Ruining Kids in Order to Save Them
The boneheaded logic behind treating “sexting” teens as child pornographers.
In order to protect children from predators and child pornographers, the local district attorney is threatening to prosecute minors who pose for racy photos as if they were child pornographers. … The girls aren’t in trouble for distributing the photos, or even for taking them. They’ve been introduced to the criminal justice system merely for appearing in them.
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The root disconnect, here, is that the law treats pre-pubescent sex crimes on par with crimes related to teenagers who are sexually mature. Fact is, teenagers become sexually mature years before it’s socially or legally permissible to think about them that way. That they’re then having sex is nothing new. Nor is the fact that teens make rash, emotional, spur-of-the-moment decisions. What’s new is that they’re able to document it all in ways that can quickly escape their control. What they need after the fact are responsible adults who can walk them through a poor decision, appropriately reprimand or punish them if necessary, but all while keeping things in perspective, and minimizing the long-term consequences for the teen. Dumping the kid into the criminal justice system has all the subtlety and precision of dropping an anvil on the problem from 40 stories above.
(via Reason)
