Grisham's Mission

[Satchmo Distel]

Grisham thinks some child porn sentencing is too harsh:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/feedarticle/11592917

It's a tricky one. If someone pays for child porn I don't think their action can be excused as clicking a few buttons while drunk. OTOH I can see how someone can accidentally find themselves viewing a free child porn image that they thought was going to be an image of someone who was at least over 16 (although legally 16-17 is still dubious).

The comments themselves will obviously be misinterpreted by some media types, omitting all the nuances of the argument.

Grisham may also be addressing a straw man, not realizing that courts take the age of the victim in the image into account, and the mode by which the image was obtained.

[ursus arctos]

Grisham's Mission

I think that your last point goes to the crux of the matter. I'm unconvinced that there are dozens of "inadvertent" viewers languishing in prison.

[WOM]

Grisham's Mission

To his point, do courts hand out 'too harsh' sentences to child porn buyers? Are there clear delineations in sentencing for those who consume vs those who distribute vs those who create the images?

In my mind, those represent three levels of involvement, but I don't know how the courts look upon it.

[salt n shake]

Grisham's Mission

I believe if you view the images/videos and subsequently save a copy, that can lead to a charge of having "made" the images (since you've caused another copy to exist).

I'm certainly no expert, and I do think Mr. Grisham is wrong here, for what it's worth

[WOM]

Grisham's Mission

I think he's wrong, but I'm not sure he even knows what he's wrong about. I agree with the 'straw man' thing.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Grisham's Mission

I don't know if there are that many delineations in sentencing to be honest. As far as I know prosecutions in Ireland are based on the idea that when you download something, you are making a copy, and therefore publishing the image, and you get tried as though you took the photo, or made it available. So the baseline crime is already pretty serious. You might get in extra trouble though if you are hosting a big cache, or if you are making these images available to share over some kind of peer to peer network.

[ursus arctos]

Grisham's Mission

Given limited prosecutorial resources, I would expect that they would not even bring marginal cases, even given the level of political attention to the offence.

That said, it is more plausible to me that "inadvertent" cases can be caught up in the "sweeps" that police authorities are so fond of given their media appeal.

But that isn't Grisham's point, as I understand it.

[Bored Of Education]

Grisham's Mission

I know that it is an accepted phrase in some contexts but what is his point about "Sixty-year-old white men in prison"

[ursus arctos]

Grisham's Mission

This piece on his apology provides some context.

“We have prisons now filled with guys my age, 60-year-old white men in prison who’ve never harmed anybody, would never touch a child ... But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn.

“I have no sympathy for real paedophiles,” he said. “God, please lock those people up. But so many of these guys do not deserve harsh prison sentences.”

It's a ham handed attempt to evoke "guys who look like me".