The Sex Crimes of Children

As a libertarian, I’d like our government to be a lot smaller, but even I acknowledge that there are a number of essential government functions. One of the most important of these is the justice system.

That’s why it angers me so much that our justice system (at all levels) has drifted so far from the core mission of protecting us from people doing bad things. Instead, it seems we’re increasingly prosecuting people for fake crimes (such as resisting arrest or disorderly conduct), fictitious crimes (such as intent to distribute), dubious catch-all crimes (such and conspiracy or obstruction), victimless crimes (such as gambling or prostitution), and non-crimes (such as money laundering).

By now, even when the crime sounds legitimate, I still have my doubts. For example, Chicago model Rachel Jay links to a news article about a photographer she’s worked with who was later charged with child pornography:

During the investigation, it was discovered that a 17 year-old girl had lewd photos of herself of professional quality in her possession.

After the teen was interviewed, she was able to provide information which led to the sheriff’s detectives in executing a search warrant at Kozel’s home.

Detectives said during the search, they seized photographic equipment, computers, electronic storage devices and a commercial copier printer that Kozel is alleged to have used to produce child pornography.

So, nude pictures of a 17-year old girl? It’s technically child pornography, but it’s not what most of us think of when we hear the term. The girl is over the age of consent in this state, so it would have been legal for the photographer to have sex with her. And she kept the pictures, so I’m guessing this was a voluntary photo session. It was stupid, and it was a crime, but it’s not the reason we have such tough child pornography laws.

The investigation may well have turned up evidence of much worse crimes than I’m aware of, but these days I wouldn’t count on it. Law enforcement folks love to say they’ve caught one of those nasty child pornographers even when, really, they haven’t.

[Update: Rachel Jay stopped by in the comments to explain that at the time of this arrest, Kozel was out on bail for a previous 19-count arrest for possession of child pornography, something that wasn’t clear from the news articles I found.] 

This leads me to something I’ve been meaning to post about for a while now. It’s my guess that—based on the raw numbers—the vast majority of sex crimes against children are committed by…children.

It’s long been the case that most “crimes” of statutory rape were committed by young men against their completely willing but slightly younger teenage girlfriends. Fortunately for an awful lot of people, police don’t spend a lot of effort to catch horny teenagers, rightly preferring to arrest older people who are genuinely exploiting children.

Still, with millions of teenagers having sex, a few of them are bound to get caught up and punished by the justice system beyond all reason. That probably explains a few of the young faces you can see at this disturbing post at Classical Liberal. (Hat tip: Radley)

The first image is a screen capture from the Idaho Sexual Offender Registry, showing someone with a recorded offense of LEWD COND W/MINOR CHLD U/16, which I think means lewd conduct with a minor child under the age of 16.

The offender himself is a 14-year-old boy.

It’s entirely possible, of course, that this boy is a creep who took advantage of a younger person. Maybe he even forced himself on his victim and plead out to lewd conduct. He could be 145 pounds of violent psychopath. As could all of the other 13 young boys pictured in that post. But I think it’s far more likely to be the unintended consequence (’cause God help us if our leaders intended to do this to our children) of a lot of stupid tough-on-crime laws.

These laws vary wildly. In some states the laws are crafted so poorly that a teenage couple can have sex legally until the older one hits a certain age, then the law expects them to stop until the younger one catches up to the age of consent. Other states have sensible romeo and juliet laws that don’t punish the older sex partner unless the age difference is fairly large. In still other states, a 15-year-old boy and his 14-year-old girlfriend can both be charged as sex offenders.

Thanks to the electronic revolution, the same sad state of affairs is affecting the crime of child pornography. Soon, if not already, the vast majority of child pornography will be created by children themselves. On the basis of raw image count, millions of children with cell-phone cameras can produce far more lewd photos of children than a few perverts ever could.

I’ve already written about poor Amber and Jeremy, a couple of teenagers who were convicted of taking pictures of themselves having sex. Judge James Wolf justified this stupidity by saying that “if these pictures are ultimately released, future damage may be done to these minors’ careers or personal lives.” Of course, now the future damage to their careers and personal lives will come from being labeled as sex offenders for the rest of their lives, which is far worse than a few embarassing pictures.

For a teenager, it’s really easy to run afoul of these laws just by taking a pictures of themselves. If they send these pictures to a boyfriend of girlfriend, they’re distributing child pornography, and the friend who received the picture is in possession of child pornography. Sounds silly, but as at least one teen has found out, that’s the law.

Nobody wants their children to be victims of a sex crime. But neither do we want them to be the victim of an out of control sex crimes prosecution.