Minors Charged as Adults for Child Porn of Themselves-Not the Onion

[Blanky]

So if a kid in the bathroom looks at their crotch it is legal, but if they take a picture of it and then delete it right after they were still in possession of child porn?

 

[shabby]

So if a kid in the bathroom looks at their crotch it is legal, but if they take a picture of it and then delete it right after they were still in possession of child porn?

Exactly... and if he emails it to himself that right there is child porn distribution, possibly through multiple states too!

 

[stormkroe]

They should just take advantage of the ridiculous system we're building and tell the judge that they identify themselves as 'over-18-year-olds'.
Checkmate.

 

[woolfe9998]

I did not know that was illegal. In fact, a disturbing amount of porn advertising seems to me to be designed to create that idea.

Yes, and the porn which merely creates the idea, say by having an 18 year old who looks 13 but the character's age is unspecified, is legal. But if somewhere in the dialogue it says the character is supposed to be 17, then it's kiddie porn.

I like the idea of sex offender registries, I just think they are predictably poorly implemented. The idea that some dude who at 18 got caught banging a 16 year old or some girl caught peeing behind the stadium is "elevated" to the level of someone who kidnapped and raped children is satire-level on its own. In my opinion a sex offender registry should be limited to those people most of us believe should never leave prison anyway.

Under the current system, that 18 year old who had sex with his 16 year old girlfriend will have his name made available to neighbors when he moves into a neighborhood. But these same neighbors will not be notified if he had been convicted of residential burglary or even aggravated assault, things you'd think would be far more concerning. I just don't see the point of singling out sex crimes for this kind of treatment. The fact is, if we are deciding a jail sentence has ended, that person has paid his debt. If we don't really think so, then the sentence should have been longer. I see no reason to arbitrarily single out sex crimes to encourage illegal vigilantism. Let's just have longer jail sentences if we think the existing ones are inadequate, for sex crimes or any other crimes. The whole concept of a registry is not a good idea because it only encourages lawless behavior.

 

[realibrad]

Under the current system, that 18 year old who had sex with his 16 year old girlfriend will have his name made available to neighbors when he moves into a neighborhood. But these same neighbors will not be notified if he had been convicted of residential burglary or even aggravated assault, things you'd think would be far more concerning. I just don't see the point of singling out sex crimes for this kind of treatment. The fact is, if we are deciding a jail sentence has ended, that person has paid his debt. If we don't really think so, then the sentence should have been longer. I see no reason to arbitrarily single out sex crimes to encourage illegal vigilantism. Let's just have longer jail sentences if we think the existing ones are inadequate, for sex crimes or any other crimes. The whole concept of a registry is not a good idea because it only encourages lawless behavior.

While I agree with you, the system was set up that way on purpose. Its a feature not a bug that we treat sex crimes unequally. Sex crimes in this nation are considered far worse than most other crime. Further, young sex is considered so horrible that anything to make punishments harsher is a good thing. We do not live in a society that believes in rehabilitation or being able to pay for their crime. If you are 18 and you have sex with a 17yo, then you are a rapist forever.

 

[woolfe9998]

While I agree with you, the system was set up that way on purpose. Its a feature not a bug that we treat sex crimes unequally. Sex crimes in this nation are considered far worse than most other crime. Further, young sex is considered so horrible that anything to make punishments harsher is a good thing. We do not live in a society that believes in rehabilitation or being able to pay for their crime. If you are 18 and you have sex with a 17yo, then you are a rapist forever.

You're just repeating the same arbitrary bias against sex crimes which is the reason for this arbitrary law. Among sex crimes, there are those which are more and less serious. So too with crimes not involving sex. Sex criminals include not only 18 year olds with their 16 year old girlfriends, but park flashers, gropers and peeping toms. Non-sex crimes include murder, mayhem, aggravated assault, and armed robbery, among others. It isn't worse per se because it involves sex. That's our sexual puritanism of the past seeping into our modern laws.

Again, if we want to punish a particular crime more than we already do, we have longer jail sentences for that. We do not need to have the state play a role in encouraging illegal vigilantism just because we get into a tissy about any crime somehow involving sex. It undermines the rule of law.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

You're just repeating the same arbitrary bias against sex crimes which is the reason for this arbitrary law.

I think that's his point.

 

[Jeff7]

They should just take advantage of the ridiculous system we're building and tell the judge that they identify themselves as 'over-18-year-olds'.
Checkmate.

Writing a legal system like we've got is like writing a complex computer program, except without a quick way of debugging it or running the program in advance. It's got to play out in realtime, with no good way of tracing out the big picture that's actually been created.

When common sense is not allowed to be applied (zero tolerance), this is what happens. Laws need to be written more clearly or better defined. That is unless this is the original intention of the law - ensnaring minors this way.

This sort of thing, while it may be necessary, ends up adding to the problem by adding additional complexity. Laws also have a habit of constantly referring to other laws, or they can also rescind other laws. Computer programs like that can be a nightmare to debug.
Just look at how often new patches come out for Windows, or even for much simpler programs. It's complexity beyond what the human mind can properly deal with, and that leads to unintended consequences.

 

[Darwin333]

While I agree with you, the system was set up that way on purpose. Its a feature not a bug that we treat sex crimes unequally. Sex crimes in this nation are considered far worse than most other crime. Further, young sex is considered so horrible that anything to make punishments harsher is a good thing. We do not live in a society that believes in rehabilitation or being able to pay for their crime. If you are 18 and you have sex with a 17yo, then you are a rapist forever.

Throwing out the absurd charges and focusing solely on those that most of us would agree should be on the sex registry, there is compelling evidence that their brains are "wired wrong", that they are sick and will never truly be cured. Considering that, I can potentially agree with the extra scrutiny as a term for their release from jail. Personally, I don't give a fuck what some 40 year old who raped a 13 year old has to go through. It's a social experiment worth trying, imho.

OTOH, the law is WAY to black and white. A guy that just turned 18 years old, who has been having sex with his girlfriend who is 2 years younger for years legally is now all of a sudden a sex offender is completely absurd.

 

[Dannar26]

There is no commonsense. It is all gone.

Sex offender crap needs to go, or be greatly lessened in scope. You can't lump 18 year olds banging their highschool SOs who are a few years younger with violent rapists. And this sexting stuff...really?

There are some women who don't look their age too, but want to play in the big leagues...only to regret it later or their parents go ape shit. I don't see how this is a heinous crime either...certainly not to the level of "sex" offender anyways.

But this is just one of many laws that are so messed up in application. Marijuana possession offenses, child support...hell just about any thing within the realm of "domestic relations" needs to go.

 

[Darwin333]

Writing a legal system like we've got is like writing a complex computer program, except without a quick way of debugging it or running the program in advance. It's got to play out in realtime, with no good way of tracing out the big picture that's actually been created.

This sort of thing, while it may be necessary, ends up adding to the problem by adding additional complexity. Laws also have a habit of constantly referring to other laws, or they can also rescind other laws. Computer programs like that can be a nightmare to debug.
Just look at how often new patches come out for Windows, or even for much simpler programs. It's complexity beyond what the human mind can properly deal with, and that leads to unintended consequences.

This is why we have something that judges and prosecutors will NEVER tell a jury they are capable of doing called jury nullification. The public at large needs to be made aware of this but the government is highly invested in throwing people in jail so they will never, ever, even mention it.

Judges tell juries that the only thing that they are deciding is if a law was broken and that is factually untrue. A jury has the ability and imho the responsibility to use the perfectly legal act, and indeed one of the reasons for jury trials, of jury nullification if the charge is bullshit or the punishment doesn't fit the crime. Unfortunately her in the good ole USA the punishment for petty crimes, along with other BS charges being piled on, is often so high that prosecutors more often than not strong arm defendants into taking plea deals regardless of their innocence.

If you are an innocent man and a prosecutor tells you that you can take a year in the pokey, be out in 4-6 months, OR he is going for the maximum of 30 years a hell of a lot of innocent people take the deal. This is true 10 fold for the poor and lower middle class who can't afford a decent defense.

Our "Just Us" system in the United States is currently very broken and in need of some serious fixin. Of course it won't though because anyone who takes that on as a policy will be labeled soft on crime. Just look at how prosecutors are elected (in states that elect them), they flaunt their conviction rate which is a rather meaningless stat because if they put 20 innocent people in jail that stat says they are doing a better job. All the while our justice system was built on the foundation that it is better to let 10 guilty men go free than to have 1 innocent man falsely imprisoned.

 

[Jeff7]

This is why we have something that judges and prosecutors will NEVER tell a jury they are capable of doing called jury nullification. The public at large needs to be made aware of this but the government is highly invested in throwing people in jail so they will never, ever, even mention it.

Judges tell juries that the only thing that they are deciding is if a law was broken and that is factually untrue. A jury has the ability and imho the responsibility to use the perfectly legal act, and indeed one of the reasons for jury trials, of jury nullification if the charge is bullshit or the punishment doesn't fit the crime. Unfortunately her in the good ole USA the punishment for petty crimes, along with other BS charges being piled on, is often so high that prosecutors more often than not strong arm defendants into taking plea deals regardless of their innocence.

If you are an innocent man and a prosecutor tells you that you can take a year in the pokey, be out in 4-6 months, OR he is going for the maximum of 30 years a hell of a lot of innocent people take the deal. This is true 10 fold for the poor and lower middle class who can't afford a decent defense.

Yes, the beloved plea bargain.
If you're not wealthy, you take the plea bargain so you can go back to work sooner to maintain income if you've got a family to take care of.

Our "Just Us" system in the United States is currently very broken and in need of some serious fixin. Of course it won't though because anyone who takes that on as a policy will be labeled soft on crime. Just look at how prosecutors are elected (in states that elect them), they flaunt their conviction rate which is a rather meaningless stat because if they put 20 innocent people in jail that stat says they are doing a better job. All the while our justice system was built on the foundation that it is better to let 10 guilty men go free than to have 1 innocent man falsely imprisoned.

And the system is tuned more to punish people, or use it as a form of revenge or retribution, rather than truly rehabilitate and turn them into productive members of society. Our prisoner count and recidivism rate are embarrassing.

That cited mentality of "If you're on trial, you must have done something wrong" is more than a little scary. History has shown us societies where a simple accusation automatically leads to a sentence. It's not pretty. I also have a feeling that quite a few people would rather send a larger number of innocent people to jail if it meant keeping more guilty ones there as well. They're filled with the pervasive and short-sighted "Well it won't ever happen to me" mentality.

 

[Sunburn74]

So basically a 16 year old has no right to take a photo of his genitals at any point and share them with any individual under pretty much any circumstance?