A Life Sentence for Possessing Child Pornography?

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I skimmed the article. While the author pointed out the non-constructive aspects of many of the penalties, I turned off when it got to the section, “Looking vs. Touching.”

For everyone’s information, child pornography is NOT a victimless crime. What law enforcement cares about is the trafficking of images. Once you are sending photos, it stops being your little problem alone. How much incarceration should be involved is probably debatable, but the fact remains that collecting images is serious business, and sending them even more serious.
 
V. Peccatóres.
R. Te rogamus, audi nos.

V. Ut nobis parcas.
R. Te rogamus, audi nos.

V. Ut nobis indulgeas.
R. Te rogamus, audi nos.

V. Ut ad veram pœniténtiam nos perducere dignéris.
R. Te rogamus, audi nos.
 
Child porn is something repulsive and despicable.

If the person is a researcher into this abomination, and has those images
for purposes of research, that is one thing.
If he or she is collecting them for sick pleasure and sharing them with others,
they are exploiting those innocent little ones and should have
to answer for it. These little children are being molested and raped
and this is horrible. Absolutely horrible.

Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+
 
Jaypeeto4 said:
Child porn is something repulsive and despicable.

If the person is a researcher into this abomination, and has those images
for purposes of research, that is one thing.
If he or she is collecting them for sick pleasure and sharing them with others,
they are exploiting those innocent little ones and should have
to answer for it. These little children are being molested and raped
and this is horrible. Absolutely horrible.

Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+
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In this case, a man had a collection of pictures, presumably not for research, but had committed no other crime. I don’t believe he was accused of sharing them with anyone.
 
The sentence does seem unreasonable, if the man was convicted only of having pictures on his computer, without trafficking in them. I don’t know the content of the pictures; maybe that would make a difference. (I read somewhere that even images which are not of real persons may be considered child porn.)

What seems scary is this: here is a person with a perverted mind, sitting in front of his computer, looking at disgusting images. Without ever leaving the house, without ever trafficking in child porn images, he can get a life sentence?
 
I went back and skimmed through the article Perverted Justice, linked within the first piece. It also seems rather unreasonable to require teenagers to register as sex offenders for having premarital sex, or as in one case noted, for a ten year old to be required to register as a sex offender.
 
The criminal justice system is a joke in this country. People who commit crimes like this have no fear of being incarcerated. They get 3 meals a day, shower, tv, access to the internet. How many out there today get 3 meals a day?

These animals don’t fear being corrected because or system is both soft and corrupt. How do you fix this? I truly believe only two things will get these people in line. The first is execution. How many monsters are on death row? Living out quiet days, while their victims families suffer. Make execution mandatory in most cases. The second solution is flogging. Whipping, lashing, whatever. Tie them up to a pole and start giving out 100 lashes. They give more in Muslim countries to women who disobey. Crime is fairly squared away over there.

I know that my view on this is horribly draconian, but I truly believe that people don’t fear punishment any longer.
 
I am curious… Did the accused actually willfully install the said pictures on his computer? Or were they put onto his computer by some hacker or some unbeknownst to him nefarious website he visited that slipped in a ‘bot’ program and used his home computer for a distribution point for the hacker’s profit?

This is a serious issue to be considered by *all *here. If military computers and gov’t computers can be hacked -almost routinely - then all here are vulnerable.

Food for thought.
 
JimG said:
I went back and skimmed through the article Perverted Justice, linked within the first piece. It also seems rather unreasonable to require teenagers to register as sex offenders for having premarital sex, or as in one case noted, for a ten year old to be required to register as a sex offender.
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It must be that ‘‘Some’’ children can be just as guilty as the adults when it comes to producing child pornography!
 
Is anything known about people who view child pornography with regards to recidivism? Perhaps that is driving the long sentencing; sort of like a preemptive three strikes application?

Maybe we ought to ask a different crowd than CAF if it is fair. Perhaps the general prison population would feel it is a reasonable sentence. I have no idea what tends to get you life, other than murder or that three strikes thing.
 
shaky said:
It must be that ‘‘Some’’ children can be just as guilty as the adults when it comes to producing child pornography!
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Well yes, some teenagers have been known to send nude photos of themselves to their boyfriends or girlfriends via cellphone. They are essentially guilty of producing and distributing child porn, and their friends who might forward such images to others are guilty of distributing child porn. I don’t think it merits a life sentence. Mandatory and harsh sentencing laws can have myriad unintended effects.

I would note that even “three strikes” laws have unintended effects, resulting in unwarranted long and costly prison sentences for essentially minor crimes.
 
Foresight said:
Your missing the point, the victims are the children in the photographs. Recall Economics? No Demand = No Supply. We learned this lesson with Crimen Sollicitationis.

advancedchristianity.com/Pages/CBS/CBS.htm
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Elizabeth502 said:
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The definition of child pornography is sufficiently broad such that drawings of children may sometimes qualify.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003
Prohibits computer-generated child pornography when "(B) such visual depiction is a computer image or computer-generated image that is, or appears virtually indistinguishable from that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; (as amended by 1466A for Section 2256(8)(B) of title 18, United States Code).
Prohibits drawings, sculptures, and pictures of such drawings and sculptures depicting minors in actions or situations that meet the Miller test of being obscene, OR are engaged in sex acts that are deemed to meet the same obscene condition. The law does not explicitly state that images of fictional beings who appear to be under 18 engaged in sexual acts that are not deemed to be obscene are rendered illegal in and of their own condition (illustration of sex of fictional minors).
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Moreover, sometimes innocent family photos are classified or used as child porn:
foxnews.com/story/0,2933,425946,00.html
blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/09/22/family-vacay-pics-deemed-child-porn-by-wal-mart-at-center-of-lawsuit/
 
TheTrueCentrist said:
Moreover, sometimes innocent family photos are classified or used as child porn:
foxnews.com/story/0,2933,425946,00.html
blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/09/22/family-vacay-pics-deemed-child-porn-by-wal-mart-at-center-of-lawsuit/
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I read the linked article.

“Some of the photos showed their three young girls, all under 5 years old, partially nude in the bathtub. . . . Child Protective Services searched the Demaree home and took custody of the children for a month while the state investigated. They watched family videotapes and found a few in which the children were playing unclothed. Lisa was suspended from her school job for a year, and both of their names were placed on the sex offender registry. The couple spent $75,000 on legal bills.”

Ultimately the charges were dropped, and now the family is suing the State and Wal-Mart for making false accusations.

Good grief, the way this family was treated is an outrage.

On the other hand, given the hysteria over this issue, I can see where Wal-Mart might have been worried that failure to report the images might have made them criminally liable! This is crazy.
 
TheTrueCentrist said:
The definition of child pornography is sufficiently broad such that drawings of children may sometimes qualify.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003

Moreover, sometimes innocent family photos are classified or used as child porn:
foxnews.com/story/0,2933,425946,00.html
blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/09/22/family-vacay-pics-deemed-child-porn-by-wal-mart-at-center-of-lawsuit/
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I wasn’t speaking of the exceptions. I was speaking of the undercurrent in one section of the article (read my previous post) that Looking can’t be as bad as Touching. And I have heard over and over by bleeding heart libertarian-types that the issue is privacy and having no victims.

Garbage. If a person has voluntarily looked (clicked on images, sent images electronically), then that person has participated in victimizing children. Period. Over. Out.
Enough with the excuses and technicalites. It happened to a celebrity in the (non-related) entertainment field a few years ago. Judge threw the book at him. He and his defenders made the same argument about “private” activity.

And by the way, the Roman Catholic Church includes as an aspect of grave sin, the “private” participation of men who access adult pornography, in terms of their contributing to the pornography trade.

I already acknowledged, in my earlier post, the extreme reactions and situations narrated in the story. That does not justify confirmed so-called “private” use of child pornography.
 
Yes, life sentence could certainly fit the crime.

Child porn–possession, trafficking of, making, causing to be made–is all evil. A horrible evil that harms, mutilates and kills children every year, every day. Most of you have NO idea what “child porn” even entails and don’t want to know, shouldn’t have to know.

How does viewing images harm, mutilate or kill children, you might ask? because as mentioned above, the supply and demand factor. someone has to create the photos and there is a child victim (from infant to teen).
 
Elizabeth502 said:
I wasn’t speaking of the exceptions. I was speaking of the undercurrent in one section of the article (read my previous post) that Looking can’t be as bad as Touching. And I have heard over and over by bleeding heart libertarian-types that the issue is privacy and having no victims.
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They are not exceptions. There have been several cases such as this one where people were jailed for possession of cartoon porn, in which no children were actually harmed. Moreover, in cases such as the one I originally posted, this man will face a longer sentence than a person who actually abused children.

I don’t think that the article is saying that looking can’t be as bad as touching, but that it usually isn’t.
 
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