Prosecutors Abusing Power

To follow up on Duncan and Roy, one will hope that child pornography laws will be changed to exempt non-commercial self-photos of adolescents sent to other adolescents. Changing them is difficult, however — it probably won’t be a high priority, and will present both the fake “won’t someone think of the children” political problems and real problems ensuring that modifications don’t create loopholes for actual child pornographers. While laws don’t explicitly exempt such cases, however, any prosecutor who tries to put an adolescent in jail for taking a picture of him or herself and sending it to a friend should be relieved of their duties at the earliest possible time. Reading the “logic” of these brownshirts is remarkable — people suffering from intense humiliation that harmed nobody else apparently just won’t “learn their lesson” without being arrested and threatened with jail time. Maybe enough of these cases actually will spur legal changes.

…This might be a good way of spurring legal reform, in addition to being justified in itself.