Child Pornography Offenders
Posted by Joseph Doherty on Fri, Dec 23, 2011 @ 10:10 AM
Recently, a university professor from Utah was on a flight to Boston, where he was to attend a conference. While in flight he was viewing child pornography and was seen by another passenger. This passenger took a photo of the child porn on his computer and notified the stewardess. The passenger also called one of their children, who notified the Massachusetts State Police. The professor was arrested upon the plane's landing in Boston.
Viewing and downloading child pornography is becoming a huge problem, both here in the US and in other countries. It is one of the fastest growing Federal crimes, where receipt of child pornography carries a mandatory five year sentence.
Up until very recently it was assumed that those arrested for posession of child pornography were at risk to have physical contact with children, referred to as "offline offending." Thus it would be assumed that the Utah professor would be a high risk individual, based on the behavior that he engaged in.
But the recent research of Canadian psychologist Michael Seto indicates that this may not be the case. In a metaanalysis of 9 samples Seto and his associates found that in following offenders from 1.5 to 6 years after they had been arrested for possession of child pornography only 2% committed a contact offense, 4.6% had committed a sexual offense and 3.4% had committed another possession of child porn offense. This data supported an earlier metaanalysis that had arrived at similar results. (A Swiss study arrived at similar results.)
Seto's research appears to be having some effect. In Massachusetts a defense attorney recently challenged a SORB (Sex Offender Registry Board) ruling that classified his client, who plead guilty to possession of child pornography, as a Level 3 ("most dangerous") offender. He presented the Board with Seto's study and his client was re-classified a Level 2.
Seto and his associates are now attempting to develop a risk assessement measure that will determine who is low risk v high risk among those who download and collect child pornography.
