Refocusing the Law of Child Pornography

Professor Alisdair Gillespie, Professor of Criminal Law and Justice Business and Law at De Montfort University gives his inaugural lecture.

In England & Wales the law on child pornography is primarily focused on indecent photographs of children. This law was derived from the obscenity legislation and was a reaction in the 1970s to the growth of the availability of child pornography. Advances in technology have meant that child pornography is now widely available but the law continues to be derived from obscenity legislation. The focus of the law remains on the image and there have been several high-profile incidents where this focus has led to what many commentators believe are overreactions. In this lecture, Professor Gillespie will develop a thesis that the law should move away from this preoccupation on the image and instead focus on the actions of the offender.

Alisdair Gillespie is Professor of Criminal Law and Justice at Leicester De Montfort Law School. He was a member of the Home Secretary’s Task Force on Child Protection on the Internet, is a member of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety and works closely with law enforcement and child protection agencies on the issue of child sexual exploitation and communication technologies. He has written widely on this issue, including three books and over 50 articles, and is currently completing a monograph entitled Child Pornography: Law and Policy for Glasshouse Publishing.

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