What To Do About Child Pornography Laws


Criminal defense lawyers have two reactions to cases involving possession of child pornography: either the lawyer does not take such cases as a matter of principle, or the lawyer takes the case with a sense of foreboding approaching despair. The law involving possession of child pornography is harsh; I will go so far as to call it savage.

An article in the forthcoming issue of the Washington Law Review offers limited hope. "Disentangling Child Pornography from Child Sex Abuse," Carissa Byrne Hessick, 88 Wash. U.L.Rev. (2010).

Hessick seeks to drive an empirical and logical wedge between the frequent claim that possession of child pornography is identical to, or worse than, the actual physical abuse of a child. These arguments are familiar. We justify long sentences by saying that if there were no market for prohibited images there would be no supply. Punish consumers and suppliers will evaporate. It is the suppliers, after all, who engage in hands on abuse. We saw how well that worked in the war on drugs.

This punishment by proxy theory raises troubling due process arguments, Hessick notes. It conflates actual harm with tangential harm. A person looking at a picture is not abusing a child, except in some attenuated, metaphorical sense. Indeed, there is little empirical evidence to suggest that looking and touching are related. Hessick goes so far as to assert that there is no empirical evidence linking actual abuse of children with mere photographs. Indeed, Hessick notes, even the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that in 84 percent of child pornography cases there is no empirical association between possession of pornography and actual abuse of children. One study even suggests the contrary: that in an era in which pornography is freely and widely available on line, men are actually less libidinous. (I have my doubts about that; the rage to procreate is as powerful as the desire to eat.)

Hessick notes that in some states penalties for possession of child pornography can actually be more severe than the actual abuse of a child. In Arizona, for example, the law permits a sentencing authority to impose a 10 year sentence for each prohibited image in a defendant's possession. Thus, the Arizona courts have upheld a sentence of 200 years for a man convicted of possessing 20 images. In such regimes, rational predators actually have a greater incentive to abuse actual children than to look at dirty pictures. Yes, Virginia, the law really can be an ass.

Hessick repeats the common observation that the risk of stranger-danger is vastly overstated. While cases of  the abduction of children by those unknown to them are terrifying, they account for only seven percent of child abuse cases nationwide. Hessick wonders whether child pornography laws aren't really a weapon shooting at a fictional target -- the dirty old man seeking to gain entry to the home of an innocent stranger by barging through the computer screen. The real danger of actual abuse comes from those known to the child, a relative or caregiver with regular and unsupervised access to children. Focusing on child pornography displaces the anxiety about what is going on in our own homes when the lights go out.

A moral panic sweeps legislative chambers from one end of the country to other. Everywhere, sentences for possession of child pornography increase. Most judges are afraid to stand against this tsunami of grief for fear that they too will be swept away in the same crazy and unreasoning energy that brought us prohibition and a war on drugs. I recommend Hessick's article. It doesn't solve the problem of an unreasoning law applied in an unthinking manner. The article merely arms willing practitioners and reformers with the conceptual tools necessary to advance the cause of justice.

Comments: (5)

  • Seems like an interesting, if not controversial ar...
    Seems like an interesting, if not controversial article. Do you know when it's going to be published?
    Posted on June 13, 2010 at 8:37 am by Guy
  • G:
    Not sure. A friend of the firm sent me a hard ...
    G:
    Not sure. A friend of the firm sent me a hard copy 10 days ago. I know nothing more about it than that. Sorry.
    N
    Posted on June 13, 2010 at 8:39 am by Norm Pattis
  • For anyone who is interested, the full-text PDF is...
    For anyone who is interested, the full-text PDF is available via SSRN:
    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1577961
    I think overall the paper was quite good at pointing out some of the more nonsensical aspects of child pornography law.
    One point that really struck me (which had never occurred to me before) is the distinction that there is to be made in the pre and post-internet era with respect to child pornography. I mean, the conventional wisdom is that people who view child pornography are pedophiles who pose immediate risks to children in the community where they reside. Undoubtedly the conventional wisdom probably holds true in at least some cases, but the genesis of that theory was in the pre-internet era, where obtaining child pornography required considerable effort, risk, and expense. One could make the argument (as the author does)that such individuals are highly motivated to obtain such material, and are therefore more likely to pose a risk.
    Now, however, things are much different. I've heard it said that if you look at porn on the internet on a regular basis that it is not a question of if, but when, with regard to coming across child pornography. Suffice it to say, the level of risk, expense, and effort involved in obtaining child pornography has been minimized by technology. Given that, it only makes sense that the risk profile of the offender would be minimized, as well.
    Posted on June 14, 2010 at 10:18 am by Guy
  • What about online chat/solicitation? It is far wo...
    What about online chat/solicitation? It is far worse in some states than actual contact too. All because of a t.v. show nonetheless!
    Posted on July 3, 2010 at 6:31 am by Anonymous
  • Hysteria plays a part in the current laws, it is l...
    Hysteria plays a part in the current laws, it is like the witch hunts of the early centuries of this country.
    A Mom of an inmate
    Posted on July 4, 2010 at 3:34 pm by Anonymous

Add a Comment

Display with comment:
Won't show with comment:
Required:
Captcha:
What is the year?
*Comment must be approved and then will show on page.
© Norm Pattis is represented by Elite Lawyer Management, managing agents for Exceptional American Lawyers
Media & Speaker booking [hidden email]