ABSTRACT
Although definitions of illegal material, laws and practice within the criminal justice system (CJS) of various countries differ quite significantly, there is increasingly compelling evidence that only a minority of those found to be in possession of illegal images are likely to have been previously convicted for contact sexual offences (see Chapter 9 for further discussion). One possible explanation for this is that these offenders were arrested at an early stage in a process of escalation of deviant interest and behaviour which would probably, or even inevitably, result in a contact offence against a child or children. This belief has some face validity, and it is often implicit in the representation of Internet offenders in the media and in the accounts of some professionals. The assumption is that even in the absence of evidence for contact offending, consumers of child pornography present an inevitable, if not immediate, direct risk to children. It is very difficult to identify the processes implicit in the assumptions of risk, often because they are assumed to be self-evident. One possibility is that the accessing of sexually explicit material (SEM) reflects a covert planning process to engage in the behaviour depicted. Alternatively, it may be felt that SEMs are so toxic that they will inevitably drive an interaction between sexual fantasy and behaviour such that contact offending becomes inevitable, or at least highly likely.
