Hunn Charlotte M, Cockburn Helen, Spiranovic Caroline, Prichard Jeremy
Faculty of Law, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia.
Psychiatr Psychol Law. 2018 Jun 20;25(6):811-828. doi: 10.1080/13218719.2018.1478337. eCollection 2018.
The online viewing of child exploitation material (CEM) is a seemingly intractable problem. Evidence suggests that CEM is viewed not only by the paedophilic 'other', but by people without prior offending histories or pre-existing sexual interests in children. Studies emphasise the role of offence-supportive attitudes in enabling first-time offending. Relatedly, nascent research indicates that some sections of the Australian community express ambivalence about the harms involved in viewing such material. Taking a crime prevention perspective, this article considers the need and value of tackling such attitudes and the educative role that judges' sentencing comments may play. In doing so, this article presents a content analysis of judicial comments from Victoria and Tasmania. Encouragingly, results show that judges provide some explanation of the harms involved in most instances. Yet, some of the explanations that judges give may be perpetuating, rather than reducing, ambiguity about the wrongfulness of 'just' viewing CEM online.
在线观看儿童剥削材料（CEM）似乎是一个棘手的问题。有证据表明，观看CEM的不仅有恋童癖的“他人”，还有那些没有前科或先前对儿童有性兴趣的人。研究强调了支持犯罪的态度在促成初次犯罪方面所起的作用。与此相关的是，新出现的研究表明，澳大利亚社会的一些群体对观看此类材料所涉及的危害表达了矛盾态度。从预防犯罪的角度来看，本文探讨了应对此类态度的必要性和价值，以及法官量刑评论可能发挥的教育作用。在此过程中，本文对维多利亚州和塔斯马尼亚州的司法评论进行了内容分析。令人鼓舞的是，结果表明，法官在大多数情况下会对所涉及的危害做出一些解释。然而，法官给出的一些解释可能会延续而不是减少对“仅仅”在线观看CEM的不法性的模糊认识。
