from the Adam Walsh Act (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Walsh_Child_Protection_...) which required mandatory minimums that have now been successfully challenged in courts. If you read about Adam Walsh's story, while tragic the circumstances had nothing to do with a sexual predator type situation, and could be judged as negligence by a couple adults responsible for Adam's safety the day of his disappearance.

What I would hope everyone could support is possibly leaving these stings in place but allowing first time offenders the ability to rectify the situation like the person I knew by participating in ongoing therapy and reasonable monitoring to ensure they do not pose a threat to society, and stepping things back a bit with labeling them as offenders when no actual victim was harmed and there were no priors.