A friend of mine, her boyfriend is a trucker. He had pulled over to urinate along the side of the highway late at night, in the shadow cover of his truck. A state trooper had pulled over a speeding vehicle, a distance behind him along the road. The trooper proceeded to then pull in behind the trucker, and threatened to put him on the sex offender's registry for public urination; the trooper spent 10 minutes reaming him out for it before letting him go.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/05/us/teenagers-jailing-bring...
We don't have a war on pedophilia. We have a war on "child pornography". I put "child pornography" in scare quotes because it's abundantly clear that many of the laws that aim to target child pornography really only use it as a bogeyman to obscure some other agenda.
Also, as for "safer", whatever we're doing now is clearly putting children at risk. In many countries (including the US), pedophilia is exempt from typical confidentiality laws regarding mental illnesses[0]. This makes pedophiles less likely to seek professional help, and I can only imagine that this means that they are more likely to harm or abuse a child.
[0] https://medium.com/matter/youre-16-youre-a-pedophile-you-don...
They found a young man who selfidenties as a pedophile, who was actually willing to go on camera and talk about his desires and urges. It was quite fascinating, and I do see many parellels not just to the war on drugs but to homosexuality as well.
We aren't treating these people in a humane way, and IMO we are making the problem worse by perpetuating a Wich Hunt.
[0] http://www.channel4.com/info/press/programme-information/the...
[1] Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO4yfvc9THs
No, what they do is threaten you with some hypothetical 30 year term if they were to charge you will all the broad interpretations of the law. This fear of hard time is then used as a carrot to get you to plead guilty to lesser charges that you may not have even done.
They get around the "judges" by the minimum sentencing laws: "sorry, my hands are tied, I have to lock you up for ____ years because I have to follow federal sentencing guidelines."
Furthermore, there is a huge incentive to prosecute "sex crimes" because that's a gold star for the prosecutor/judge. At the end of the year, or at election time they can say "We locked up N sex offenders this year for a combined total of X years".
This meme is repeated a lot about posession of child pornography, and is absoluely incorrect. Perhaps this is because in the UK the law had to be amended to include an exception, so that deliberately 'making' otherwise illegal images solely for the purpose of law enforcement was allowed as a defence. But (again, in the UK, but true for most other common law jurisdictions) there is still a 'mens rea' (that is, guilty mind, or intent) requirement, as with any crime.
EDIT: Also, there are no 'edge cases' in regard to sexting, at least in the UK at present, as the law allows the obvious defence that the images are of ones partner.
Except of course for teenage sexting. Where the legal system has ruined lives for no reason. Or the weird edge cases it introduces. Such as a theoretical case where someone wearing Go Pro comes across a pedophile actively abusing a child out in the wild. The good samaritan Go Pro wearer is now guilty of both production and possession of child pornography. The laws do not leave any room.
Oh well!