Typology of Paedophile Picture Collections

Over recent years, offences related to the production, possession and distribution of child pornography have assumed great prominence. Public attention has focused on these crimes as being particularly repellent and deserving of both proactive policing and, when detected, full and extensive investigation. Increased awareness of the problem of child pornography has been associated with a parallel recognition of the significance of the Internet as a medium for the distribution of both child pornography and the facilitation and propagation of a number of sexual offences against children. Most European countries have statutes that criminalise possession of child pornography, and it is now regarded as a serious offence in most jurisdictions, attracting significant sentences on conviction. Because of its emotive nature and also because possession is, in the main, illegal, research into child pornography has been limited. Little is known about the nature and extent of child pornography precisely because it is an illegal trade, and the distinctive qualities contributed by the current principal medium of distribution, the Internet, add even further complexity. Such work that there is tends to be from a limited evidential perspective. Lanning (1992), in what is amongst the most significant contributions to this area, outlined a behaviour analysis of child molesters describing the role of child pornography in their offending behaviour. He discussed motivation for collecting, the functions of collection and the characteristics of collections (for example important, constant, organised, permanent, concealed and shared). A major weakness of this work is its lack of empirical verification, relying instead on the experience of Lanning in law-enforcement work in this area. However, Lanning (24-6) introduces the important distinction between child pornography ('the sexually explicit reproduction of a child's image') and child erotica {'any material, relating to children, that serves a sexual purpose for a given individual'). The significance of this distinction is to emphasise the potential sexual qualities of a whole range of kinds of photograph (and other material as well) not all of which may meet obscenity criteria. The implications of that distinction in the context of the Internet could not at that time be fully explored, although Lanning does, in that and later work, clearly recognise the significance of the new technologies. The operational