A must-read case for forensic psychologists
"C.R." grew up in a chaotic, highly conflictual home. He was immature, socially klutzy, anxious and depressed. Friends introduced him to online pornography, readily accessible for free via peer-to-peer file sharing. He took to smoking marijuana and escaping into sexual fantasy. Between the ages of 15 and 19, he downloaded pornography, much of it involving boys ages 10-12, and shared files with other users.
When he was 19 years old, the FBI ensnared him in a sting and the world came crashing down. Under federal law, “C.R.” faced a statutory minimum of five years in prison.
Until Judge Jack B. Weinstein intervened, ruling that the 5-year minimum is unconstitutional in C.R.’s case, due to the youth’s age and immaturity.
The ruling is part of a crusade by Weinstein, one of the United States' most accomplished and respected jurists, against what he calls “the unnecessary cruelty of the law.” Previously, the 89-year-old federal judge in the Eastern District of New York led a similar campaign against rigid drug sentencing.
Weinstein’s 401-page tome in United States v. C.R. should be on the required reading list of every forensic psychologist, tackling as it does many of the front-burner issues and controversies currently facing the field:
- Adolescent brain development and immaturity
- Risk for hands-on offending among pornography offenders
- The misuse of risk assessment instruments (including the circular reasoning involved in assigning an offender to the “high risk” group on the Static-99)
- The bogus disorder of “hebephilia” that you've heard about here
- Morality and prejudice masquerading as science
Ultimately, the judge still imposed a prison sentence, but cut it in half to 30 months. A longer term "lacks any legitimate penological justification" and violates the 8th Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual punishment, he wrote:
This case illustrates some of the troubling problems in sentencing adolescents who download child pornography on a file-sharing computer service. Posed is the question: To protect the public and the abused children who are shown in a sexually explicit manner in computer images, do we need to destroy defendants like C.R.? ... C.R. should be prepared to assume a useful law-abiding life rather than one of a broken and dangerous, ex-prisoner deviant. Were it not for Congress‘s strongly expressed preference for incarceration in these cases, the court would have imposed a long term of supervised release with medical treatment outside of prison.
This is not Weinstein's first foray into the thicket of child pornography sentencing. Last year, he vacated the conviction of Pietro Polizzi on the grounds that the jury had a right to know what punishment a guilty verdict would produce. Several jurors told the judge they might not have convicted the married father of five had they known he would have gone to prison for at least five years.
"I don’t approve of child pornography, obviously,” Judge Weinstein told the New York Times at the time. But he also said he did not believe that those who merely view images, as opposed to producing or selling them, present a significant threat to children. “We’re destroying lives unnecessarily. At the most, they should be receiving treatment and supervision.”
Although Weinstein is more outspoken than some, an increasing number of judges are balking at giving pornography viewers longer prison terms than actual child molesters and rapists often get. “Across the country, an increasing number of federal judges [are] criticizing changes to sentencing laws that have effectively quadrupled their average prison term over the last decade,” noted the Times report.
In his erudite, data-rich dissection of pornography and risk, Weinstein cites everyone from Malcolm Gladwell to Alex Kotlowitz (long one of my favorite authors) and Laurence Steinberg, and to our very own forensic psychology colleagues John Monahan, Jennifer Skeem, and Charles Patrick Ewing (whose newest book is another must-read).
Weinstein, by the way, has had a fascinating and colorful career. He put himself through Brooklyn College by working on the docks in New York Harbor before forging multiple and overlapping careers as a teacher, lawyer, and public servant. Back in his early days of lawyering, he helped the NAACP with the landmark desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education. As a jurist, he’s handled many of the biggest mass tort cases in the United States, involving Agent Orange, asbestos, tobacco, breast implants, DES, Zyprexa, and handguns. More on Judge Weinstein’s interesting life and career is HERE.
I have made the case of United States v. C.R. available for download HERE. Again, I recommend that you read it for yourself. It's a great primer, packed full of useful information and references -- many of them available online.
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The Department of Justice has also pointed to a study at a federal prison that found that 85 percent of inmates convicted of child pornography possession who took part in therapy sessions later admitted to having sexual contact with children. Before they were sentenced, 74 percent of the 155 men who took part in the study indicated they had no history of contact with children . . . “I’m very cautious when I hear people use the term child pornography offender with this underlying assumption that they haven’t done anything else," said Michael Bourke, a psychologist who conducted the study and published its findings in 2009.
First, is this study correct, that most inmates sentenced for possession of pornography have a history, or is this a media twist to make it sound like something more extreme than fact?
Second, should it be automatically assumed that possession of child pornography equates to or is associated with child abuse as defined according to SVP standards for those who have actually engaged in illegal sexual activity?
Gertner, who now teaches law at Harvard University, said the Sentencing Commission has long sought to strike a balance between sentences that are both tough but also appropriate . . . But the involvement of policymakers inflamed by public opinion has only swayed the guidelines to the point they are out of proportion with the underlying crime, said Gertner, who has issued sentences ranging from 48 months in prison to 60 months. She also sentenced two men convicted of trafficking children to 300 months in prison.
How can an appropriate balance come about regarding an emotional issue such as possession of child pornography or an SVP crime? The reason such punishments and/or sentences are extreme is due to emotional stances instead of rational ones. I am not saying that people shouldn't be upset--crimes of this nature can be and are quite serious--but allowing emotions to reign will only create a bigger mess. This proves it. Luckily, many judges are now speaking up about it.
Here is the entire article for those interested in reading it:
Judges Straying from Sentencing Guidelines for Child Pornography
By the way, does science support the assertion that viewing pornography actually leads to correlative behavior and/or SV crimes? The fact that many inmates guilty of porn possession have no criminal history would suggest this is not the case.
That study sounds dubious. Remember that federal courts tend to go after the most serious offenders who trade in very high volumes of bad stuff. This kind of person would be substantially more prone to harm a child than a guy in a state prison who got caught looking at something illegal. The average offender, like the young man in this article, are probably not the same breed. I am also a little skeptical of any federal study because the feds are corrupt and they customize studies to justify prosecutorial blood-thirst. There is no argument that people who look at child porn are sleazy and disgusting, but a lot of young men become addicted to porn which spirals out of control. They are compelled to look at increasingly hard core materials to get the same high. It is ultimately an addiction problem.
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