Abstract
Pornography continues to be a contentious matter with those on the one side arguing it detrimental to society while others argue it is pleasurable to many and a feature of free speech. The advent of the Internet with the ready availability of sexually explicit materials thereon particularly has seemed to raise questions of its influence. Following the effects of a new law in the Czech Republic that allowed pornography to a society previously having forbidden it allowed us to monitor the change in sex related crime that followed the change. As found in all other countries in which the phenomenon has been studied, rape and other sex crimes did not increase. Of particular note is that this country, like Denmark and Japan, had a prolonged interval during which possession of child pornography was not illegal and, like those other countries, showed a significant decrease in the incidence of child sex abuse.
Notes
In October 2007, a new law (§205a, Head V., Czech Penal Code) was enacted prohibiting the possession of child pornography. According to the law, persons holding a movie, photo, electronic, computer or any other format depicting a child involved in any pornographic activity can be imprisoned for up to two years.
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Acknowledgments
The authors deeply thank Tomas Husak at Ministry of Justice of the Czech Republic, Vladimir Stolin at Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic, Pavel Kvoriak at PK 62 Inc., Barbora Capitova at Czech Statistical Office, and Martin Konvicka at University of South Bohemia. This work was supported by grant 53221-15-0001-01 from the J. S. Purkinje University in Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic.
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An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10508-011-9871-9
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Diamond, M., Jozifkova, E. & Weiss, P. Pornography and Sex Crimes in the Czech Republic. Arch Sex Behav 40, 1037–1043 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-010-9696-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-010-9696-y