by Robert Henderson
Note: I would not mind betting that a very large proportion of these people are charged with viewing, downloading and making of images of child pornography. As I have mentioned before, I am absolutely opposed to laws which make the viewing of anything illegal. Punish the child pornographers severely – where it is truly child pornography and not a young adult under the age of 18 who is involved – but don’t deny the public the opportunity to see what is being made illegal in their name.
There is also the practical problem of numbers. In 1999 the British police received around 8,000 names of those who had accessed from Britain a USA child pornography site which charged for access. The police initiated Operation Ore to follow up the leads. . As the law stands the police would have had a simple job in most of the cases of simply tracking down the individuals and charging them unless they could explain how the site had been accessed from their computer using their credit card without their knowledge. In the event they only charged a few hundred of the 8,000. Easy to see why: the number from that one source was simply too large for them to begin to tackle it. The numbers of those accessing child pornography in Britain could well run into hundreds of thousands, perhaps even a few million. The law is in practice unenforcible in any equitable way.
Eight jails now hold only sex offenders, says Chris Grayling
Indeed. This is one of those great scandals for which, if history is a guide, some future politician will make a pointless apology once the damage has been done and it is too late to do anything for the victims.
It is worth noting that mass incarceration is a consistent feature of Progressivism; whether in prisons for non-crimes, or in asylums, colonies and other “therapeutic” facilities. The previous Progressive Era initiated- particularly in the USA- a mass wave of therapeutic incarceration which still echoes in tropes in horror fiction of asylums and hospitals. So it is worth noting that a similar wave is currently building up; as men are sent to prison, girls are increasingly being forced into a “therapeutic” system as victims of “abuse”, “trafficking” etc, while social services child removals are growing year on year. (Ignored by all, the Rotherham report casually remarks that many of the “victims” denied being victims of anything and insisted that no coercion had occurred, even under fierce pressure by therapists. It is presumed that they are not fit to judge their own state. This is classic Progressivism in action).
One of the many things I’ve idly considered and done nothing about would be to write a “report card” for Progressivism so far, listing harms done. A major feature would be non-crime incarcerations, therapeutic incarcerations, etc. I suspect it would make for chilling reading.