Week 10 RF-IIOC Flashcards
What are the key features of internet offending and indecent images of children (IIOC)?
-There is no regulatory body to ‘police’ the internet (Bainbridge & Berry, 2011).
-Control of the enormous amount of available content is limited (Beech et al., 2008).
-Global usage of the internet recently topped 4 billion users in 2017, which is over 50% of the worlds population (Internet World Stats, 2017).
-Almost exclusively a male problem by in large with the rarity of women at times
What does the Internet provide?
-Provides Accessibility, Affordability & Anonymity – ‘Triple A Engine’ (Cooper 2002).
-Allows individuals to engage with others who share the same pro-offending attitudes and enables easy access to IIOC (Quayle & Taylor, 2002).
Provide some Internet Statistics
-Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average (Internet Live Stats, 2017).
-This translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide.
-In just 60 seconds, 28,258 internet users are viewing pornography (Internet Filter Review, 2006).
-Approximately 20% of all internet pornography is child sexual abuse (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 2013).
-One ISP reported blocking more than 20,000 attempts to access IIOC on the internet in one day (Quayle, 2010).
-The trade in IIOC is argued to be between a £2 (Ropelato, 2006) and £13 billion (Bourke & Hernandez, 2009) industry annually.
What are a number of key questions for trying to understand offending behaviour?
-There is a considerable body of academic research that has looked at offenders convicted of IIOC offences.
Key questions:
-How do offenders use IIOC within their offending?
-How prevalent are contact sexual abusers within IIOC offending population?
-What are the key features of IIOC & dual offending?
-Dual offenders are both contact and viewers of IIOC
What are 3 prevailing ideas regarding the reasoning of use of IIOC?
- Diverts from contact abuse: ‘compensatory’ model
-Use of IIOC acts as a diversion to contact offending (Riegel, 2004).
-This model suggests that viewing and reaching arousal to IIOC enables offenders to use this as a means to inhibit the urge to act upon fantasies (Babchishin et al., 2011).
-However, this model has little empirical support. - Encourages contact abuse: ‘facilitation’ model
-IIOC facilitates the ‘spiral of sexual abuse’.
-Offenders begin with lower-level images and progress through the levels from grooming/inciting/producing to the contact sexual abuse of a child (Sullivan, 2002).
-Little research on this - In occurrence alongside contact abuse: ‘concurrent’ model
-IIOC is used as part of an already established paraphilic lifestyle (Bourke & Hernandez, 2009).
-Individuals use IIOC to justify their paedophilic interests (i.e. if it exists it must be ok to view) rather than them becoming a paedophile because they have viewed IIOC (Sheenan & Sullivan, 2010).
-Has the most research in this area
What proportion of IIOC offenders are also committing contact sexual offences (or have previously)?
A meta-analysis that considers a wide range of research suggests that contact sexual offending against children among IIOC offenders ranges from:
-As low as 5% (Seto & Eke, 2008);
-55% when using self-report data;
-To as high as 84.5% - but this is considered a statistical outlier (Bourke & Hernandez, 2009);
-Research conducted as part of the FIIP & FIIP 2 projects suggests a best guess of 1 in 6.
Source: (Seto, Hanson & Babchishin, 2011).
What are the levels of indecent images?
L1: Images of erotic posing, with no sexual activity;
L2: Non-penetrative sexual activities between children, or solo masturbation by a child;
L3: Non-penetrative sexual activity between adults and children;
L4: Penetrative sexual activity involving a child or children, or both children and adults;
L5: Sadism or involving the penetration of, or by, an animal.
What 3 factors have been found to differentiate between offenders according to risk (IIOC vs dual)?
- Previous behaviour:
- Is an indicator of future behaviour;
- Anti-social tendencies;
- Previous criminal history (not just sexual offences). - Access to children:
- Greater opportunity for contact offending. - Behavioural facilitators :
- Engaging in risky behaviours.
IIOC Risk Prioritisation: What is Operation Ore?
-Commenced in 1999 and was the UK’s biggest ever computer crime investigation of its time.
-Referrals sent to the UK from the US containing details of individuals who had paid for access to IIOC online using credit cards.
-Leading to 7,250 suspects identified, 4,283 homes searched, 3,744 arrests, 1,848 charged, 1,451 convictions, 493 cautioned and 140 children safeguarded.
IIOC Risk Prioritisation: What was the impact of Operation Ore?
-Continually growing number of IIOC investigations and access to the internet.
-Inconsistencies in workload prioritisation and risk assessment.
-Absence of an academically validated way to prioritise the most dangerous offenders (i.e. those most likely to also commit contact sexual abuse against a child).
-Lead to the idea to develop a risk prioritisation tool.
-The Kent Internet Risk Assessment Tool (KIRAT) was developed.
Who does Kirat apply to and what does it do?
KIRAT applies to…
-Individuals suspected of possessing, making, taking and/or distributing indecent images of children (IIOC).
-Only applies in investigations involving IIOC.
What does it do?
-Prioritises the most dangerous offenders (i.e. those most likely to also commit hands-on sexual offences against children).
-Uses known intelligence to assess risk.
-Allows police to take action to protect children.
-Assists with resource/workload management.
-Not a risk assessment in a prognostic way but more an allocation of resources
