Situational Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse in the New Technologies

							Situational Prevention of
Child Sexual Abuse in the
    New Technologies
       Richard Wortley
      Griffith University
      Brisbane, Australia
                Overview
 What is Situational Prevention?
 Situational Theory and Child Sexual Abuse
  (CSA)
 Implications for Internet Child Exploitation
  (ICE)
 The Way Ahead
 Conclusions
 What is Situational Prevention?
 Importance of person-situation interaction
 Shift from distal to proximal causes
 Public health model - primary/secondary
  prevention
 Search from crime hotspots
 Two kinds of interventions:
    – Reducing ‘precipitators’
    – Reducing opportunities
     Situational Theory and CSA
   Smallbone and Wortley (2000, 2001)
    – Late onset
    – Low stranger abuse
    – Low incidence of chronic offending
    – Criminal versatility
    – Low incidence of paraphilic interests
   Significance of non-treatment sample
     Situational Theory and CSA
   Control model of CSA
    – What stops people from misbehaving?
    – Potential to view children as sexual objects
      widespread
    – CSA driven by vulnerability of children
    – Offending may cause paedophilia rather than
      the reverse – offending changes offenders
    – Predicting offending not the same as
      predicting recidivism
     Situational Theory and CSA
   Types of offenders
    – Committed: stereotypic chronic preferential
      offenders
    – Opportunistic: low self-control, sexually
      adaptable, criminally versatile
    – Reactive: generally law-abiding, situationally-
      specific offending
              Implications for ICE
   ICE opportunity-driven
    –   Vast quantities
    –   Convenient, any time or place
    –   High quality, easily stored and manipulated
    –   Cheap
    –   (apparently) anonymous
   Demetriou & Silke (2003)
    – Deindividuation
   Two types of immediate environment
    – Physical
    – Virtual
           Implications for ICE
   Physical Environment
    – Lifestyle issues
    – Patterns of use, triggers – time and place?
    – Anonymity – e.g., location of computer
   Difficult to implement – implications for
    offenders in treatment, managing children
           Implications for ICE
   Virtual Environment
    – Law enforcement
    – ISPs
    – Credit card companies
    – Workplace rules
    – Legislation
   Increasing perceived risks, making activity
    more difficult
          The Way Ahead
 Offending onset
 Modus operandi
 Perceptions of risk
 Relationship between online and hands-on
  offending
 Non- treatment and non-prisoner samples
                   Conclusions
   Risky individuals versus risky
    environments
    – Who will become and offender?
        Needle in a haystack
    – Who will reoffend?
        Miniscule proportion of offenders arrested
    – What makes the Internet a risky
      environment?
        ‘Biggest bang for the buck’