Child Pornography

This book explores the enduring appeal of child pornography and its ramifications for criminal justice systems around the world. It is based on an extensive review of academic literature and newspaper coverage, a trawl of websites frequented by those with a sexual interest in children, a survey of how police investigate these offences, examination of prosecutors' decisions, and interviews with judges. It provides a framework for understanding the contemporary nature of this problem, especially the harms it causes, its intimate relationship with new technologies and the challenges it poses to law enforcement authorities. The internet plays a pivotal role. Its sheer size, the anarchic way it grows, the lack of any boundaries to its expansion and its disregard for national borders make it a legal environment without parallel. An unwavering focus on the threat of sexual abuse has contributed to the emergence of a context where routine dealings with children are viewed through a 'paedophilic' lens. This can have the unfortunate consequence of distracting attention from more urgent concerns (such as poverty and neglect), which make children vulnerable to sexual exploitation. In this way an emphasis on the sexualisation of children could be said to aggravate the problem that it sets out to address. The book: provides a comprehensive analysis of child pornography issues in all of their complexity, including legal, psychological, criminal justice and social perspectives. presents significant volume of original empirical data gathered from police, prosecutors and judges. includes new qualitative and quantitative information set against a background of shifting international developments. The analysis is explicitly comparative. draws on a variety of sources including support groups for paedophiles, newspaper coverage of court cases involving child pornography, victim testimony and police operations.

Child Pornography: Law and Policy draws on interdisciplinary work in order to critically address the law relating to child pornography. Child pornography is recognized as a specific form of child abuse and there are now many national, and international, efforts to tackle it. Yet despite these efforts, the volume of child pornography, particularly on the internet, is increasing. The law has reacted to this situation by adapting its definitions, increasing sentences and providing new powers to law enforcement. It is, however, unclear how far the law should extend. What should the relationship be between criminalization and free-speech? Is there a link between the "use" of child pornography and contact offending? The issue of child pornography has been the subject of considerable literature in the areas of psychology, sociology and psychiatry. These studies provide the basis for a greater understanding of the nature of child pornography, as well as the profiles and behaviour of those who access or produce such material. Child Pornography: Law and Policy brings this wider literature to bear on the legal and policy frameworks relating to child pornography, questioning both the appropriateness and the effectiveness of the law in this context.

Jenkins looks at the first amendment and how it should be applied to child pornography on the internet.

This book provides a critical assessment of the problem of internet child pornography and its governance through legal and non-legal means, including a comparative assessment of laws in England and Wales, the United States of America and Canada in recognition that governments have a compelling interest to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation. The internet raises novel and complex challenges to existing regulatory regimes. Efforts towards legal harmonization at the European Union, Council of Europe, and United Nations level are examined in this context and the utility of additional and alternative methods of regulation explored. This book argues that effective implementation, enforcement and harmonization of laws could substantially help to reduce the availability and dissemination of child pornography on the internet. At the same time, panic-led policies must be avoided if the wider problems of child sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation are to be meaningfully addressed.

Legal experts, sociologists, and social workers debate the definition of child pornography, the punishment of offenders, and the protection of victims

This book examines the reality behind the often hysterical media coverage of child pornography, particularly that available via the internet.

Child pornography and sexual grooming provide case study exemplars of problems that society and law have sought to tackle to avoid both actual and potential harm to children. Yet despite the considerable legal, political and societal concern that these critical phenomena attract, they have not, thus far, been subjected to detailed socio-legal and theoretical scrutiny. How do society and law construct the harms of child pornography and grooming? What impact do constructions of the child have upon legal and societal responses to these phenomena? What has been the impetus behind the expanding criminalisation of behaviour in these areas? Suzanne Ost addresses these and other important questions, exploring the critical tensions within legal and social discourses which must be tackled to discourage moral panic reactions towards child pornography and grooming, and advocating a new, more rational approach towards combating these forms of exploitation.

The First Amendment provides that 'Congress shall make no law... Bridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...'. The First Amendment applies, with two exceptions, to pornography and indecency, with those terms being used to refer to any words or pictures of a sexual nature. The two exceptions are obscenity and child pornography; because these are not protected by the First Amendment, they may be, and have been, made illegal. Child pornography is material that visually depicts sexual conduct by children, and is unprotected by the First Amendment even when it is not legally obscene. Federal statutes, in addition to making it a crime to transport or receive child pornography in interstate or foreign commerce, prohibit, among other things, the use of a minor in producing pornography, and provide for criminal and civil forfeiture of real and personal property used in making child pornography, and of the profits of child pornography. In addition, child pornography crimes are included among the predicate offences that may give rise to a violation of the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act. This book explains the laws that are currently implemented in the fight against child pornography. Also, the book goes on to discuss the various issues and problems associated with child pornography and how the American government has reacted to them.