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Implementation
a written communication, that ‘a complete palette of strategies to combat child pornography
will significantly increase the overall effectiveness. The experiences gained from the Amsterdam
sexual abuse case as well as the development of intervention strategies provide a valuable
contribution to the further improvement of the process of tackling child pornography and of the
associated barrier model.’ 869
Focus
The number of child pornography cases that involve possession with no concrete evidence of abuse 870
is so great that the police cannot act on all of them. 871 The current shift of focus of the police, the Public
Prosecution Service and the Ministry of Security and Justice involves these parties using a victim-oriented
approach to place a focus on perpetrators of child pornography offenses with a high risk of hands-on
abuse, as well as upon identifying victims. 872 However, the problem of the sheer number of hands-off
viewers will continue to exist for as long as the material remains so easy to obtain and distribute via the
Internet, see §1.4.1.2. 873 Besides this, the government cannot keep an eye on all movements on the Internet,
and for this reason, other parties have been assigned to detect instances of abuse. Finally, research
reveals that there is sometimes a lack of digital knowledge and experience within the government. 874
The focus of public-private sector partnerships needs to be complementary to the focus of the police, the
Public Prosecution Service and the Ministry of Security and Justice, in addition to providing an answer
to the problem outlined above.
Public-private sector partnerships could therefore focus more emphatically on the accessibility of (old)
material in open Internet environments. The literature considers reducing the accessibility, as a type of
situational prevention, which may be able to reduce the number of perpetrators of child pornography
offenses. 875 It could be discussed whether the government would be able to assume a facilitating role
in this – as the example of PhotoDNA demonstrates – by providing the private sector and NGOs with
the hash codes of known material, for example, with the intention of removing this known material.
In so far as offenders, victims and new material are concerned (usually from less easily-accessible
Internet environments, see §1.4.1.2), the NGOs, companies and the Internet community could fulfil a
supporting role for the purpose of criminal detection by actively identifying, registering and reporting
the existence of such material. Various social networking sites (SNSs) in the Netherlands have already
formulated safety policies and appointed individuals – community managers – to implement this
policy, whereby abuse is reported to the police. Finally, private parties, NGOs, the scientific domain
and the Internet community can contribute to the improvement of knowledge and the provision of
(technological) resources to organisations with or without a public responsibility, such as the police,
869 Programme of Improvements in Tackling <strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong>, 2011, p.24.
870 These usually relate to cases that only involve low-value evidence such as IP-addresses, see Liberatore
et al, 2010 and §3.4.
871 See §3.4.
872 Alternative means of settlement (whether or not pertaining to criminal law) probably ensue for other
perpetrators of child pornography, see §3.5.1.
873 Taylor & Quayle, 2006. In addition to this, victims of child pornography suffer harm as a result of the
permanent existence of the images, see §3.7 and Von Weiler et al., 2010.
874 Stol, 2010.
875 Taylor & Quayle, 2006, pp.175-176.
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