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Introduction

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The Rise of Extreme Porn

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Abstract

This chapter sets the scene with an introductory discussion of the stated justifications underlying the introduction of the extreme pornography offence (Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, s 63). It engages with the philosophical question of where the boundaries of state intervention should be delineated and discusses previous research undertaken into the criminal offence in question. In addition, this chapter outlines the aims of the research undertaken and explains the research methods adopted.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    L Edwards, J Rauhofer and M Yar, ‘Recent developments in UK cybercrime law’ in Y Jewkes and M Yar (eds), Handbook of Internet Crime (Willan Publishing, Devon: 2010) 417.

  2. 2.

    Obscene Publications Act 1959 (OPA 1959).

  3. 3.

    Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981.

  4. 4.

    R v Gibson (1990) Cr App R 341.

  5. 5.

    Customs Consolidations Act 1876, A Table of Prohibition and Restrictions Inwards; HM Customs and Excise, Volume C4: Import prohibitions and restrictions, Part 34: Indecent or obscene material, Appendix F; Broadcasting Act 1990, s 162 and Sch 15; Cinemas Act 1985, Sch 2, para 6; Video Recordings Act 1984, ss 2 and 4A; Communications Act 2003, s 3 and s 319. In addition, the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, Sch 3 gives local authorities the power to control ‘sex establishments’ (meaning a sex cinema or a sex shop), including the power to exclude such businesses from certain areas.

  6. 6.

    J Rowbottom, ‘Obscenity laws and the Internet: Targeting the supply and demand’ [2006] (February) Crim LR 97, 98.

  7. 7.

    Edwards et al. (n 1) 417.

  8. 8.

    M Taylor and E Quayle, Child Pornography: An Internet Crime (Brunner-Routledge, Hove: 2003) 2.

  9. 9.

    Protection of Children Act 1978 (PCA 1978), s 1.

  10. 10.

    Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, s 84(3)(c): Pseudo-photograph means an image, whether made by computer graphics or otherwise howsoever, which appears to be a photograph.

  11. 11.

    PCA 1978, s 7(8).

  12. 12.

    D Howitt and K Sheldon, Sex Offenders and the Internet (Wiley, Chichester: 2007) 78; Y Akdeniz, Internet Child Pornography and the Law: National and International Responses (Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Aldershot: 2008) 22.

  13. 13.

    Criminal Justice Act 1988, s 160.

  14. 14.

    R v Coutts [2005] EWCA Crim 52, [94].

  15. 15.

    Home Office, Consultation: On the Possession of the Extreme Pornographic Material (Home Office Communications Directorate, London: 2005) [34].

  16. 16.

    Rowbottom (n 6) 101.

  17. 17.

    Home Office, Consultation (n 15) [35].

  18. 18.

    Home Office, Press Release (30 August 2006), ‘New Offence to Crack Down on Violent and Extreme Pornography’, http://www.cjp.org.uk/news/archive/new-offence-to-crack-down-on-violent-and-extreme-pornography-30-08-2006/, accessed 10 September 2013.

  19. 19.

    In 2015, 3,494 reports of alleged ‘criminally obscene adult content’ were made to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which works within the UK to minimise the availability of sexual abuse content online. Criminally obscene adult content is defined by the IWF as ‘images and videos that show extreme sexual activity that is criminal in the UK’. According to the IWF, ‘almost all’ of these 3,494 reports were not hosted in the UK and therefore fell outside their remit. Interestingly, none of them were assessed by IWF analysts as criminally obscene and hosted in the UK. In 2014, only 9 out of 3,016 reports of such content were assessed as criminally obscene and hosted in the UK; see Internet Watch Foundation, Annual Report 2015 (IWF, Cambridge: 2015) 16 and Internet Watch Foundation, Annual Report 2014 (IWF, Cambridge: 2015) 16.

  20. 20.

    Home Office, Consultation (n 15) [55].

  21. 21.

    M Stuligrosz, Violent and Extreme Pornography, Doc 12719 (Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly, Strasbourg: 2011) [67].

  22. 22.

    Ibid [68].

  23. 23.

    Ibid [69].

  24. 24.

    Ibid.

  25. 25.

    Ibid.

  26. 26.

    Recommendation 1981 (2011); Assembly debate on 5 October 2011 (32nd and 33rd Sittings) (see Doc 12719, report of the Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men).

  27. 27.

    Resolution 2001 (2014); Assembly debate on 24 June 2014 (22nd Sitting) (see Doc 13509, report of the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media and Doc 13536, opinion of the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development).

  28. 28.

    CJIA 2008, s 63(1).

  29. 29.

    Scotland introduced analogous but wider provisions in the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, s 42. Their main differences from the English and Welsh law are discussed in Chapter 5.

  30. 30.

    CJIA 2008, s 63(2) and 63(3).

  31. 31.

    CJIA 2008, s 63(6)(b).

  32. 32.

    CJIA 2008, s 63(7).

  33. 33.

    Ibid.

  34. 34.

    CJIA 2008, s 63(7A) inserted by the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, s 37; the CJIA 2008 extends to England, Wales and Northern Ireland but the amendments made to it by s 37 do not affect the law as it applies in Northern Ireland.

  35. 35.

    Home Office, Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution (Cmd 2471, 1987) 9–10; the Report recommended that prostitution should be viewed as a matter of private morality (except when it causes public nuisance) and that homosexual acts between consenting adults in private should be removed from the control of criminal law.

  36. 36.

    JS Mill, On Liberty (The Floating Press, Auckland: 2009 [1859]) 18.

  37. 37.

    P Devlin, The Enforcement of Morals (OUP, Oxford: 1965) 13.

  38. 38.

    Ibid 17.

  39. 39.

    Shaw v DPP [1962] AC 220 (discussed in Chapter 2).

  40. 40.

    Ibid 267; see also Knuller v DPP [1973] AC 435, where the defendants were prosecuted for having published in a magazine advertisements inviting readers to contact advertisers for homosexual purposes. The House of Lords held that the offence of conspiracy to corrupt public morals could be committed by encouraging conduct which, though not in itself unlawful, might be calculated to result in such corruption; see in particular Knuller (n 40) 457 (Lord Reid).

  41. 41.

    PJ Fitzgerald, Criminal Law and Punishment (Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1962) 78–81.

  42. 42.

    LA Hart, Law, Liberty and Morality (OUP, Oxford: 1963).

  43. 43.

    W Wilson, Central Issues in Criminal Theory (Hart Publishing, Oxford: 2002) 20.

  44. 44.

    J Feinberg, The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law: Offense to Others (OUP, Oxford: 1985) 1.

  45. 45.

    Ibid.

  46. 46.

    Ibid 26.

  47. 47.

    Feinberg (n 44) 26, 142; see also DJ Baker, The Right Not to Be Criminalised: Demarcating Criminal Law’s Authority (Ashgate Publishing, Surrey: 2011) 199.

  48. 48.

    Feinberg (n 44) 142.

  49. 49.

    Backlash, ‘Extreme Pornography proposals: Ill-conceived and wrong’ in C McGlynn, E Rackley and N Westmarland (eds), Positions on the Politics of Porn: A debate on government plans to criminalise the possession of extreme pornography (Durham University, Durham: 2007) 11; Backlash was created in 2005 by the Libertarian Alliance, the Spanner Trust, the Sexual Freedom Coalition, Feminists against Censorship, Ofwatch and Unfettered to collate evidence for an informed debate on censorship and ‘fight plans to criminalise ownership of material the Home Office finds abhorrent’; McGlynn et al., Positions on the Politics of Porn (n 49) 9 fn 3.

  50. 50.

    E Wilkinson, ‘Perverting visual pleasure: Representing sadomasochism’ (2009) 12(2) Sexualities 181, 193.

  51. 51.

    See also D Pereira, ‘Pleasure politicised: The relevance of morality in the regulation of extreme pornography’ (2011) Bristol Law Journal 102, 111.

  52. 52.

    N Strossen, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex and the Fight for Women’s Rights (New York University Press, New York: 2000) 20–1.

  53. 53.

    R Dworkin, ‘Is there a right to pornography?’ (1981) 1 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 177, 194.

  54. 54.

    Ibid.

  55. 55.

    R Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA: 1985) 354.

  56. 56.

    R Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA: 1977) 327.

  57. 57.

    R Dworkin, Freedom’s Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution (OUP, Oxford: 1996) 238; for a criticism of this position, see J Raz, The Morality of Freedom (OUP, Oxford: 1986).

  58. 58.

    Dworkin (n 57) 258.

  59. 59.

    R Dworkin, ‘Lord Devlin and the enforcement of morals’ in R Wasserstrom (ed), Morality and the Law (Wadsworth, Belmont, CA: 1971) 72.

  60. 60.

    MC Nussbaum, Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, Shame and the Law (Princeton University Press, Oxfordshire: 2004) 14.

  61. 61.

    Ibid 102.

  62. 62.

    Ibid 14.

  63. 63.

    See MC Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice (OUP, Oxford: 2000) 213–15 who suggests reconsidering the concept of objectification.

  64. 64.

    The Committee was chaired by Bernard Williams. The Report was commissioned by a Labour Government and was considered ‘unacceptably liberal’ by the incoming Tories; J Petley, Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh: 2011) 131. Its recommendations were only partially implemented in the Indecent Displays (Control) Act 1981, the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 and the Cinematograph (Amendment) Act 1982.

  65. 65.

    C MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA: 1988) 140, 148, 156, 175-77, 200-1.

  66. 66.

    G Robertson, Freedom, the Individual and the Law (7th ed, Penguin, London: 1993) 233-4; R v Butler [1992] 1 SCR 452.

  67. 67.

    DEH Russell, Dangerous Relationships: Pornography, Misogyny and Rape (Sage, London: 1998) 155.

  68. 68.

    D Linz and N Malamuth, Pornography (Sage, Newbury Park, CA: 1993) 28-49.

  69. 69.

    D Cornell, The Imaginary Domain: Abortion, Pornography and Sexual Harassment (Routledge, London: 1995) 95, 99.

  70. 70.

    P Jenkins, Child Pornography on the Internet (New York University Press, New York/London: 2001); T Taylor and E Quayle, Child Pornography: An Internet Crime (Brunner-Routledge, Hove: 2003); Akdeniz (n 12); A Gillespie, Child Pornography: Law and Policy (Routledge, Oxon: 2011).

  71. 71.

    C McGlynn, ‘Marginalizing feminism? Debating extreme pornography laws in public and policy discourse’ in K Boyle (ed), Everyday Pornography (Routledge: 2010) 190-202.

  72. 72.

    C McGlynn and E Rackley, ‘Striking a balance: Arguments for the criminal regulation of extreme pornography’ (2007) (Sep) Crim LR 677, 688.

  73. 73.

    C McGlynn and E Rackley, ‘Criminalising extreme pornography: A lost opportunity’ (2009) 4 Crim LR 245, 259.

  74. 74.

    Ibid 249.

  75. 75.

    A Carline, ‘Criminal justice, extreme pornography and prostitution: Protecting women or protecting morality?’ (2011) 14(3) Sexualities 312, 330.

  76. 76.

    LH Leigh, ‘Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008: Extreme Pornography’ (2008) 172(46) JPN 752, 755.

  77. 77.

    AD Murray, ‘The reclassification of extreme pornographic images’ (2009) 72(1) MLR 73.

  78. 78.

    S Foster, ‘Possession of extreme pornographic images, public protection and human rights’ (2010) 15(1) Coventry Law Journal 21, 27.

  79. 79.

    F Attwood and C Smith, ‘Extreme concern: Regulating “dangerous pictures” in the United Kingdom’ (2010) 37(1) Journal of Law and Society 171, 188.

  80. 80.

    C McGlynn and I Ward, ‘Pornography, pragmatism, and proscription’ (2009) 36(3) Journal of Law and Society 327.

  81. 81.

    Ibid 335.

  82. 82.

    S Easton, ‘Criminalising the possession of extreme pornography: Sword or shield’ (2011) 75(5) Journal of Criminal Law 391, 397.

  83. 83.

    Ibid 413.

  84. 84.

    F Attwood, V Campbell, IQ Hunter and S Lockyer (eds), Controversial Images: Media Representations on the Edge (Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire: 2013).

  85. 85.

    J Kennedy and C Smith, ‘His soul shatters at about 0:23: Spankwire, self-scaring and hyperbolic shock’ in Attwood et al. (n 84) ch 14.

  86. 86.

    Easton (n 82) 412; the author asserted in her 2011 article that the ‘fears of numerous over-zealous prosecutions [were] misplaced’.

  87. 87.

    R v Walsh (Kingston Crown Court, 8 August 2012, unreported). The authors draw on public tweets and press reports, but simultaneously acknowledge that these sources of information should be treated with great caution. They conclude that the law on extreme pornography is ‘misunderstood’ and in Walsh’s case ‘misused’; see E Rackley and C McGlynn, ‘Prosecuting the possession of extreme pornography: A misunderstood and mis-used law’ (2013) 5 Crim LR 400, 400.

  88. 88.

    T Judd, ‘Extreme porn acquittal puts prosecutors in the dock’ The Independent (London 10 August 2012) 16; N Cohen, ‘Simon Walsh: The vindictive persecution of an innocent man’ The Observer (London 12 August 2012) 35: In a sexual context, ‘urethral sounding’ involves ‘the insertion of surgical rods into the penis’. Urethral sounds are ‘slightly conical instruments for exploring and dilating a constricted urethra’; KL Moore, AF Dalley and AMR Agur, Clinically Oriented Anatomy (7th ed, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia, PA: 2013) 425.

  89. 89.

    Home Office, Consultation (n 15) [1].

  90. 90.

    Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Prosecution Policy and Guidance, Extreme Pornography, http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/d_to_g/extreme_pornography/, accessed 7 June 2013.

  91. 91.

    Home Office, Consultation (n 15) [49].

  92. 92.

    CPS Prosecution Policy and Guidance, Extreme Pornography (n 90).

  93. 93.

    Jenkins (n 70); Taylor and Quayle (n 70), Akdeniz (n 12) and Gillespie (n 70); see also T Buck, International Child Law (2nd ed, Routledge, Oxon: 2011).

  94. 94.

    This claim is substantiated in Chapter 6.

  95. 95.

    C McGlynn and E Rackley, ‘Striking a balance’ (n 72) 680.

  96. 96.

    As it will be discussed later, the Home Office initially proposed restricting the offence to explicit pornography containing actual scenes or realistic depictions of necrophilia, bestiality, ‘serious sexual violence’ and ‘serious violence in a sexual context’; Home Office, Consultation (n 15) [39].

  97. 97.

    Home Office, Consultation on the Possession of the Extreme Pornographic Material: Summary of Responses and Next Steps (Home Office Communications Directorate, London: 2006) 4.

  98. 98.

    CJIA 2008, s 63(6)(b).

  99. 99.

    Ministry of Justice Circular 2009/01, Possession of extreme pornographic images and increase in the maximum sentence for offences under the Obscene Publications Act 1959: Implementation of section 63–67 and section 71 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 (Criminal Law Policy Unit, London: 2009) [13].

  100. 100.

    CPS Prosecution Policy and Guidance, Obscene Publications, http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/l_to_o/obscene_publications/#a05, accessed 7 June 2013.

  101. 101.

    CJIA 2008, s 63(7)(a); or ‘results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals’ according to CJIA 2008, s 63(7)(b).

  102. 102.

    CPS Prosecution Policy and Guidance, Obscene Publications (n 101).

  103. 103.

    LB Nielsen, ‘The need for multi-method approaches in empirical legal research’ in P Cane and H Kritzer (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Empirical Legal Research (OUP, Oxford: 2010) 952.

  104. 104.

    C Greer and E McLaughlin, ‘Trial by media: Policing, the 24-7 news mediasphere, and the politics of outrage’ (2011) 15(1) Theoretical Criminology 23.

  105. 105.

    The specific criteria according to which the news articles and case files were identified as relevant to the study are discussed in Chapters 4 and 7, respectively.

  106. 106.

    Sometimes also referred to as qualitative content analysis; DL Altheide, Qualitative Media Analysis, Qualitative Research Methods Series 38 (Sage, London: 1996).

  107. 107.

    DL Altheide, ‘Ethnographic content analysis’ (1987) 10(1) Qualitative Sociology 65; Ibid 2.

  108. 108.

    Altheide, Qualitative Media Analysis (n 107).

  109. 109.

    Ibid 16.

  110. 110.

    C Greer and E McLaughlin, ‘“Trial by media”: Riots, looting, gangs and mediatised police chiefs’ in J Peay and T Newburn (eds), Policing, Politics, Culture and Control: Essays in Honour of Robert Reiner (Hart Publishing, Oxford: 2012).

  111. 111.

    Rose Court, 2 Southwark Bridge, London SE1 9H.

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  1. School of Law and Criminology, University of West London, London, United Kingdom

    Alexandros K. Antoniou

  2. Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, United Kingdom

    Dimitris Akrivos

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Antoniou, A.K., Akrivos, D. (2017). Introduction. In: The Rise of Extreme Porn. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48971-1_1

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