Sex Offender News
A recent report from the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics shows a 91 percent increase in the number of people prosecuted for “commercial sexual exploitation of children” (CSEC). A statistic that should be shocking if you assume that “sexual exploitation” constitutes trafficking of children for a sexual purpose or producing child pornography. However, the report shows that most were charged with consuming child pornography, including images of cartoon obscenity.
In fact, 80% of defendants were charged with “possession, receipt, or distribution” of child pornography. An InJustice Today article points out that the phrase “possession, receipt, or distribution” is misleading because it lumps together very different conduct that can range from benign to heinous.
When further broken down, 73% of federal child porn “distribution” cases involve little more than a defendant using a peer-to-peer network to download child pornography. The remaining roughly 27% of distribution cases typically involve defendants swapping illicit images directly with one another, though without any money changing hands. Hardly “commercial sexual exploitation of children”! It is so misleading, the article points out, that ” in 2010, exactly zero of the distribution cases pressed at the federal level involved commercial distribution”.
The USDOJ claiming a 91% increase in commercial sexual exploitation of a minor is a very dangerously misleading claim.
Some other interesting statistics came out of the report, which are worthy of mention:
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24% of CSEC matters were declined by U.S. attorneys due to weak or inadmissible evidence. Indicating that the law enforcement agencies are taking action against people with very weak or little evidence.
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92.5% of defendants prosecuted in federal court for possession, receipt, or distribution of child pornography pled guilty. Indicating this is fast and easy work for enforcement and prosecutors and they may be favoring these “shooting fish in a barrel” cases than investigating and prosecuting more demanding ones.
- 79% of those convicted had no prior felony convictions! This indicates that it’s not repeat offenders and it’s not even people who have criminal tendencies. Sex Offender Registries would have done nothing to prevent these crimes as most of those convicted were not on any registry or had criminal histories.
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98% of defendants convicted were sentenced to prison, with the mean prison sentence imposed being 11.6 years. We are taking first-time, non-violent offenders who, in the overwhelming majority of cases, looked at illegal images online, and sending them to prison for over a decade!
@MJ, I’m guessing your conviction stems from a sting op? I don’t know about Georgia law but here in Florida the charge of Traveling, soliciting, use of a 3 way communication device do not fall under the category of mandatory sex offender probation. You CAN be sentenced to some of those restrictions if they are orally pronounced by the judge at your sentencing hearing. But again, in Florida, unless specified as part of your probation these charges don’t have internet restrictions.
Btw, those convicted of the charges mentioned should NOT have all of the conditions of the s.o. probation. See Jared Snow v. State of Florida.
Also of note to the author of this post. On the federal level 97 point 5 of all guilty verdicts are the direct result of accepting plea. On a state level it is 95 percent. See Missouri v Frye; Lafler v Cooper. Both of these cases are Supreme Court decisions from 2012 or 13. Crazy right? This isn’t a system of trials , its a system of pleas.
This is a very upsetting thing. The more we know the worse it gets. How does a person fight this and win in a system that has people tied to a chain? So if you have supervision for 10-20 years, you have to go to their mandated treatment for that time plus polygraphs etc.? What about having your own personal therapy or group therapy, does that carry any weight?
No. They only recognize “state approved therapy.” How convenient. I went VOLUNTARILY to a Christian counseling center while I was on bond. It was in Atlanta. I went for a year. None of that mattered or was recognized. Only got 6 months taken off my prison sentence and 1 year taken off my probation. And I still had to go to counseling once I got out. The counseling I went to on bond, was ten times better than that one I’m going to now. It’s all an industry Donna. It’s pretty obvious. And disgusting.
One last post, here is a piece of the grant requirements given to each state task force to carry out these bogus sting operations. As you can see, each state task force gets 1/2 of a percent of the total money (60 million) given to each state, which would be 3 million in this case. So basically, Florida gets 3 million dollars to carry out these stings every year. And if you look at Section B IV, it says that part of the formula to get this money is based on the number of successful prosecutions of child exploitation carried out by a task force. Isn’t this disgusting?? Where is the outrage over this?? The states and county sheriffs offices are selling out their citizens for federal grant money all to justify their jobs to the public. Knowledge is power. Man, I wish someone would take this information and run with it and do a documentary to expose all of this!!
(1) In general
The Attorney General is authorized to award grants to State and local ICAC task forces to assist in carrying out the duties and functions described under section 21114 of this title.
(2) Formula grants
(A) Development of formula
At least 75 percent of the total funds appropriated to carry out this section shall be available to award or otherwise distribute grants pursuant to a funding formula established by the Attorney General in accordance with the requirements in subparagraph (B).
(B) Formula requirementsAny formula established by the Attorney General under subparagraph (A) shall—
(i) ensure that each State or local ICAC task force shall, at a minimum, receive an amount equal to 0.5 percent of the funds available to award or otherwise distribute grants under subparagraph (A); and
(ii) take into consideration the following factors:
(I) The population of each State, as determined by the most recent decennial census performed by the Bureau of the Census.
(II) The number of investigative leads within the applicant’s jurisdiction generated by Operation Fairplay, the ICAC Data Network, the CyberTipline, and other sources.
(III) The number of criminal cases related to Internet crimes against children referred to a task force for Federal, State, or local prosecution.
(IV) The number of successful prosecutions of child exploitation cases by a task force.
(V) The amount of training, technical assistance, and public education or outreach by a task force related to the prevention, investigation, or prosecution of child exploitation offenses.
(VI) Such other criteria as the Attorney General determines demonstrate the level of need for additional resources by a task force.
Let me get this straight.The feds take our taxes to pay states to have a sor . The more offenders they can put on a list and act like there doing investigative work the more money the state can get.So in order for the state to get more and more money they must keep adding more names to there lists and not let any names be removed. That explains why they must use trumped up charges plus keep creating more and more laws So that they can keep getting more and more money.
Sounds to me like the main problem is the feds and unless something can be done on a federal level nothing will be accomplished
To go along with my other post. Look at Item #4. This is under the subsection of the “Purpose of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force” that each state has to create in order to get this grant money. #4 says the ICAC task force has to INCREASE THE NUMBER OF CRIMES BEING INVESTIGATED…. stop right there. How do you INCREASE the number of crimes being investigated in any given category?? Just think about that for a moment. The standard sting operation is exactly how you do that. Florida has 2 task forces, one of them is the North Florida ICAC task force. They get approximately 1.5 million dollars a year to run these stings. That was just the numbers from 2015.
(1) increasing the investigative capabilities of State and local law enforcement officers in the detection, investigation, and apprehension of Internet crimes against children offenses or offenders, including technology-facilitated child exploitation offenses;
(2) conducting proactive and reactive Internet crimes against children investigations;
(3) providing training and technical assistance to ICAC task forces and other Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies in the areas of investigations, forensics, prosecution, community outreach, and capacity-building, using recognized experts to assist in the development and delivery of training programs;
(4) increasing the number of Internet crimes against children offenses being investigated and prosecuted in both Federal and State courts;
(5) creating a multiagency task force response to Internet crimes against children offenses within each State;
(6) participating in the Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood initiative, the purpose of which is to combat technology-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes against children;
Yes, I feel your pain, the Ft. Lauderdale Sex Offender treatment program I had to attend was the worst, Dr. Butts. They lie, cheat and manipulate you into admitting to things you never did or even thought of. The PO and the government are in bed with these scammer’s! They should be shut down for illegal practice!
People, people, people. I guess I’m luckier than most because I don’t have internet restriction and I can do a lot of research for myself. There’s a very simple reason for why this stat is the way it is and why states keep doing these sting operations. Let me introduce you to Chapter 34 of the US Code and the Federal Grant program which basically bribes the states to arrest as many people as they can for imaginary cybersex crimes. Link here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/34/subtitle-II/chapter-211/subchapter-I.
Look at and read each subsection, especially the last one to see just how much money is being spent for states to arrest and prosecute as many people as they can in these stings. It all has to do with getting as much govt control over the population as possible. And what better way to do it, than to create sex offender laws that keep a citizen bound to the system for the rest of their lives and registered and tracked. And create this wide web of sex crimes for regular law-abiding citizens to fall into and, bam, instant govt slaves for the rest of that person’s life. Call me conspiracy theorist if you want, but it’s time American citizens started critically thinking about stuff like this rather than just blindly accepting it as “oh look at those perverts. Thank God for the police who are catching these guys!” Yet, the vast majority of public opinion is conditioned this way. What better way to get control of a citizenry, than to arrest all of their strong, able-bodied men for heinous sex charges and lock them away and control them for life?? So, this whole cybersex nonsense is all about money and control. Shocking, I know. Wake up people. Like seriously, WAKE THE F**K UP!!
I hear ya. I would like to get a county by county listing on just how many arrests are made for these “crimes” as results of stings vs those without. From my own research i know the numbers are striking. Perhaps we can make a county by county comparison and go from there?
They appear to only be interested in who looks at them, very seldom do they ever go after who hurt the children, and who made the videos.. justice is blind, deaf, and dumb..
Susan,
You are correct. There is no incentive to catch the people who produced, past tense, these images and videos. LEOs want these images and videos to be on the web forever so they will have a continuous stream of “offenders” to provide for their own cash stream. Most of the images and videos floating around on the “dark web” (a myth in itself), are 15-20 years old. And yet, people who look at or download these images are told they are victimizing these children each time they view an image, and given hard prison time and a lifetime of registration, which IS actually lifetime probation.
I had a court mandated “therapist” (social worker) who was of the opinion that all of us in the group were GUILTY and had to admit it. And everyone else was fine…or a victim.
You cannot use LOGIC with these people. Their minds are made up before hand.
It’s all part of the industry bro. The therapist I go to has no clear cut curriculum or plan from start to finish. It’s like you just get strung along for 3-5 years or however long they wanna keep you in there and of course, you can’t file to get off probation until they release you from the program. It’s a scam bro. One big industry. Polygraphs, Probation, “therapy”, the whole nine yards.
And this is all in the name of “protecting the children?”
WTF are these “guardians of the public” thinking??
They are MANUFACTURING a class of criminals…
for what reason??? For job advancement?
Or to make themselves feel more superior?
Where are all the defense attorneys in these cases. Do they not know what pornography is. In English it is taken from the Greek form for prostitution.so to be pornography there has to be some kind of sexual conitation either in the image or it’s use. Nudity is not in itself pornography.That is how art is distinguished from pornography. So if they want to put people in jail for possession of nude pictures there going to have to come up with a different word.
The “defense” attorneys are in the financial whore bed along with everyone else benefitting financially from these stupid sting operations (LEO’s, judges, prosecutors, FDLE agents, polygraphers, therapists, Probation officers, etc…) Just look at this long list of people we have to give money to when we’re on probation.
The treatment provider of my mandatory group is of the opinion that those convicted for CP are every bit as abusive of those depicted as those who made the video / picture. I then asked, isn’t that also true for the LE and prosecutors in these stings? Isn’t that made a little worse by their using them as worms on the hook in their fishing expeditions? She only surmised that they get the parents’ permission before using them and quickly changed the subject. Didn’t occur to me until later that, assuming that’s true, the parents would also be abusive in doing so in some regard.
I’m not advocating CP use. I just think the penalties for simple viewing are a bit severe and based on flawed reasoning (as is most other sex crime), especially considering the entrapment that most of these convictions result from.
Out of curiosity, who is your treatment provider or in which County are you located?
I’m in Georgia. Any support I can give to Florida (or any other state) is limited (of course) and anything your organization does is not likely to affect me directly. But I still keep up and offer my opinion / experience due to the tendency of all states to mimic or outdo the others in crime legislation, SO legislation in particular.
Mandated SO treatment doesn’t vary much from one provider to another (the only real difference is the attitude and conduct of the provider), being based on the same model as substance abuse treatment that is ordered by virtually every court sentencing for drug or alcohol offenses. Surprising, considering it is mostly the same defendants for the same charges going through the same courts who keep sentencing the same ineffective treatment.
Most sex crimes are committed due to opportunity and/or stupidity, not mental illness. Mandated SO treatment is flawed in that it presumes mental illness that is not present, more often than not. The complete Oregon study – not the sanitized version reported to Oregon’s legislature – already highlights the flaws and effectiveness of mandated SO treatment, so I see no need to repeat it here.
I only add that the treatment requirement in most cases serves only to impose more financial burdens on SOs (most of whom are legislated into poverty) and, at least in Georgia, to circumvent the law that mandates courts to show cause why SO probation doesn’t go “inactive”, the usual reason being treatment not complete. There are a host of other issues connected to that, but that may be better discussed in a separate thread.