In a New York Times op-ed piece published today, Amy Adele Hasinoff, a professor of communication at the University of Colorado, Denver, amplifies the concern that reforms aimed at making the legal treatment of teenaged sexters less punitive could have the opposite effect. “Once they have the option of lesser penalties,” Hasinoff writes, “prosecutors are more likely to press charges—not only against teenagers who distribute private images without permission, but also against those who sext consensually.” In fact, more prosecution is the avowed goal of some legislators who sponsor sexting-specific bills.
Hasinoff, one of the experts I quoted in my post about Colorado’s proposed reforms last week, agrees that it makes no sense to treat consensual nude images that teenagers share with each other as a kind of child pornography, which exposes them to the threat of felony charges and registration as sex offenders.
The post Why Should Sexting is a crime, When Sex ain’t ? appeared first on Parent Security Online.
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