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Dec
15
From Crackdown on Child Pornography:
Cybercrime, the majority of which involves child pornography, is now the FBI’s third-highest priority, behind counterterrorism and counterintelligence.
Is that right, as in what the priorities should be for the FBI? Another article that demonstrates the intense focus on behavior long after it’s already cemented with a character, rather than an article focused on how we help people stop developing the behavior in the first place. Let’s not even get into what this is doing to the prison population.
Notice how the article traces the introduction of child pornography into the States, but it doesn’t say a word about how or why a person engages in the behavior in the first place and asks all the wrong questions:
Underlying the debate are efforts by researchers to understand the perpetrators. Do people who view the images harbor a latent sexual interest in children that the Internet brings out, or does the Internet prompt the urges? And will people who view child pornography molest children?
Note that “understand the perpetrators” is interpreted as trying to understand what the perpetrators will do next and what triggers the perps behavior. Not the why, not the etiology.
Do not click away from here thinking that I don’t believe that people with an interest in child pornography should proliferate and thrive. That would be the farthest thing from the truth of my desire: to eliminate whatever the drive is that allows people to desire to engage in behavior related to child pornography. But focusing on the criminality of it seems to be doing very little to stop the creation of the interest.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:31 pm December 15th, 2007 in Crime, Culture, Mental health, Parenting, Politics, Social Issues
Comments
2 Responses to “What does the “crackdown on child pornography” accomplish?”
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I see your point, Jill, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that very real children are being raped on film to produce that child pornography. Rescuing and protecting them has got to be the first priority, and prosecution is what it takes to do that, at all levels. Those who watch it just create a market for children’s pain and horror.
I agree that rescuing and protecting has to be the top priority in regard to child pornography and molestation. This is the sociologist in me speaking that I want to see the breeding ground – whatever elements are there and wherever they are – dismantled and extinguished as best as possible. Massachusetts and Arizona, for a while, were putting money into prevention programs for young potential sex offenders and it is admittedly an extremely difficult population to identify before any acts occur under circumstances that rise to the level that law enforcement or people in a position to report.
I’m just saying, we almost never read about the other efforts – it seems to me as though we only hear about the after-the-fact efforts with law enforcement.
It’s been a long peeve of mine that we just can’t legislate behavior – the bulk of people who view child pornography aren’t going to stop because it’s illegal – they are doing it now, they’ve found other places. It just seems logical to me to ALSO try to find a way to extinguish whatever it is that gives rise to the desire in the first place.
Thanks for commenting – I do understand the priority. I’m just blathering about something I notice all the time in terms of our focus on behavior and its consequences when it comes to laws.