Child Pornography and Child Sexual Abuse in the 21st Century: A Critical Overview of the Technological Shifts in Distribution, the Academic Literature, and the Current Re-Entry Policies for Convicts of these Crimes

This capstone project focuses on four distinct but interrelated papers. The first details the role of technology in creating a resurgence of child pornography and how both the authorities and corporations have responded to this phenomenon. The second paper provides a literature review on research assessing the amount of child pornography consumers who victimize children. The third work is my own original research on the topic explored in the second paper. The fourth and final paper explains the post-incarceration consequences child pornography possessors often encounter and how they reintegrate into society, in addition to assessing the flaws and successes of these approaches. The overarching theme of this capstone project is to detail why this topic is a major concern and not a single criminal justice problem. By describing how child pornography rose to prominence in the 21st century as a major criminal justice concern, why there is more to the issue than the production, distribution, and consumption of child pornography, and the current approaches to preventing these individuals from reoffending after their release from prison, I aim to provide the reader with an understanding of how the consumption of child pornography is a major issue and how the United States can implement more robust approaches to assessing and confronting it