Can We Consider Children's Drawings As Art?

When a drawing or cartoon paradigm can land you in jail

Diterbitkan: Oktober 27, 2014 12.53pm WIB

Penulis

Abhilash Nair
Senior Lecturer in Police, Northumbria Academy, Newcastle

Pengungkapan

Abhilash Nair tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham, atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi selain yang telah disebut di atas.

Mitra

Northumbria Academy, Newcastle memberikan dana sebagai anggota The Conversation UK.

Lihat semua mitra

Some images are illegal even to see, an online crime scene. mangostock/Shutterstock

A cartoon can country you lot in court, as happened to a human being recently bedevilled of possessing non-photographic images – cartoons, drawings – of a sexual nature featuring children.

Clearly child pornography, more accurately called child abuse images, represents horrendous crimes and should accept no place in our society. Children are incapable of giving legal consent to sex or sexual posing for nude photographs, meaning each of such images is criminal and represents a criminal offense scene itself.

While nobody will disagree that they should be banned entirely, the justification for criminalising the possession of drawn or computer-generated images that involve no real children is not then clear.

Under the Coroners and Justice Deed 2009, sections 62-68 made it a law-breaking to exist in possession of "prohibited images" of children. This is divers closely to crave that the image is first grossly offensive and obscene, and pornographic for purposes of sexual arousal. It too requires that the focus is principally on the kid'due south genitals and sexual regions, or includes one of diverse sexual acts either with the child or in the presence of the child. It also covers images that draw sexual practice in the presence of or between children and an beast, whether dead, live, or imaginary.

The law covers yet and moving images, and can include cartoons, drawings, and manga-style images. These images are easier to find on the net than actual child abuse images involving existent children, largely due to the fact that virtual pornography is non illegal in all countries. For example, the existence of Japanese websites featuring fantasy kid sexual abuse has been a concern in countries where it is illegal.

The two main justifications given by the government for criminalising the possession of these "prohibited images" was that they could exist used for grooming children and could fuel child abuse by reinforcing potential abusers' inappropriate feelings towards children. Simply as the Home Role'south own Consultation Paper acknowledged, these justifications were not based on any conclusive scientific inquiry. In other words, the rationale of the police was to address a possible risk of impairment to children.

Certainly risk of harm has been regarded as sufficient elsewhere, for case in the age-based restriction of adult pornography, and indeed motion picture classification in general. But the focus hither has ever been on the producer and distributor of content rather than those possessing information technology. Strict possession offences are intrusive and often draconian in nature, and should just be used when justified by the prevention of credible harm. The problem with respect to this law governing cartoon child pornography is that information technology will in most cases be a victimless crime – the images are not of a real kid suffering abuse.

Instead the police focuses on the morality and character of the epitome – that which depicts a kid, albeit an imaginary one, in an inappropriate context. The difficult question is whether this offers sufficient justification to make possessing such an image a serious criminal offense when the owner has no intent to harm a real child (the product and distribution is a separate matter and raises more serious issues).

Criminalising conduct is generally justified on the basis of preventing harm to others (later on John Stuart Factory), hence why possessing real child abuse images would be a crime every bit they represent documentary show of real damage caused to children. But unless scientific evidence becomes available that establishes that possessing non-photographic images leads to concrete offences, this is difficult to establish. So critics argue that the existent outcome – and even aim – appears to be to police force thoughts and fantasies, rather than protect real children from harm. Naturally this raises bug of privacy and freedom of thought.

The Us tried enacting similar legislation well-nigh xx years ago through the Child Pornography Prevention Deed 1996, but the relevant provisions were somewhen struck downward past the U.s.a. Supreme Court as unconstitutional. The court felt that as in that location was no harm acquired to real children, it merited First Amendment protection. Somewhen further legislation arrived in the form of the PROTECT Act 2003, which was much more narrowly tailored to criminalise not-photographic pornographic images of children, just only if they are indistinguishable from bodily images of a small-scale.

Perhaps the Great britain should have followed a similar path and drafted more specific legislation that makes possession a criminal offence based on the resemblance and likeness of the epitome to a photograph of a real child – something now possible with advances in 3D modelling and graphics software. This would accept provided sufficient justification for the harm argument and, rather than creating a [strict liability possession offence](http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/strict_liability (still the defences available inside the Act), it would have encouraged prosecution simply where there is a realistic prospect of the owner going on to cause real impairment to real children.

Pembaca kami

Jumlah pembaca The Chat sebanyak eighteen juta pengguna setiap bulan, dan melalui Creative Commons republikasi menjangkau 42 juta pembaca.

Mau menulis?

Tulis artikel dan bergabung dengan komunitas akademisi dan peneliti yang terus tumbuh dengan lebih dari 144.000 dari four.339 lembaga.

Daftar sekarang