Decriminalising.. possession of child pornography?
Hypnodisc
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Okay, let me just start by saying this is just something I was pondering, not a particularly serious suggestion but I thought it at least deserved a discussion..
Do you think there would be any merit in 'decriminalising' possession of child pornography?
That basically means, instead of just chucking people with the porn in prison, getting them in to some sort of mandatory therapy/help instead, to try to change their ways?
The way I see it;
Peadophiles are suffering from what can only be described as a mental illness - I find it hard to blame them for their 'urges' if that's how they're wired. It obviously isn't normal to be attracted to children. Of course however, it is dangerous because their attraction could cause them to offend, but what if it could be 'nipped in the bud' before they do offend?
I just kinda think if we put them in prison for 3-4 years, they'll come out and might do the same thing again. Meanwhile we've spent £50k+ a year keeping them there, and you can't detain people forever just for possessing pictures, no matter how vile.
I'm just not sure the justice system is the best way to stop people from offending in this way. As we all know, people often come out of prison and are seemingly more likely to offend because their life has lost all structure and meaning. I also think that people might leave prison, not try to look at child porn but will 'inadvertently' end up actually sexually attacking a child because they have this illness.
Just for the record, obviously I don't think the law should change with regard to people who actually make child porn, or indeed try to attack children.
Please try to keep it sensible..
Do you think there would be any merit in 'decriminalising' possession of child pornography?
That basically means, instead of just chucking people with the porn in prison, getting them in to some sort of mandatory therapy/help instead, to try to change their ways?
The way I see it;
Peadophiles are suffering from what can only be described as a mental illness - I find it hard to blame them for their 'urges' if that's how they're wired. It obviously isn't normal to be attracted to children. Of course however, it is dangerous because their attraction could cause them to offend, but what if it could be 'nipped in the bud' before they do offend?
I just kinda think if we put them in prison for 3-4 years, they'll come out and might do the same thing again. Meanwhile we've spent £50k+ a year keeping them there, and you can't detain people forever just for possessing pictures, no matter how vile.
I'm just not sure the justice system is the best way to stop people from offending in this way. As we all know, people often come out of prison and are seemingly more likely to offend because their life has lost all structure and meaning. I also think that people might leave prison, not try to look at child porn but will 'inadvertently' end up actually sexually attacking a child because they have this illness.
Just for the record, obviously I don't think the law should change with regard to people who actually make child porn, or indeed try to attack children.
Please try to keep it sensible..
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Paedophiles can not be fixed.
Can I ask why you think that?
The BIB is interesting as although I suppose you are right it is a form of lust, because it is involuntary and very psychologically abnormal to lust over children surely that qualifies it as something similar to a mental illness? If not a mental illness?
I agree re the control aspect, but maybe decriminalisation would encourage people to seek help from their GP with controlling the urges, which they might not do presently because they fear having the police called on them?
I wouldn't be in favour of decriminalising kiddy-porn but I do wonder if, distasteful as it might be to the rest of us, setting up some kind of official supply of suitable material might be useful.
I really don't think you can alter people's sexuality and I don't think you can change a kiddy-fiddler any more than you can change a straight person or a gay person.
Imagine living in a world where heterosexual sex was illegal.
Maybe some of us could repress or ignore our sexual urges completely but you'd get some people pairing up for consensual heterosexual sex, you'd get some people ending up committing rape and, if we're honest, the vast majority of straight people would end up looking at heterosexual porn to get their jollies.
Just because we (quite rightly) find child-porn distasteful it seems rather silly to suggest that those people's sexual urges can be changed or ignored any more than our own can be.
So, seems like there might be some mileage in, perhaps, creating an online database where convicted kiddy-fiddlers could log in and find stuff to satisfy their urges without the need for them to go and find actual kids to abuse.
I'm not saying this would definitely be a good idea.
I'm saying that, perhaps, it'd be worth looking at the sort of stuff these people do have on their computers and finding out whether that stuff is usually enough to satisfy their urges without escalating them and, if it is, then maybe it'd be worth looking at.
Course, that's all academic because it would never be considered for moral reasons.
A very considered response, thank you!
Interestingly I hadn't thought of what you propose, but I reckon it certainly merits 'study' (although I'm not quite sure how easy/practical that would be to study!)
I guess though as you say, for moral reasons it's something that'd never, ever be sanctioned - even just for research.
You hit the nail on the head with the sexuality part I believe. From what I've heard, liking children is effectively a 'fixed sexuality' in the same way people are straight/bisexual/gay and it's not necessarily something which can be controlled/changed, either easily or at all.
However, there's some evidence to suggest that paedophiles who have access to child porn have a lower risk of committing abuse than those who don't, so allowing the possession of CGI or cartoon porn could be a means to reduce offending without (real) children being exploited in the process. That would never happen, however, and iirc even countries like Sweden and the Netherlands treat CGI as real.
Which pictures/videos would be used though? It wouldn't to fair on the kids involved to sanction something like that. Imagine the state encouraging people to watch you being abused? What if you were related to one of the children?
Oh, I agree completely and that's why I said you'd probably want to find out what sort of stuff these people actually have on their computers and find out what sort of stuff they could actually, erm, "make use of".
Seems (to me, at least) like half the manga/anime in the world might fit the bill and then there's fictional writing and the possibility of CGI animation too, as well as movies where adults might play roles.
I suspect there's probably quite a bit of suitable stuff around that doesn't actually involve any real kids.
It just seems a little unrealistic to just say "No, they're evil and they should be banned!" because these people are here, sharing the planet with us and no amount of outrage is going to change that so it seems like it might be more productive to try and help them deal with their issues rather than simply demonise them.
To me, it's a little bit like the stigma that was attached to homosexuality in (hopefully) the past.
"ZOMG! You can't have gays in the army cos as soon as the lights go out they're going to be sticking it up yer bum!"
Right, cos gay people have absolutely no morals, no self-control, no respect for others, no sense of propriety, no need for emotional attachment, no decency, no restraint?
They're just 100% sexually-driven creatures of instinct?
I suspect that, in that regard, a lot of people are probably making the same assumptions about peadophiles that were made about gay folks in the past.
It occurs to me that, for all we know, there might well be hundreds (or more?) of people with these problems who're productive members of society who're quietly sitting at home with no urge to go out and harm real kids but who're terrified that they're going to end up doing serious jail time for downloading weird stories off newsgroups and looking at the pictures on the Toys'R'us website a bit too closely and that doesn't seem like a healthy situation.
*EDIT*
FWIW, I think it's probably important to make a distinction between the sort of people involved here and the offences they commit too.
If we're talking about an actual child-abuser then I'd have to say that I think they've already crossed the line and you'd have to be VERY careful to ensure that any help they were offered didn't actually encourage them to further abuse.
These days, however, it seems like we're prosecuting a lot of people for websites they've visited and stuff that's on their computers and I think those sort of people are the ones who we should have some sympathy for and who might benefit from some kind of official source of material.
Probably the same reasons some men try and fix lesbians by saying they haven't been with them yet.
Spot on.
Also any use of soft kiddie porn, as it were, would inevitably lead to harder stuff.
How many Gay and Heterosexual people who use porn and started on soft porn, are still restricting themselves to soft porn?
Of course the one big advantage is that GCHQ would have a list of names and addresses of many of the paedophiles in the country that currently never come up on the radar.
The difference of course is that most fetishes aren't illegal.
It's a good job somebody has some sense on this forum. I've never read a bigger load of pseudo-psychologist twaddle as has been written further up the thread.
This is true, but what about cartoon stuff that doesn't involve kids.
I don't think any porn leads to actual sex, at least not in my experience lol. No reason to suspect it would for pedos, so that way around I've no problem with it only reservations.
Anyway decriminalising watching child porn really sits wrongly, it's a no from me.
I really can't stand the term 'child porn'. This was a term coined by the media and is completely incorrect and quite dangerous to use. Pornography is something that is produced between 2 consenting adults.
Children cannot and do not consent to being in pornography so what it is, and what it should be called is 'child abuse images' because that is exactly what it is.
'Child porn' almost downgrades what it actually is and that is wrong.
And for the record, these images are supply and demand so decriminalising is not ever to going to help any of the poor children that are being used for child abuse images.
And that is what is the most important thing, helping the children that are being abused, not trying to find ways to help paedophiles. I know that in theory, if you could 'cure' paedophiles then ultimately you would help children but I believe in reality this is not going to happen so let's focus on the victims.
That's just my opinion, can understand if people want to disagree
...is the correct answer
It's hardly surprising that somebody who actually abuses children has a preference for pornography which features children. That doesn't mean there's a causal link, any more than you can draw a conclusion from those who offend against adults having adult pornography. People abused children long before there was online access to porn, and I'm not convinced the figures for actual abuse have gone up in recent years (other than because offences are more likely to be reported nowadays).
I don't think that will help Glowbot - there are treatments for paedophilia (in terms of suppressing the behaviour,albeit not that effective apparently) but using CGI porn would get in the way of that surely. And there is no guarantee that people wouldn't want to move on to the real thing.
I genuinely don't know what the answer is, because there isn't a cure and so people who have this disorder will always present a risk to children (either directly or indirectly) and if they act on their urges then I believe the only option is to prosecute and imprison them. I normally opt for a liberal approach to imprisonment, but in this case I think we need to add a significant deterrent factor to try and encourage them to avoid offending at all.
Describing paedophila as 'mental illness' is not a good thing at all. People who live with mental illness also have to live with the stigma that carries. Suggesting a paedophile is one because of mental illness is not smart and not correct.
But children do appear to be capable of being attracted to other children... so obviously they can grow out of it.
what
S'funny cos if it was as superficial as others seem to have suggested, you'd think they have managed to "fix" Jon Venables, eh?
Let's stop for a second to try to understand the children involved in these pictures and videos and not make light of the horrific things they have had to endure.
By decriminalising it, you're condoning this damaging behaviour.