November 2003
Executive Summary
The Internet1 and computers have come to play a growing role in sex crimes that are committed against children and youth.2 Since the mid-1990s these developing technologies have posed challenges for law enforcement requiring them to confront situations not anticipated in criminal statutes, master technical advances, develop new investigative techniques, and handle criminal cases that often span multiple jurisdictions. To assist, legislators have acted on a number of fronts creating new statutes that encompass Internet offenses, stiffening penalties, and creating a national clearinghouse for reports of Internet-related crimes against children and the CyberTipline® operated by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. In addition the federal government has increased funding in this area creating Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces to support state and local law enforcement and specialized Internet, child-exploitation units in federal, law-enforcement agencies.
Unfortunately the results of these initiatives are difficult to track. Criminaljustice authorities do not collect information specifically about Internet-related crimes. The National Juvenile Online Victimization (N-JOV) Study was undertaken to get a sense of the scope and types of law-enforcement activity in this area and serve as a baseline for monitoring the growth of Internet sex crimes against minors and related law-enforcement activities.
These are some of the important findings of the N-JOV Study about law enforcement activity.
.....: Law enforcement at all levels made an estimated 2,577 arrests during the 12 months starting July 1, 2000, for Internet sex crimes against minors
.....: These Internet sex crimes against minors can be categorized in three mutually exclusive types
• Internet Crimes Against Identified Victims involving Internet-related sexual assaults and other sex crimes such as the production of child pornography 3 committed against identified victims (39% of arrests)
• Internet Solicitations to Undercover Law Enforcement posing as minors that involved no identified victims (25% of arrests)
• The possession, distribution, or trading of Internet Child Pornography by offenders who did not use the Internet to sexually exploit identified victims or solicit undercover investigators (36% of arrests)
Two-thirds (67%) of offenders who committed any of the types of Internet sex crimes against minors possessed child pornography
• 83% of these possessors had images of children between the ages of 6 and 12
• 80% had images explicitly showing sexual penetration of minors
....: The vast majority of offenders were non-Hispanic White males older than 25 who were acting alone
....: Most investigations (79%) involved more than one law-enforcement agency
....: State, county, and local agencies were involved in 85% of all cases and federal agencies in 46%
....: It appears there are fewer dismissals and acquittals for Internet sex crimes against minors than for conventional child-sexual-abuse prosecutions
Introduction
As Internet use has become widespread, questions have emerged about how often sexual offenders are using the Internet to commit crimes involving child sexual exploitation and child pornography. These types of Internet sex crimes against minors have caused concern among parents, law-enforcement agencies, lawmakers, educators, and other child advocates and become a factor in the debate over Internet regulation. Media reports about them have proliferated; however, media reports may produce a skewed picture of the characteristics of these crimes and overall numbers of arrests.
Because Internet sex crimes against minors are a recent phenomenon, data about them have not been gathered in a national study. The N-JOV Study is the first national research to systematically collect data about the number and characteristics of arrests for Internet sex crimes against minors. The N-JOV Study had the three goals of
.....: Estimating a baseline number of arrests during a one-year period so that the growth of these cases in the criminal-justice system can be measured in the future
....: Providing a statistical portrait of the characteristics of Internet sex crimes against minors and description of how they are handled within the criminaljustice system
.....: Organizing the variety of cases into a typology useful for tracking and analysis This bulletin is the first publication of findings from the N-JOV Study. It discusses arrest estimates and gives an overview of the types of crimes, characteristics of offenders, and how ..more.. by Janis Wolak, Kimberly Mitchell, and David Finkelhor, Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire
Store the following for further research
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Online Threats to Youth: Solicitation, Harassment, and Problematic Content
by Andrew Schrock and Danah Boyd, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard University
The Internet and Family and Acquaintance Sexual Abuse. Child Maltreatment
by Kimberly J. Mitchell, David Finkelhor, Janis Wolak, University of New Hampshire
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