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Sorell, Tom (2017) Online grooming and preventive justice. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 11 (4). pp. 705-724. doi:10.1007/s11572-016-9401-x ISSN 1871-9791.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11572-016-9401-x
Abstract
In England and Wales, Section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act (2003) criminalizes the act of meeting a child –someone under 16—after grooming. The question to be pursued in this paper is whether grooming –I confine myself to online grooming—is justly criminalized. I shall argue that it is. One line of thought will be indirect. I shall first try to rebut a general argument against the criminalization of acts that are preparatory to the commission of serious offences. Grooming is one such act, but there are others, sometimes associated with terrorism. According to me, the general argument misapplies certain considerations about autonomy that are alleged to be in force in other areas of criminal law. Contrary to that general argument, criminalization of preparatory acts does not, in general, bypass the agency of citizens. Moreover, the criminalization of preparatory acts can disrupt activity that would have led to very serious crime, and with relatively low costs to the perpetrators, costs that reflect the non-occurrence of the more serious crime. There is evidence that grooming is harmful in itself, and so another point against the general argument is its assumption that preparatory offences are often harmless or at least victimless. There are objections to some of the undercover policing techniques that lead to a Section 15 prosecution, but these objections are not all weighty.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Alternative Title: | |||||||||
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare K Law [LC] > KD England and Wales |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Child sexual abuse -- Prevention, Undercover operations, Sex crimes, Pedophilia | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Criminal Law and Philosophy | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Springer Verlag | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 1871-9791 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | December 2017 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 11 | ||||||||
| Number: | 4 | ||||||||
| Number of Pages: | 20 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 705-724 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11572-016-9401-x | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 4 June 2016 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 27 June 2017 | ||||||||
| Funder: | Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC) | ||||||||
| Grant number: | ES/L003279/1 | ||||||||
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