Friday, April 22, 2005



Police and porn

In the haste to make a scandal out of the police discovering pornography in their email system, something has been overlooked: namely that it's not illegal to look at porn. Sure, it's unwise (not to mention just damned rude) in the workplace, and is likely to get you into trouble with most employers, but unless said porn can be classified as objectionable (involving kids, animals, dead bodies, or extreme degradation), it's not against the law as such. Just a little fact, but one we should keep in mind before leaping to excoriate the police over this.

That said, some of the material apparently is objectionable, and it does raise troubling questions about the ability of the police to deal sensitively with the victims of sexual crime. But something else people seem to be forgetting is that porn or no porn, it would be the same people dealing with these crimes. The problem is with the culture; porn in the office computers is just the symptom. But I think the response to both the police rape inquiry and to this shows that the police leadership is committed to changing that culture. We just have to hope they succeed...

3 comments:

I'm sure most of them haven't done anything criminal - and even less anything that *I* think should be a crime.

However when someone chooses to work in a sensitive job like the police (or teaching, etc) they take on a responsibility to be more sensible - particularly with something like work email. Not doing so calls into question whether they've got the level of judgment and maturity to be a policeman, apart from anything else.

Of course it would be simple for the police force to block images at their firewall with MailMarshal or something.

Posted by Rich : 4/22/2005 02:40:00 PM

If you eliminate all policement who do anything the prunes of society find objectionable you will soon have no polie at all or at best only deeply religious ones.

If any of the material is illegal then they should be charged with that crime - otherwise they should be told politely to stop wasting bandwidth.

Posted by Genius : 4/22/2005 07:59:00 PM

Obviously, New Zealand society still has a certain amount of prudishness. It will be a great day for New Zealand when people are as embarrassed about being thought violent or bigoted as they are for being caught with porn on their computer.

Posted by Anonymous : 4/25/2005 11:54:00 AM