Under a ‘dirty hands’ model of undercover policing, it inevitably involves situations where whatever the state agent does is morally problematic. Christopher Nathan argues against this model. Nathan’s criticism of the model is predicated on the contention that it entails the view, which he considers objectionable, that morally wrongful acts are central to undercover policing. We address this criticism, and some other aspects of Nathan’s discussion of the ‘dirty hands’ model, specifically in relation to state entrapment to commit a crime. Using János Kis’s work on political morality, we explain three dilemmatic versions of the ‘dirty hands’ model. We show that, while two of these are inapplicable to state entrapment, the third has better prospects. We then pursue our main aim, which is to argue that, since the third model precludes Nathan’s criticism, a viable ‘dirty hands’ model of state entrapment remains an open possibility. Finally, we generalize this result, showing that the case of state entrapment is not special: the result holds good for policing practices more generally, including such routine practices as arrest, detention and restraint.

在卧底警务的“脏手”模式下，它不可避免地会涉及到国家特工所做的任何事情都存在道德问题的情况。克里斯托弗·内森（Christopher Nathan）反对这种模式。内森对该模型的批评是基于这样的论点，即该模型包含了一种他认为令人反感的观点，即道德上的错误行为是卧底警务的核心。我们讨论了这一批评，以及内森关于“脏手”模型讨论的其他一些方面，特别是与国家诱捕犯罪有关的问题。利用雅诺什·基斯 (János Kis) 关于政治道德的著作，我们解释了“脏手”模型的三个困境版本。我们表明，虽然其中两个不适用于国家陷阱，但第三个具有更好的前景。然后我们追求我们的主要目标，即认为，由于第三种模型排除了内森的批评，因此可行的国家陷阱“脏手”模型仍然是一种开放的可能性。最后，我们概括了这一结果，表明国家诱捕的情况并不特殊：该结果适用于更广泛的警务实践，包括逮捕、拘留和限制等常规做法。