NCJ Number
112424
Date Published
1988
Length
6 pages
Annotation
Attorney General Edwin Meese III discusses the relationship between crime and obscenity and pornography and the need for increased enforcement efforts.
Abstract
The commission on pornography concluded after extensive study that violence is pervasive in pornography; that there are empirically verifiable connections between it and certain violent crimes, including child abuse and molestation; that the pornography industry is brutal and exploitive; that pornography has a deleterious effect on what its consumers consider normal and healthy; and that organized crime controls and profits from most obscenity. Further, obscenity is not a victimless crime to those women and children who have been raped or otherwise abused or to those families that have been broken because of obscenity and pornography. Obscenity, and the exploitation, degradation, and desensitization that accompany it, represents a grave social crisis -- one that law enforcement can help resolve. While the goal of eliminating obscenity ultimately must be realized at the personal and moral level, all levels of Government can and must contribute if human dignity and the loving, family-centered values that are torn apart by obscenity are to be restored.