peripathetic

Sex, abuse and the internet
I've read one report today (and I can't remember where it is), and this one, which both highlight the dangers posed to children by, supposedly, the internet. The linked report from the BBC is about a Northern Ireland charity report into the hazards the net poses for juvenile users.

The charity's spokesperson, Dee Kelly, commented: "The internet can be used to access vulnerable children or young people and presents real dangers in the form of the collecting of indecent images or stories of children, grooming and chat room activity to name but a few."

But the internet can be used to access *anyone* if they're listed on it. *Any* images can be collected, not only indecent images of children. Chat rooms can be used to chat about *any* topic. So I think that what we have here is an oft-repeated semantic shift. The locus of people's fear of abuse turns to the net itself, rather than to the single factor which makes a chatroom sinister, an image available, a people-search predatory.

That factor is: the psychologically fucked-up (potential) offender.

It's encouraging to note that a police expert in sex offender risk management will talk at the charity's event today, and hopefully shift the focus back to an even-handed look at net + offender. Tech analyst Bill Thompson writes that reporting of increased internet abuse "makes good headlines, but I am not sure it helps us as we try to decide what to do about this serious problem. Instead it is more likely to persuade unthinking campaigners and compliant politicians to call for some sort of clampdown on the net".

This is an important point for a few reasons. First: censorship, filtering, ISP legalities, privacy and surveillance on the net are huge cans of very wriggly worms. Second: the potential or actual offender (or re-offender) is likely to be aware of the measures police take to look at their online activity, and also be net-savvy enough to move from site to site, place to place, program to program in evasion. So restricting online freedom with broad brushstrokes wouldn't work, fullstop. Same goes for restrictions on the use of encryption tools.

The analyst Thompson seems to encourage police to instead look at how they can infiltrate the criminal groups via the net. Good idea - but I also say this.

If a net offender is psychologically fucked, countries should try to unfuck them through medical channels as part of a judicially-overseen custodial sentence which is open-ended for however long it takes to get the prisoner's mental health back to normal. And yes, I think that in the case of child-sex offenders, this should be compulsory.

If a serious offender can't be 'fixed', they should, perhaps, be kept in prison for life. Or electronically tagged and forbidden ownership or use of a computer.

It's easy to forget, too, that offenders weren't always so. Until they committed an offence they were ordinary members of the public with jobs and homes and families. Their mental health was invisible. Put simply, and I don't think you can argue with this, the child-sex offender offends due to being in some way profoundly ill in the head. If it is possible for even one country in the world to take the lead, and make sure that their health services emphasise mental health in every member of the population from an early age through continued screening and treatment, I reckon these crimes would lessen.

Now go ahead, and tell me why I'm wrong. Really. :o) These issues are important.