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offending through variations in the type or severity of the criminal penalty or disposition(Andrews, 1995). For example, Smith, Goggin, and Gendreau (2002) concluded, afteran in-depth review of 111 studies involving 442,000 offenders, of all offense types, that:(1) harsher criminal sanctions do not deter re-offending; (2) prison sentences are relatedto increased re-offending rates; (3) longer prison sentences are associated with high reoffendingrates; and (4) sentences of more than two years result in average increases ofre-offending rate of 7%. The exception may be incapacitation where the communityis protected while offenders are in prison. However, it is expected that the majority ofoffenders in the context of this paper would eventually be released, if incarcerated in thefirst instance” (p. 11). Adler (2001) has gone beyond this to suggest that the legal waragainst pornography has already been lost, and that there is, “the possibility that certainsexual prohibitions invite their own violation by increasing the sexual allure of what theyforbid. I suggest that child pornography law and the eroticization of children exist in adialectic of transgression and taboo: The dramatic expansion of child pornography lawmay have unwittingly heightened pedophilic desire” (Adler, 2001, p. 4). This remains acontentious issue.However, in law offences related to child pornography are not all treated as the same.Akdeniz (2008) referred to this as a ‘chain of liability’. At the top of the chain are thosewho produce abusive images or content, and will be made up of, although not exclusively,those who will have sexually abused the children in the images. Many of these will produceimages within a domestic setting where production is part of a spectrum of abusive practices.As has been previously discussed, this group consists of sexual abusers and sexual exploiterssince the photography is always there to continue to exploit the sexual abuse in someway. The second group that sexually exploit are those who distribute child pornographyover the Internet, either commercially (for financial gain), or non-commercially, where theimages themselves function as a form of currency (Taylor and Quayle, 2003) or possiblyas a means to raise their status in a group or to confirm their allegiance and sense ofbelonging to a group. The final group are those who sexually exploit the child through thepossession of images downloaded from the Internet (or occasionally acquired via mobilephone). This latter group are often considered the least serious of offenders and are likelyto attract a lower sentence. However, Clough (2008) has suggested that, “We have seenthat traditional notions of possession may prove problematic in the digital environment.While actual possession may be difficult to prove, in many cases it is clearly established,often on their own admission, that the defendant did in fact view child pornography. Itmay therefore be argued that rather than being prosecuted for possession, they should beprosecuted for ‘accessing’ child pornography” (p. 233). Clough (2008) goes on to breakaccessing down into three components:1. Displaying/viewing88|Child Pornography and Sexual Exploitation of Children Online