Jailed for looking at drawings

Defending people jailed for possession of child pornography may not be popular, but when people are imprisoned for looking at drawings, there is something wrong with the legislation.

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald reports that 20-year-old twin brothers have been sentenced to three months in jail for possessing child pornography. They had thousands of images on their home computer. But here's the thing: those images were all hentai -- Japanese-style pornographic drawings, in this case featuring children.

According to the Herald, Crown attorney Craig Botterill said, "The victimization wouldn’t happen in the first place if there weren’t people there to look at this material."

Well, there's a statement that ought to be open to some debate. If people could not look at drawings of children being abused there would be no child abuse? That seems pretty questionable to me. Have all the convicted pedophiles out there had access to drawings of children being abused? And did those drawings cause them to abuse real people?

Remember, we're not talking here about actual children being victimized and that victimization being captured through photographs. We are talking about drawings.

The presiding judge (the wonderfully named Theodore Tax) added that "This is a crime that victimizes young people around the world." What, drawing cartoons or looking at them?

"The images can only be regarded as disgusting and perverse," Judge Tax added. I have no doubt about that. But that doesn't mean people should go to jail for creating or possessing them.

If we still had a court challenges fund, I'd say this section of the law is one that somebody ought to mount a constitutional challenge against.