The related page about the relationship between CSAM and CSA:
A range of research has been conducted examining the link between viewing child pornography and perpetration of child sexual abuse, and much disagreement persists regarding whether a causal connection has been established.[1][2][3][4] Perspectives fall into one of three positions:
Viewing child pornography increases the likelihood of an individual committing child sexual abuse. Reasons include that the pornography normalizes and/or legitimizes the sexual interest in children, as well as that pornography might eventually cease to satisfy the user.
Viewing child pornography decreases the likelihood of an individual committing child sexual abuse. Reasons are that the pornography acts as a substitute for actual offenses. Simulated child pornography is suggested as an alternative so that real children are not harmed.
There is no meaningful association between viewing child pornography and acts of child sexual abuse, or that available evidence is insufficient to draw any conclusions at all.
“Loophole” in that the motivation for production and distribution is grounded ultimately by acquisition, which is identical to possession. If mere possession of CSAM is allowed, then it emboldens distribution.
Targeting possession acts as a disincentive towards acquisition, which in turn disincentivizes production, while also lending credence to the rationale behind it, which does influence the culture to an extent.
I have no doubt in my mind that a more reasoned approach to how the criminal justice system addresses criminal offenders would be welcome, given how many law professors and jurists agree that certain things are unnecessarily harsh.
But none of that is in contradiction to my central points.
I think that the issue some people take is simply the idea that ANY prison time for CSAM is counterproductive to rehabilitation, and that it really ought to be treated as an addiction like to drugs. You are correct that CSAM possession itself cannot be compared 1-to-1 with drug possession. Real people were manipulated or outright raped in the production of CSAM, drugs don’t inherently require violence to manufacture.
But what are the motives of collectors? Those who never even once directly lay their hands on any child, only collecting its documentation? Can the motives of CSAM collection be compared to other addictions and compulsions? Can the treatments used for other obsessions be applied to CSAM collectors? If this is the case, is even a single year of prison time an appropriate response to possessing CSAM? Would rehab centers dedicated to curbing CSAM addiction/obsession/collection be out of the question as an alternative to prison?
Note: I’m fully aware that addiction, compulsion, ignorance, mental illness, loneliness, and wanting to belong to a community aren’t the only motives for CSAM collection and proliferation. There’re of course those who have no sexual feelings for children whatsoever, gangsters and pirates who are only in it for the money and power. I can easily see the case being made for these people being put in prison. The latter folks don’t need help, they’re just selfish and greedy. But the former? They come across to me as having more in common with addicts than anybody else. That’s not an excuse, but I just think the way we approach the former cases needs to be fundamentally different from the latter.
Apologies if I’m jittery in my speech. I’m freezing my ass off (broken heater) and it’s hard to concentrate…
I think this is what might be causing us to disagree with each other. Unlike drugs, I don’t think possession has much correlation with production.
Drugs are usually grown or made and then sold for money and thats how drug cartels benefit from their consumers and distributors.
Aside from most CSAM mostly being made by teens themselves (usually for other teens), the other CSAM which involves over 18s in its production is I believe usually shared because they believe the under 18 consented to doing so. There is no money exchanging hands to effect its production because most of the production is done “for fun” like adult porn.
I can see that there might be a possibility of more CSAM being produced due to people encouraging the producers to make more “content” sure, but I personally don’t think it’s worth all the suicides and prison sentences people would have to go through (MAP’s in particular for being born attracted to the stuff). I just don’t understand the need to completely destroy someones life over mere possession when we can just as easily help them.
Well, first of all, pornography addiction is not formally recognized condition, let alone CSAM addiction. Any and all studies relating to the prospct of pornography addiction can best be attributed to a comorbidity of focused hypersexuality, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and pattern behavior addiction.
Also, it feels to me like @Angel is intentionally ignoring key points of my posts, constantly asking why, which tells me that they’re simply unwilling to accept a succinct response or answer in favor of drawing out the conversation because they feel that they have more they’d like to say, or because they genuinely do not understand how I’m approaching the subject matter.
Constantly asking “why” or “where” in a debate or discussion with heaps of nuance is not a productive or helpful way to get points across.
I also take great offense to some of their bullet points:
Pattern behavior addiction and substance abuse dependency are not the same thing, a person suffering from PBA has more agency than someone whose neurochemistry has been physiologically altered by the introduction of foreign substances that induce changes to the brain’s functions.
Then they should consider reaching out to outpatient care services before they’re caught by authorities. CSAM possession isn’t something that they are required to report (as far as I’m aware), as opposed to acting on contact abuse offenses, but that’s a discussion for a different day.
See my previous post. This only furthers the need for rehabilitative counseling, which is perfectly compatible with the criminal-justice approach.
This is wrong. Possession and acquisition are motives for production and distribution, and one cannot be feasibly tackled without the other. We’ve seen this scenario play itself out in countries like Japan and are currently seeing it in Russia. They may not be identical in terms of scope and effect, but in the grand scheme of things, where the economic motives for CSAM are observed, yes, it does matter. The only reason why this approach hasn’t fared well for drug possession is because someone physically dependent on hard drugs is a victim themselves. I have no doubt in my mind that consumers of CSAM deserve sympathy, but not the same kind of sympathy we afford to someone in need of clinical help for methamphetamine dependence.
Rehabilitation and criminalization are not mutually exclusive, nor incompatible with one another, given the appropriate circumstances and facts. This is one of Prostasia’s key points in its mission.
But nothing about that excludes harsher penalties to those who make the conscious effort to continue offending while refusing treatment, or when their motivations for CSAM consumption/possession are not identical to those seeking to satisfy sexual urges. Criminology 101.
But it does, that’s where you’re wrong. CSAM is a problem because of the underground market/demand for child sexual exploitation and abuse as a commodity, wherein they are photographs and videos of real events and are intrinsically linked to acts of real-world abuse or exploitation.
A market that is dependent on child sexual exploitation is one that presents itself as a clear and present danger to the welfare of children, one that has reached exponential degrees of sophistication in spite of fierce social and political opposition, and one not necessarily comparable to that of the market for hard drugs.
In Germany, even the literal torture of a child under your care has lower a minimum sentence of just 6 months (§ 225 StGB). Torturing a child to the point where there is a danger of death or permanent injury carries the same range of sentences as the distribution of even just a single CSAM image.
Also, there is another dimension to be considered. When you have been convicted for CSAM you are legally forbidden to work in basically any social or public occupation. There will be a record against you for at least the next ten years, and there are multiple groups trying to make those records never disappear at all.
Ok, I think I see where I’m getting hung up. Addiction and compulsion are two different things and should NOT be used interchangeably. I apologize for doing so hope to avoid so in the future.
Ok, so, there’s no such thing as sex or porn addiction (a literal dependency on it that could result in physically crippling withdrawal if cold turkeyed) and applying the addiction model is counterproductive (treating excessive/self-harmful porn viewing/collecting as an “addiction” does very little to actually curb the issue).
Compulsion is another story. Ok, so semantics aside, what about those who are compulsive in their viewing/collecting of CSAM? Again, is prison (as in, put you in a cell and put you on a record: I’m talkin’ AMERICAN prison, not the swanky suites they got in the Nords that hardly qualify as “prison” in the eyes of the average American) appropriate for keeping even a single image of CSAM? And for repeat offenders, if their motive isn’t money, if they really suffer from a serious compulsive disorder and are otherwise unable to get help, is (American) prison really what’s best for them?
I know that the topic at hand is Germany, but not all countries are the same. Saying 1-5 years prison with a focus on rehabilitation is great! But is cold comfort for those in nations like America. And if it involves rehab and such, does it even count as “prison” anymore?:
pris·on
/ˈprizn/
noun
a building in which people are legally held as a punishment for a crime they have committed or while awaiting trial.
Prison is specifically defined as punishment. Punishment, by its very nature, is meant to SUCK. Equating prison with rehabilitation comes across as calling rehab “punishment”, which is just plain odd to me. Again, maybe I’m just getting hung up on semantics…
Sorry for the long post, and apologies if I’ve offended or annoyed you in any way, wasn’t my intention.
Firstly, when I talk about CSAM “addiction” I mean it in a similar way to if somebody in a deeply religious country looked at gay porn because they were born gay. There’s nothing wrong with gay pornography to us but to them its completely wrong, no questions asked and they would be seen as potential “addicts” because they’re literally born to be drawn towards it.
I’m definitely not ignoring your key points, I’ve been disagreeing and or agreeing with all of your points 1 by 1 since we started this conversation. It’s you who’s ignored my points and has now decided to attack my character instead. There is nothing wrong with asking why someone thinks what they think in order to get to the root cause of the disagreement, in fact that’s the more mature way to have a debate rather than throwing out your own points and not even attempting to understand others.
My point was that users are both compelled to use for reasons that are beyond their control. I know MAP’s have more agency than drug addicts of course but MAP’s are also more likely to face an “addiction” to CSAM than a non-MAP because there is a literal inborn attraction to it. I would say it’s more difficult for someone born with that attraction to not look at CSAM than for someone who has never taken drugs to be tempted into taking some but not for more than an addict.
Would you say the same thing for drug users?
I don’t think it criminal-justice side is helpful for reasons I’ve already explained. Again there is NO reason why we can’t try to help people instead of ruining their lives (and potentially their families) with prison sentences.
I disagree, I believe it is possible for production can be tackled, distribution less so but still possible. The whole “child porn industry being a billion dollar industry” is a myth, Adult porn is a billion dollar industry because of advertisements and users willing to pay for content etc. I doubt child porn sites has any advertisements and the only people who would pay will be those who are extremely tech-savvy and knows how to transfer money without getting traced & caught. It’s not a business and I’m sure there are many people who we’re convicted for possession or distribution or production would say the same.
For people who are constantly re-offending and refuse treatment could be put into something like rehab, NOT jail.
I’ve explained above in this post why you’re wrong, there is no “market” most CSAM is made by teens themselves and the rest of it is made by adults who believe kids/teens consented to it and share it to make people who also like that stuff happy not for money.
You were unequivocally describing CSAM consumption as something that requires treatment.
Then why did you ignore the substance of my posts? I’ve come to spell out exactly how drug abuse/addiction and CSAM addiction were not comparable when discussing decriminalizing mere possession, yet you’ve not responded with a single rebuttal that addressed my points that wasn’t you asking why as a means to reduce it, when it’s already been answered.
When people say “economic motive” they’re not necessarily referring to massive scale profits, and when people refer to these massive industrial scale assessments, they’re typically referring to the trade of such materials as a whole, which is admittedly a difficult number to gauge, but due to the illicit nature of how transactions are conducted, especially on the darknet with cryptocurrencies and other indirect forms of payment (if not cashapp purchases made with stolen account info), most of these operations are small-scale.
And even factoring that in, that’s not the point. It happens on a wide-enough scale for there to be an economic motive for these images/materials to exist, with underground subcultures and communities thriving on what is undeniably the sexual exploitation and abuse of children. That fact, along with the scale, warrants prohibition, even with regards to the mere possession.
They employ networks of spambots to promote and share spam links to trading networks all over social media and on various forums. A lot of these websites and botnets are hosted in countries with lax/nonexistent CSAM prohibitions, like Russia and China, in addition to word-of-mouth advertising.
These networks aren’t expensive to host content on, but supplying the manpower to maintain these botnets and move them to different locations requires investment, in addition to paying off/bribing police and even the families of the abused victims to look the other way.
If they continually refuse to cooperate with the rehabilitative practices, hence why I said what I said about refusing treatment, then yes, jail/prison is the best bet, as unfortunate as it is to admit.
This is where you’re factually incorrect on the matter. There does exist both a legitimate economy which thrives on the continual sexual exploitation and abuse of children, as well as a metaphorical ‘market’, wherein the mere fact that these materials are intrinsically linked to the sexual exploitation and abuse of children warrants suppression.
People aren’t going to just produce this type of material without some form of compensation, be it in the form of money or some other incentive.
Quite honestly, it’s infuriating to see this be spouted by someone on the forum whose been here for as long as you.
I think you are. The criminal justice system isn’t necessarily designed to facilitate punishment, but also rehabilitation and other corrective actions deemed integral to the commission or perpetration of criminal acts.
In the US, there are treatment programs designed for people struggling with addition, as well as sexual offenses and paraphilic disorders, which defendants are routinely required to participate in as a condition for release, or in lieu of a prison sentence (typically as a condition for a suspended sentence). it happens in Japan, with lots of room for success and low rates of recidivism following post-release checkups.