Ban on possession of child abuse images planned
Mark Sweney
Wednesday December 13, 2006
The government plans to ban the possession of computer-generated images of child abuse.
The move is one of a number of initiatives announced today at the first meeting of the task force for child protection on the internet.
The measures are aimed at protecting young children from sex predators who may use social networking websites to find victims.
"There is no higher purpose for government than to protect children," said the home secretary, John Reid, who chaired the meeting.
"To that end I am currently consulting cabinet colleagues about how we might ban the possession of computer-generated images of child abuse, including cartoons."
He added that while such images are often found stored alongside illegal material held by paedophiles, and it is illegal to distribute them, it has been "entirely legal" to possess them.
The task force also announced that early next year it intends to introduce a safety kitemark to show that parental control software, which prevents children from accessing unsuitable internet material, meets industry agreed minimum standards.
Jim Gamble, the chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, said that while the internet is a "fun" and "educative" place, it is also a "public place where dangers lurk and where child sex offenders will follow young people as they would in the real world".
The task force has also commissioned training packs for prison, probation and social work professionals on the benefits and dangers of the internet and online communications services, such as email and instant messenging, and how sex offenders use them.
The training packs were developed by childrens charities the NSPCC and NCH.
"The growth of the internet means that we all have to be alert to the threats and dangers online and work together so that children are fully able to take advantage of the great benefits it offers in safety," said John Carr, an internet expert at NCH.
My View
I think paedohile should be castrated and locked away for life. I don't know what posses people to become like that but it just isn't right. The fact that the internet is so vast, it's going to be difficult to track every paedophile and porn abuser, however the fact that the government has started to something about it is great. I couldn't believe though that it was legal to posses child pornography, but illegal to distribute it. As I want to study psychology at degree level, one aspect of criminology to analyse the criminal and to determine their motive for crime; whether they simply did it for the sake of it or whether there is some psychological technicalities. It just goes to show you how fascinating the human mind is, that something can trigger the brain to start up murders, paedophilles and so on.
posted by Gurveer at 4:55 PM
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