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the genital regions of clothed children (Wortley and Smallbone 2012). Images that do not involve actual
children, such as computer-generated images or adults who appear to be minors, are not considered child
pornography by US courts (Wortley and Smallbone 2006).
Possession and receipt of child pornography, in addition to distribution and production, are federal
crimes. Possession does not require an individual to save or store an image, but simply to view or access
the material. All 50 US states have child pornography laws, though these statutes may differ slightly from
the federal code, particularly in equating viewing child pornography with possession.
Law enforcement and researchers frequently distinguish between contact and non-contact sexual
offenses. As defined by the United States Sentencing Commission’s 2012 report on child pornography,
contact sex offenses are “any illegal sexually abusive, exploitative, or predatory conduct involving actual or
attempted physical contact between the offender and a victim.” Non-contact sex offenses do not involve
actual or attempted physical contact.
Though this report uses the term child pornography, this term may be misleading, as it can be interpreted
to diminish the severity of the crime. To avoid this misrepresentation, certain researchers, media sources,
and law enforcement agencies prefer the terms child abuse material, child exploitation material, or child
abuse images.
Literature
Though researchers agree on the Internet’s vast impact on escalating the availability of child pornography,
it is nevertheless difficult to estimate the size of the problem. Due to the inherent challenges in calculating
the number of offenders downloading online child pornography, there is no agreed upon figure to
underscore the extent of the problem. Estimates to the number of child pornography offenders range from
50,000 to 100,000 pedophiles in organized rings (Jenkins 2001) to 750,000 Internet offenders at any one
time (Maalla 2009). Though most US child pornography offenders engage in distribution for noncommercial
purposes (United States Sentencing Commission 2012), there is a global commercial market.
However, there is little existing research regarding its structure and scope. Speculation to the size of the
commercial child pornography economy ranges from $3 to $20 billion (Bialik 2006), and the Internet
Watch Foundation found that 27 percent of the webpages hosting child pornography in 2012 were on
commercial websites (Internet Watch Foundation 2012).
Much of the existing literature focuses on the characteristics of Internet sex offenders, who tend to be
white, male, and educated (Wolak, Finkelhor, and Mitchell 2011; Wortley and Smallbone 2012). The bulk
of studies are based upon samples of individuals arrested for child pornography offenses, therefore
findings may be somewhat biased and reflect the types of offenders detected or targeted by law
enforcement, rather than a representative sample of all child pornography offenders (Wortley and
Smallbone 2012).
In order to identify variations in offender behavior, researchers have attempted to categorize offenders by
their motives and behavior (Alexy, Burgess, and Baker 2005; Lanning 2010; Merdian et al. 2013b;
Sullivan and Beech 2004). Krone (2004, 4) developed a typology of child pornography offenders with
categories that take into consideration an offender’s intent, engagement in networking, and security
measures (table 9.1). As the typology indicates, involvement can range from a browser, who inadvertently
views material, but intentionally saves it, to groomers, physical abusers, and producers, all of whom
directly abuse children.
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