I: EFFECTS ON SEX CRIMES AND VIOLENCE
6.1 We start our review of the harms possibly caused by pornography and violent material with the area where the harms alleged are of the most
definitely identifiable kind, and where it is suggested that the effects of the material are kinds of behaviour which tend to be noticed particularly because they conflict with the law.
6.2 The arguments here are that certain kinds of behaviour.
particularly in the form of criminal offences of violence and of a sexual nature, are either directly provoked by exposure to particular stimuli-such as the reading of a sex magazine producing a state of arousal which is manifested in rape or sexual
assault, or the viewing of a film producing imitative violence are at least more likely to occur in an atmosphere created by pornography and violent material. The arguments suggest. therefore, that the proliferation of porno- graphy results in increasing
sexual offences and that violence in the media leads to an increase in offences of violence.
6.3 Submissions made to us on this subject, where they considered it neces- sary to support simple assertions by some kind of evidence, rested on three
different classes of information. One kind may be called (without disrespect) "anecdotal", and is drawn from particular instances in which an association between, crime and pornographic material has been observed, and a causal con- nection, it
is claimed, can plausibly be supposed. We consider in this context also considerations put to us by psychiatrists on the basis of clinical experience. A second kind of evidence is drawn from research, involving experiments or guided observations, into
human responses to particular kinds of material. Such research, obviously enough, does not itself involve the subjects committing crimes (or at least none that does has been drawn to our attention). What it rather does is to enquire whether reactions in
the experimental set-up are of a kind-for instance, of an aggressive kind-which would lead one to expect crime or other anti-social behaviour as a response to that material in ordinary life. The third kind of evidence-the kind that has commanded a great
deal of attention and aroused a great deal of controversy in this subject-is that drawn from statistical analysis of trends in known crime relative to the varying availability of pornography.
6.4 The relations between the last two kinds of
evidence we take to be the following. A positive result in the second, experimental, kind of enquiry might be expected to show up in the statistical enquiry, if that is reliable, since if greater availability of pornography in real life is not connected
with more crime, then the experimental results cannot have the significance for real life that is ascribed to them. On the other hand, a positive result from the statistical enquiry would be compatible with negative results from the experimental enquiry,
since it might be that crime and pornography were linked in real life, but not by any mechanism which was revealed under those experimental conditions.
6.5 We will consider these kinds of evidence in turn.
Anecdotal and clinical evidence
6.6 A number of cases was drawn to our attention, and our own enquiries brought others to light, in which particular publications or films or a general interest *m pornography, had been connected with the commission of offences We saw a number of
press reports in which the defence had alleged on behalf of a man charged with sexual offences that the commission of the crime could be ascribed to the influence of pornography. To lay weight simply what is said by the defence would be rather naive:
offenders or their counsel are not slow to proffer an excuse which mitigates the seriousness of the offence or reduces the individual's responsibility for having committed it, and it was noticeable that there were fewer cases in which the trial judge
offered his own comment on the influence of pornography. Two notable cases mentioned to Us were those of the Moors Murderers and the Cambridge Rapist, in both of which it has been alleged (not by the trial judge in either case) that the corrupt- ing
effect of pornography played a role.
6.7 In the case of the Cambridge Rapist, the defence tried to emphasise the influence of pornographic films and magazines and the local Chief Constable stated at the end of the trial that the case had
"proved the real danger of pornography" . We do not believe that a study of the case permits such a simple conclusion. The offender was a man with a long history of mental dis- turbance and criminal activity, with psychopathic tendencies
evident from an early age. He had shown an interest in pornography but there was nothing to suggest that the particular methods which he had chosen to use in committing his offences owed anything to the pornography he had seen or that he would not have
committed the offences had it not been for the influence of pornog- raphy. Somewhat similar considerations applied in the case of the Moors Murderers, though in that case less emphasis was placed on the influence of the publications in the possession of
the offenders, both during the trial and in subsequent comment. Both these cases seem to be more consistent with the pre- existing traits being reflected both in a choice of reading matter and in the committed against others. It would be extremely
unsafe, in our view. to con- crude, even tentatively. that exposure to pornography was a cause of the offences committed in those particular cases.
6.8 The same point applied to the other cases which came to our attention (and indeed, the
indications from research, as Yaff6 has pointed out, are that sex offenders have had less recent exposure to sexual material than other groups). Although there was on occasion some evidence of a link between an offence committed and a previous
exposure-in the form of some common feature, for example-even this is no evidence that the link is a causal one: as one of our witnesses put it to us. to give a. person who is predisposed to commit crime an idea of a particular way in which to do it is
really very different from instilling the disposition in the first place. We discussed these matters with a number of psychiatrists and psychologists, including some with special experience of the treatment of offenders, but we were struck by the fact
that none of them was able to tell us of a case of which they had experience in which there was evidence of a causal link between pornography and a ,violent sexual crime. None of our psychiatric or psychological witnesses in fact saw very great harm in
straightforward sexual pornography, and some, indeed felt that cases more frequently occurred in which the effects of pornog- raphy were beneficial rather than harmful. Dr P L G Gallwey of the Portman Clinic was one of these, stressing the sense of
security that was sometimes generated, particularly through a lessening of the sense of exclusion and by assuaging the violent feelings associated with exclusion. Professor H J Eysenck of the Institute of Psychiatry, despite his serious reservations.
which we will consider later, about violent matter, agreed that, depending on how it was portrayed, sexual material could reduce violent activity. Dr A Hyatt Williams of the Tavistock Clinic told us that his experience was that the outlet provided by
pornography could prevent the commission of offences and that an offence could result if a person dependent on that kind of satisfaction were deprived of it. It was also widely agreed that if published pornography was not avail- able, some people would
simply produce it for themselves: Dr Gallwey, for example, showed us a highly pornographic and very disturbing story written by a young offender he had treated and cited to us another instance of a man using what materials were available to him in
prison-even The Farmers' Weekly-to construct pornographic pictures.
6.9 This does not mean that no harm was seen in pornography. Dr Hyatt Williams, for example, was less concerned about the possibility of initial cor- ruption than about the way
in which certain patients might have their recovery impeded if they were again exposed to pornography and he made the point that dependence on pornography, even when it had a cathartic effect on those otherwise disposed to commit offences, masked the
need for the person con- cerned to seek treatment which might provide a cure. Dr Gallwey, too, made the point that for some people on the edge of psychosis pornography served to weaken their grip on reality. Our witnesses emphasised to us, however, that
it was only a very small minority of people who were likely to be affected in this way and there was a general reluctance to suggest that the balance of advantage lay in attempting to place more severe restrictions on pornography in order to safeguard
them.
6.10 Clinical opinion and our impression of the anecdotal evidence cohere: the cases in which a link between pornography and crime has even been sug- gested are remarkably few. Given the amount of explicit sexual material in circulation and
the allegations often made about its effects. it is striking that One can study case after case of sex crimes and murder without finding any hint at all that pornography was present in the background. What is also striking is that if one tried to
eliminate the stimuli in published material which may have some relation to sexual deviation or the commission of offences, the net must be cast impossibly wide. As an illustration of this point, Dr Gallwey Mentioned to us a patient who had killed
himself in the course of his masochistic practices which had started when, as a disturbed child of only 8 or 9 years, he had been excited by coming across a picture of a woman bound to a stake. The protection of the young raises special considerations
Which we shall come to later, but even so it is clearly impossible to suppress Pictures of Joan of Arc. A glance at the list of books found in the home of Ian Brady, the Moors murderer, makes the same point. There are people who will gain a perverted
satisfaction from reading accounts of Nazi atrocities or of other historical happenings, or even passages in the Bible, but publications cannot be suppressed on that account. All kinds of literature can have a destructive effect. The case of Goethe's
Sorrows of Young Werther, which was said to have made suicide fashionable. is famous, but equally we heard of a romantic novel linked to the drowning of a teenage girl and of an Agatha Christie story linked to a real-life poisoning. There can be no
question of suppressing such works. Art galleries cannot be closed to those who find. excitement in paintings of barbarous acts or semi-clad women; nor can such people be kept away from beaches or be prevented from reading daily news. papers. For those
who are susceptible to them, the stimuli are all around us; but the main point we wish to make from our study of the anecdotal and clinical evidence is that there is very little indication that pornography figures very significantly among these stimuli.
6.11 Our expert witnesses had more reservations about violent material, though again we heard no direct evidence of cases in which it was considered that crime had resulted from a particular stimulus. But both Professor Sir Martin Roth and
Professor Trevor Gibbens told us that it was pornography with a violent content which concerned them most. Some cases were brought to our attention by other witnesses in which such effects were alleged to have, occurred, and perhaps the chief object of
such allegations was the film A Clock- work Orange which after its release early in 1972 was cited in a few court cases as the cause of real-life violence perpetrated by young men. The film. was undoubtedly a powerful one and it seems clear that aspects
of the were deliberately copied by some youths who engaged in violence. Whether that violence occurred only because they had seen the film is of course more difficult to say and Mrs Mary Whitehouse, in the evidence submitted to us by the National
Viewers' and Listeners' Association, was perhaps not on the strongest ground when she attacked the film principally on the basis of a case in which a 16 year old youth had brutally murdered a tramp: the youth con- cerned, though certainly fascinated by
the story, had not in fact seen the film. (Since the film was classified as unsuitable for persons under 18 years. if he had seen it, he would not have done so legally.) We came across just three other cases in which A Clockwork Orange had been
mentioned. Another film mentioned for its disturbing and anti-social effects was The Exorcist, and we read about two cases in which young men took their own lives (in only one of these was the link with the film very strong), and three other cases in
which sexual offences or murder were associated with the film. The case involving murder, which was brought to our notice by the Nationwide Festival of Light, illustrates what we said earlier in this chapter about such films being made an excuse. The
young man concerned had said that he had committed the offence while possessed by an evil spirit, after seeing the film The Exorcist; but it seems, from the press reports. that he admitted on the last day of his trial that he had simply made up this
story after seeing a copy of the book in the police car. In the two other cases the film did not, even superficially, appear to be the dominant influence in the offences.
6.12 With respect to violence, the same point arises as before. The net
would have to be cast very wide to prevent actual events from being influenced undesirably by what people see. It was, for example, a televised version of The Brothers Karamazov which was said to have influenced a young man to attempt to kill his parents
with a meat cleaver in 1976, and it was the American television series Roots which was alleged to have prompted a Jamaican in London to rape a white. woman, saying that he was going to treat her as white men had treated black women. While we have been
preparing this report, the IRA have planted a bomb in a manner modelled on an incident in a television crime series; a 12 year boy has been reported as shooting himself in Detroit while playing Russian roulette after seeing The Deer Hunter; and an 8 year
old girl has jumped from a second-floor landing in Barcelona after telling her playmates she was Superman.
Research studies
6.13 A great deal of research work-more in the United States than in this country-has been undertaken into the
effects of exposure to porno- graphic or explicit sexual material or material having a violent content. Unfortunately, no very clear impression emerges from the results of this work and, as we shall see, even those who have surveyed it cannot always
agree about the conclusions which can be drawn from it. We had available to us two reviews of the relevant literature, by Mr Maurice Yaffe on the effects of obscene material' and by Mr Stephen Brody on Screen Violence and Film Censorship 2. Besides the
general evidence which was put to us on these matters, we also had the advantage of discussing the lessons of work in this field, particularly in relation to violence, with two other authors who had made a study of it and published the results, Professor
H J Eysenck 3 and Dr Guy Cumberbatch 4.
6.14 Some serious reservations inevitably attach to research in this field. There is the absolutely general point that correlation experiments in artificial conditions are regarded by many competent critics
as an unilluminating and unreliable way of investigating complex behaviour, even in many other species, let alone in human beings. But further, more specific, criticisms apply in the case of the kinds of behaviour that are in question here. Since
criminal and anti-social behaviour cannot itself, for both practical and ethical reasons, be experimentally produced or controlled. the observations must be made on some surrogate or related behaviour, often expressed on a representational object, in
some fictional or "pretend" context. This feature of the work can come close, in some cases, to simply begging the question. 'The fundamental issue in this field concerns the relations that hold between the reactions aroused in a subject by a
represented, artificial. or fantasy scene, and his behaviour in reality. Fantasy and reality, and their relations, are the basic categories of the question. We can only express surprise at the confidence that some investigators have shown in supposing
that they can investigate this problem through experimental set-ups in which reality is necessarily replaced by fantasy. Such criticisms apply. of course. to the whole investigation. not to a particular kind of result; they are equally relevant to those
whose results, derived from this kind of experiment, are supposed to deny correlations between pictorial stimuli and real-life violence, and those whose results tend in the opposite direction.
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1 Appendix V to Pornography: The Longford Report, Coronet Books, 1972 as updated by
Mr Yaffe for our benefit.
2 Home Office Research Study No 40, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1977.
3 Sex, Violence and the Media, by H J Eysenck and D K
B Nias, Temple Smith, 1978.
4 Mass Media Violence and Society, by D Howitt and G Cumberbatch, Elek Science, 1975.
6.15 Besides observations of behaviour under experimental conditions, which particularly apply to questions of violence, the
evidence considered in relation to sexual material is. as Mr Yaffe points out, basically of three kinds: retrospective personal history studies of exposure to the material, self-reports before and after experimental exposure, and physiological and
biochemical measures of change in response to experimental exposure. The reliability of studies which depend on retrospective surveys or self-supporting is notoriously suspect and this is particularly true where they touch on highly personal and
value-laden subjects such as sexual behaviour.
6.16 Survey studies have included several which have asked varying samples of people such as young male offenders, sexual offenders and various other groups in the population about their exposure to
pornography and their sexual behaviour and other factors. Many of these were undertaken for the United States Commission on Obscenity and Pornography and their inter- pretation. quite apart from the difficulty of deriving any lessons from them. has given
rise to some controversy. We do not propose to discuss these studies in detail: a summary, and a citation of the original work, appears in Mr Yaffe's survey. We noted that the American Commission. in the light of all the studies undertaken for it,
concluded that "empirical research has found no evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behaviour among youth or adults"; we noted also that this conclusion
was criticised in a number of quarters as having been based on a partial examination of the evidence in which ambiguities and certain contra-indications were ignored. Without our- selves entering into the controversy about the Commission's methods. we
make the comment that the effect of re-examining the original studies in the light of a hostile critique of the Commission's conclusions, such as that put forward principally by Professor Victor Cline, is simply to make one adopt rather more caution in
drawing inferences from the studies undertaken. It is still possible to say, as Mr Yaffe points out in his updated review, that there does not appear to be any strong evidence that exposure to sexually explicit material triggers off anti-social sexual
behaviour. We would add only that this is con- sistent with what we learned from the clinical experience of those experienced medical witnesses we consulted.
6.17 Studies of the effects of violent material have concentrated on laboratory.
experiments, a method which has figured less in research into the anti-social effects of sexual material, though laboratory techniques have of course been used in studying sexual arousal generally. Studies using adults have concen- trated on men but
girls as well as boys have been studied in experiments using children. A considerable amount of work has been done in relation particularly to television violence, which was not of direct relevance to our review but it was the view of our witnesses that
many of the results of this work could be applied equally to films. In the case of sexual material, we encountered disagreement about the exact weight of the evidence for different conclusions; with regard to violent material, we met flatly opposing
views.
6.18 In his review of the literature, Brody concluded that "it can be stated quite simply that social research has not been able unambiguously to offer any firm assurance that the mass media in general, and films and television 'm
particular, either exercise a socially harmful effect. or that they do not". He went on:
"The most reasonable interpretation of the considerable quantity of research results so far available would suggest that some people-par- ticularly
young people-may be inclined both to actual aggressiveness (however this is manifested, and not necessarily in criminal behaviour) and to a preference for entertainment dealing with aggressive themes. for reasons which probably originate with the
development of personality and character; but that watching violent action on the screen is unlikely in itself to impel ordinary viewers to behave in ways they would otherwise not have done. Research into the causes of crime has repeatedly indicated the
enormous variety of possible contributing factors, all of which overlap in complex ways and are quite unpredictable for any one individual; in all these studies, incidentally, the mass media have war- ranted scarcely a mention. That potentially violent
or anti-social persons may find their own sentiments and dispositions confirmed and perhaps reinforced by television and films is not a consideration to be ignored. but it is in the amplification of existing tendencies that the main influence is likely
to lie, not in the moulding of social behaviour.'
Howitt and Cumberbatch had fewer doubts as a result of their comprehen- sive survey of research which, they suggested, had "'shown effectively that the mass media-as far as it is possible to
tell using social scientific methodologies -do not serve to amplify the level of violence in society". Eysenck and Nias, on the other hand, though following a less thorough review of earlier studies, also showed few doubts but in the opposite sense:
"the evidence is fairly unanimous that aggressive acts new to the subjeet's repertoire of responses, as well as acts already well established, can be evoked by the viewing of violent scenes portrayed on film, TV or in the theatre".
6.19
Such contradictions between investigators present a problem. We do not have the space to discuss in detail all the studies from which such different conclusions can be derived but it may be helpful to examine just one as an illustration of how
conflicting views can arise, and of the limitations which, as we have already suggested, are inherent in these ways of investigating these questions. A common tool in studying imitative violence is the Bobo doll, an inflatable toy with a weighted base
which resumes an upright position after being knocked over, and a number of studies have observed the reactions of children towards such a doll after they have seen an adult assaulting it. For example, in the earliest such study by Bandura and others in
1961, a number of children between 3 and 5 years were split into three groups, one of which was left in the presence of an adult model punching, kicking or striking with a mallet a Bobo doll, accompanied by aggressive cries of "Sock him ...
pow" etc. another was left in the presence of an adult who spent the time quietly assembling toys and the third group left to play by themselves, though in later experiments the children saw similar behaviour which had been filmed. When later given
a chance to play with various toys. including a Bobo doll and a mallet, the group who had seen the adult assaulting the doll displayed similar aggressive tendencies to a much greater extent than the other groups. Eysenck and Nias simply record this
result and the fact that similar studies have invari- ably found that children do tend to imitate an aggressive model when given the chance, and presumably notch it up among the "fairly unanimous" evidence to which they refer.
6.20 Both
Brody and Howitt and Cumberbatch, on the hand, discuss the severe criticisms which have been made of such studies as the basis for apply- ing notions of imitated violence to the real world outside the laboratory. Bobo dolls, it is pointed out, are
designed to invite knocking about and to extra- polate to social behaviour the way in which a child plays with them is quite unwarranted. This objection relates to the point we have already made. that in studying this issue, the investigation of violence
towards a fantasy or surrogate object such as a doll comes close to begging the question. Various other argu- ments about the many differences between the laboratory situation and real life have been put forward, which in Brody's view seriously undermine
any attempts to apply research results to the claim that films promote aggressive or violent behaviour by imitation. Howitt and Cumberbatch point out in addition that Bandura's studies involve exposing children to fairly novel kinds of toys and that if
the children have prior experience of Bobo dolls the amount of imitative violence is reduced. They also draw attention to the point that the children classified by their teachers as more aggressive might have been ex- pected to attack the doll more
readily than the others, if such behaviour was adequate as a predictor of real-life aggression: this was not so, and that fact, in their view, points away from the conclusion that the findings may be generalised to real life. Howitt and Cumberbatch,
therefore, discount such experiments in considering a link between media violence and violence in society.
6.21 Eysenck and Nias do not so much dismiss these objections, as ignore them. They leave the unsuspecting reader ignorant that such
substantial reservations have been widely voiced about the implications of these experi- mental studies, and this. in our view, diminishes the value of their work as a contribution to the scientific literature. Their book is indeed aimed more at the
popular market, drawing partly on press reports to illustrate the alleged effects of media violence (including the now celebrated Clockwork Orange murder, but again omitting the information that the young murderer had not actually seen the film); but we
thought it a pity that the lay reader should be presented so incautiously with only one side of the story. It seemed to us right to be sceptical about attempts to apply the lessons of these laboratory experiments to real life and we therefore preferred
the more non-committal view taken, in particular, by Brody. We consider that the only objective verdict must be one of "not proven".
Analysis of crime statistics
6.22 Part of the basis for the conclusion reached by the United
States Com- mission, which we have already mentioned, was a preliminary assessment of the trend in reported crime in Denmark following the liberalisation of the Danish laws on pornography in the late nineteen-sixties. The controversy surrounding the
Commission prompted some people to question the thesis that the legalisation of pornography reduced the incidence of sex crimes in Denmark; and in time a contrary thesis emerged, that there is in fact statisti- cal evidence indicating that the free
availability of pornography can be linked to an increase in sexual offences. This is an argument which rests heavily on work undertaken by Dr John Court, Reader in Psychology at the Flinders University of South Australia. and Dr Court was good enough to
submit to us several papers on the subject. The Nationwide Festival of Light and the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association urged us to pay special attention to Dr Court's work; and others with a more specialised interest in the field of human
behaviour, such as Professor Sir Martin Roth and Professor H J Eysenck, made reference to Dr Court's work in the course of giving evidence to us.
6.23 It was clearly right that we should examine this evidence in some detail and we also think it
right that we should discuss it in some detail here 1. It has not so far been subjected to close scrutiny and we think it important that the public should have the opportunity to assess what it shows. The issue of whether people are more likely to be
sexually assaulted as a result of the circulation of certain kinds of publication or the showing of certain kinds of film is obviously a very important one. But we would not want to give the impression, by dealing with the issue at considerable length,
that we think that it is the only or the decisive issue. We shall come in due course to other kinds of consideration. including other concepts of harm which have been put to us, and these are also important. A special feature of the argument about porn-
graphy and sex crimes is that the effects that have been suggested Here are claimed to be statistically measurable.
6.24 But are they measurable? Here there are several sets of problems. The first set concerns the number of offences. Certainly we
have detailed information about the number of sexual offences reported to the police over a long period. However. this is not the same as knowing how many offences occurred, since there is no means of telling how many victims decided not to go to the
police to report what happened. It is often suggested that rape and sexual offences are peculiarly prone to non-reporting because victims often prefer to avoid the prolongation and reinforcement of the distress they have suffered which may result from
questioning by the police and the giving of evidence and cross-examination at a trial. We cannot be sure. therefore, how many offences have been committed or what proportion never come to light. The particular difficulty in examining trends in offences
is that there is no way of knowing whether the unreported proportion of offences is remaining con- stant-in which case the trend can accurately be assessed even though the incidence of the offences is not fully known-or whether fluctuations are occurring
in the proportion that are not reported: victims may at different times be more or less ready to report offences, because of changing social attitudes. or because of changes in the law or legal procedure or police practice.
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1 We received assistance in analysing the statistics and the arguments based on them from
the Home Office Research Unit, in particular in a paper prepared by Mr Stephen Brody.
6.25 It follows that even apparently detailed information
about the number of offences reported to the police gives an imperfect picture of the number of such offences; it may not even reveal whether, or by how much, the number is increasing or decreasing from year to year. The problem gets worse if one tries
to make international comparisons. Legal systems vary considerably between countries and differences in what constitutes a criminal offence-and what name is given to it-often mean that comparisons which seem straight- forward are not in fact comparing
like with like. Moreover, the form and reliability of criminal statistics varies widely from country to country. Finally. it is too easy to look at statistics in isolation from the procedures and social climate in the country concerned which may affect,
for example. the readiness of victims to report offences.
6.26 The second set of difficulties concerns the other side of the correlation: the availability of pornography. The imperfections of the information about the incidence of sexual offences
are insignificant compared with the lack of information about the availability of pornography. There are two kinds of problems here. One relates simply to the quantity of pornography available, about which there is very little reliable information. The
second raises the question of what kind of material we should consider for these purposes as pornography, and whether the differences between different kinds or degrees of pornography are likely to produce different effects, and so should be taken into
account in trying to make correlations with the incidence of sexual offences.
6.27 Much of the evidence we received assumed that pornography had worse effects, the more extreme it was. Thus, mild pornography consisting of little more than
"pin-up" pictures is often regarded as harmless, while the strongest and most explicit material is commonly regarded as the most corrupting. Yet in considering a hypothesis that sexual offences are linked to the widespread availability of
pornography, it is not obvious, on reflection. that hard-core pornography should lead to the commission of offences in a way that soft pornography does not. Indeed. many people might think that if a potential sex offender were going to be triggered off
by something he saw, that effect would be produced at least as well if not better by the titillating and erotically arousing than by the clinical close-up. So how should one set about quantifying pornography? How should an index of availability reflect
changes in the type of material over a period of time? How should one compare one country where soft pornography is widely available, but hard-core material is banned, with another where hard-core pornography is available for anyone who wants it but
where pornography generally appears to be less pervasive?
6.28 These difficulties seem to us very real, and it is a severe shortcoming of much of the work which has been put to us that the sometimes detailed study of criminal statistics is
accompanied by only the most generalised and unsupported statements about the availability of pornography. If no measures exist for what is supposed to be the causal factor, it is impossible to make any progress in attempting to relate cause to effect.
6.29 The relation of cause to effect brings in the third, central, and best- known, problem. Even if it is possible to provide an accurate measure of two variables. the existence of a correlation between them is certainly no proof that one is
influenced by the other. The causes of crime are undoubtedly complex and elude isolation. Many factors are at work and much stronger indications than a mere correlation between variables are necessary before the existence of a causal link can even be
suggested, let alone proved. The difficulties of proving or even plausibly arguing for, causal relationships between general or disuse social phenomena on a purely statistical basis are sufficiently well-recognised for us not to need to dwell on them
further.
England and Wales
6.30 Having drawn attention to the general considerations which limit both the available information and the inferences which can be derived from it. we should nevertheless look at some of the information which
exists and examine what our witnesses said about it. It is natural that we should start at home.
6.31 First, in relation to the availability of pornography in England and Wales, it needs to be said that no information exists to provide any kind
of index. In the papers submitted to us, Dr Court did not attempt to provide such information. He does however treat Britain as an example of a "liberal" country in which the detrimental effects of pornography are to be seen, and he identifies
two times at which, he suggests, pornography became increasingly available-first with a change in the law introduced by the Obscene Publica- tions Act of 1964, and subsequently following the impetus of the American Commission Report on Pornography in
1970. Dr Court offers nothing to substantiate his statement and we find his explanation of the significance of these two dates less than convincing. As we have explained earlier. the Obscene Publications Act 1964 was a minor measure designed to
strengthen the existing law by plugging two loopholes which had been found in the Act of five years previously. Dr Court cites as the only authority for his suggestion that pornography became more available after the enactment of the 1964 Act as an
article by Mr Ronald Butt in The Times on 5 February 1976 which attacked what Mr Butt then found to be the ineffectiveness of the law in controlling pornography. Mr Butt argued that the intention of the 1959 and 1964 Acts had been systematically
destroyed over the years by the exploitation of their letter, but nothing in his article supports the idea that the 1964 Act opened the way to the greater availability of pornography. Nor do we know of any authority for the suggestion that pornography
became more freely available here after 1970 as a result of the influence of the Report of the US Commission. It seems to us that the choice of the years 1964 and 1970 as crucial in the increasing availability of pornography is purely arbitrary.
6.32 Our own enquiries have not placed us in a very much better position to assess the availability of pornography over a period of time. It is the experience of all of us that for very many years there has been a steady trend towards greater frankness in sexual matters and greater tolerance of the portrayal of nudity and sexual activity. This has been reflected in a wide variety of publications and films, including those which many people would regard as pornographic, but it does not help us to construct any kind of index with which to compare changes in the numbers of sexual offences. The Head of the Obscene Publications Squad of the Metropolitan Police told us that police activity in the last six years or so had resulted in a con- siderable reduction in the amount of hard-core pornography from overseas in circulation, at least in London, though the police were unable to ;quantify the amounts concerned. The same period, however, has seen a considerable increase in the publication of British magazines with an explicit sexual content which. particularly in the years 1975 to 1977. moved very quickly to adopt a character much less restrained than had previously been acceptable. These magazines were distributed throughout the country and clearly reached a much wider audience than the undercover trade in overseas pornography ever had; it was suggested to us by some witnesses that if sexual offences were indeed linked to pornography, a noticeable effect should have occurred over the last five years. However, as we have described in Chapter 4, there are indications that the circulation of these magazines reached a peak in 1976 and has subsequently suffered a decline, aided by increasing police action against publishers from early in 1977 and, in London, against retailers from early in 1978. The managing director of the largest publisher in this field stated in the trade press in June 1978, and confirmed in correspondence with u@ that the effect of this action had been to reduce the sales of his magazines by 40 per cent. in the first quarter of 1978.
6.33 With that patently inadequate basis for assessing the availability of pornography, lot us nevertheless turn to the information available about the incidence of sexual offences. Figure 1 shows the numbers of indictable sexual offences
reported to the police in every year since 1946. This gives a longer perspective than Dr Court has offered and enables the point to be made that sexual offences (or reports of such offences) were significantly increasing long before pornography is
alleged to have become more widely available and Well before the "ineffective" Acts of 1959 and 1964 had a chance to exercise their influence. Indeed, it would appear that the number of reported offences levelled off between 1959 and 1966;
though if the figures for 1964 to 1970 are taken in isolation. an increase becomes noticeable, even if it is less marked than that in the period 1946 to 1959. But what is per- haps even more significant is the trend since 1973: until the increase last
year. there had been a steady fall in the number of sexual offences known to the police. In the light of the suggestion we reported in the preceding paragraph, this should be interesting to those who are impressed by such correlations: a period of
apparently rapid increase in the availability of pornography seems to have been accompanied by a reduction in the number of sexual offences reported, which was reversed in the year in which increased police activity reportedly reduced the availability of
sex magazines.
6.34 We have also used Figure 1 to make another point of some substance, which is that it is futile to seek to examine one class of offence in isolation from the trend in crime generally. In our society. as in others throughout the
world, rising crime has been a matter of much concern for many years and it is pointless to seek a special explanation for a rising trend in sexual offences if that trend merely reflects an increase in the general level of offences. But is that the case?
In fact it is not, because sexual offences seem to have been significantly out of step with other offences. in that they have not shown anywhere near the same increase in numbers over the years. This is shown dramatically in Figure 1 by comparison with
offences against the person, which have continued to rise steeply when sexual offences have stabilised and actually fallen. The papers submitted to us by Dr Court do not face up to this point and we think it a weakness of his work that he has
concentrated on sexual offences to the extent of divorcing them from their context of crime generally. However, we note that in an article published in The Times on 7 August 1976, Dr Court put forward the proposition that the increase in serious sexual
offences is greater than the general rise in crime in countries such as the USA and Australia, but that in Britain this has been "masked in recent years by the upsurge of violent offences associated with the Irish problem". Given the fact that
the trend in violent crime. as Figure 1 shows, goes back at least a quarter of a century, and given the scale of that increase, we doubt whether Dr Court would wish to stand by that statement.
6.35 It can fairly be said that offences against the
person have not been representative of crime generally because they have increased proportionately more than other offences. However, indictable offences as a whole have, in comparison with just after the war, increased in number over five times. whereas
sexual offences have rather more than doubled in number. In 1946 sexual offences accounted for 2 per cent of all indictable offences recorded by the police. This proportion rose to almost 4 per cent in 1955 but has fallen steadily since, until in 1977
and 1978 sexual offences accounted for less than 1 per cent of all indictable offences recorded by the police. Whether com- pared with thirty years ago or twenty years ago or ten years ago, sexual offences are now relatively less common among crimes
known to the police.
6.36 It can be argued, of course. that to take sexual offences as a whole produces a misleading result, since the figures reflect changes in the law or in sexual morality with regard to offences such as those involving homo-
sexual activity or sexual intercourse with under-age girls. Dr Court pays special attention to rape as an offence which may be potentially pornography- induced, and it is reasonable to regard indecent assault, among the other sexual offences, as
appropriate to the same category. Figure 2 shows the numbers of these offences reported in each year since 1946. Offences of rape have increased faster than sexual offences as a whole, there having been five times as many reported cases in 1978 (1,243)
as in 1946 (251), but this is the same rate of increase as for all indictable offences and a much smaller increase than for offences against the person, which increased over twenty- fold. Offences of indecent assault on a female, although more common,
increased less dramatically than rape, very much in line with the increase already referred to for sexual offences as a whole. A marked fall since 1973 has been reversed in the last two years. As with Figure 1, Figure 2 also shows how the trend for
another offence of the same order of frequency. robbery. is in contrast to that for the sexual offences examined.
6.37 Dr Court did not devote much attention to the situation in England and Wales. Yet he confidently observed in a published paper
that "highly significant increases are apparent for rape and attempted rape for the period m question". The period in question, in Dr Court's thesis, is presumably that between 1964 and 1974. then the latest year for which he quoted figures,
when the number of reported offences of rape and attempted rape rose by 103 per cent. This period of ten years was clearly a bad one for offences of rape, but the assertion ignores the fact that offences of violence against the person rose over the same
period by 172 per cent, and it is not helped by the stabilisation of the number of rapes, despite the unrelenting rise in other violent crime. in the three years after 1974. The "significance", moreover. in Dr Court's view. is presumably linked
to his own totally unsubstantiated surmise that pornography began to be widely available after 1964.
6.38 In his papers, Dr Court has paid rather more attention to the figures for the Metropolitan Police District, on the ground that a greater
concentration of pornographic publications is associated with some parts of London than with the provinces. It is certainly not true that pornography has been confined to London but neither we nor Dr Court can offer any evidence of the relative
circulation of pornography in London and in provincial centres. With that deficiency acknowledged, let us examine the statistics of offences known to the police in London. Dr Court has concentrated on the figures for rape, and Figure 3 accordingly does
the same but also shows (on a different scale) the numbers of other sexual assaults in the years since 1947. The figures for offences of rape recorded by the police since 1947 indicate a slightly different picture from that for the country as a whole.
Rapes have increased twice as fast in London as in the rest of the country and have continued to increase when. in the years 1975 to 1977 they came nearer to remaining constant else- where. This is not because crime in London has increased faster than
elsewhere -the contrary is the case-and the effect is that rape has increased much faster than indictable offences as a whole, though still much more slowly than offences of violence. The same is not true, however, in respect of other sexual assaults,
which have increased in London only by about the same extent as in the country as a whole, and they showed a significant decline between 1970 and 1977. Moreover, what Figure 3 also shows in a longer perspective than Dr Court gives is that the rising
trend in rape and sexual assaults started well before what Dr Court alleges was the first date significant for the availability of pornography.
6.39 While we were hearing oral evidence it was reported that sexual offences known to the police in
London had risen substantially in the first six months of 1978 compared with the same period of 1977 (rapes from 75 to 122 and sexual assaults from 550 to 741). These reports prompted some of our witnesses to draw the conclusion that the rise was @ed to
the onset of a more active enforcement policy in the Metropolitan area, in which, from the beginning of February 1978. scores of raids on retailers by divisional police officers had significantly reduced the amount of pornography available in London (we
have already reported one publisher's statement of the effect on his sales). A reduc- tion in sexual assaults during a period when pornography is widely available, followed by an increase when curbs are placed on the trade, hardly bears out the
hypothesis that pornography stimulates sex crimes; but we do not think that the figures for one period of six months or for a year (now that the statistics for 1978 as a whole confirm the increase apparent in the half-year figures) can be used as the
basis for any conclusions. Arguments of a similar kind were put to us in relation to the rate of sex crime in Manchester, where there has also been a policy of rigorous enforcement of the law on obscene publications. but we came to the conclusion from a
more detailed examination of the statistics that the arguments were insufficiently supported.
6.40 We must at this point refer again to the problem of knowing how large the "dark area" of sexual crime is. The figures for rapes known to
the police certainly underestimate the incidence of such offences. However, there may be, grounds for thinking that there has recently been an increase in the level of reporting of cases of rape, and this could be reflected in the latest figures. There
is a greater consciousness of the problem of rape, partly associated with the development of organisations such as Rape Crisis Centres, and greater protec- tion is now afforded to complainants in rape cases under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1976
(which provides for their anonymity and imposing certain restrictions on their cross-examination); because of these factors. rape victims may be more willing to go to the police, and this may have increased the official statistics.
6.41 We now
attempt to summarise what has emerged from this study of the arguments linking pornography and sexual offences in England and Wales. First, there is no firm information about the availability of pornography over the years, and there is no foundation to
suggestions that have been made about particular times at which pornography became increasingly available. Second, the rising trend in sexual offences generally, including rape and sexual assault started long before it is alleged pornography began to be
widely available. Third, the increase in sexual offences generally, and in rape and sexual assaults, has been significantly slower (though in the case of rape alone the difference is less significant) in the last twenty years than that in crime
generally. Fourth, the contrast between the upward trend in crime generally and the greater stability in the numbers of rapes and sexual assaults has been most marked in the years from 1973 to 1977 (except in the case of rapes alone reported to the
police in London where the increase is consistent with that in other forms of crime), when this period appears to have been the one when pornography was most available.
6.42 So, what conclusions can be drawn? We have already referred briefly to
the extreme difficulty of identifying causal factors in the incidence of crime but, in the light of the findings we have set out above, we see no need to develop that argument. Ale case put to us by Dr Court, and by other witnesses who have looked to Dr
Court's work for support. cannot on the basis of the situation in England and Wales, we believe, even survive as a plausible hypothesis. Each of the findings in the preceding paragraph stands opposed to it. Consider Figure 4, which shows the relative
importance of the numbers of rapes and sexual assaults in the totality of crime. We think it unlikely that any fair- minded person would, on the basis of the information depicted in that graph, feel the need to construct a special hypothesis to explain
the increase in sex crimes, still less that the hypothesis constructed would be that an alleged increase in the availability of pornography first after 1964 and secondly since 1970 (increases for which there is no independent evidence) provided a crucial
influence in the growth in such offences.
6.43 We are not denying the possibility that pornography could be linked to the commission of sexual offences. Nor are we suggesting, on the other hand, as the data in Figure 4 encourage some to
suggest, that the availability of pornography is associated actually with a decline (or at any rate a reduction in the rate of rise) in sexual offences. It might be. for example, that if only information were available about the amount of pornography in
circulation some kind of correlation might be possible; it might be that whatever the factors are which have given rise to the substantial increases in most other forms of crime, they do not operate in respect of sexual offences and therefore some other
separate explanation of the more modest growth in sexual crime has to be sought; it may be that there has been a substantial reduction in the willingness of victims of rape and sexual assault to complain to the police, so that the true number of
offences. and the trend. is quite different from what appears in the criminal statistics. These are, we say. possible: but we do not think they are probable. It is not possible. in our view, to reach well-based conclusions about what 'm this count has
been the influence of pornography on sexual crime. But we unhesitatingly reject the suggestion that the available, statistical information for England and Wales lends any support at all to the argument that pornography acts as a stimulus to the
commission of sexual violence.
Denmark
6.44 The main 'international interest in a possible link between pornography and sex crimes has centred on Denmark and on what was the result in that country of the abolition of the laws restricting
pornography. A feature of the Danish situation which is thought to make it a helpful subject for study is that the change was a quick one. with the prohibition on the obscene written word being abolished in 1967 and that on obscene pictorial matter being
abolished in 1969. Although pornography, particularly of the softer variety, had been increasingly available before the law was changed, the fairly rapid move from the restricted availability of pornography to its being widely available, is con- sidered
to facilitate a "before" and "after" study in a way that is impossible with the more gradual increase in the availability of pornography in countries such as Britain; and the fact that it has continued to be available would lead one
to expect that any adverse effects there might be would manifest themselves. Even so. the fact that pornography is freely available does not tell one how much is in circulation or is being consumed, data which might be the more appropriate measure with
which to compare the incidence of sexual offences; information suggests that sales of pornography in Denmark slumped drastically after an initial boom which accompanied the removal of legal restrictions. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that one
is in a better position in the case of Denmark to provide an index of the availability of pornography than one is in the case of England and Wales.
6.45 There has grown up something of a folk myth about the effect of the Danish liberalisation on
the incidence of sexual offences. This may have resulted from the general way in which studies of the Danish situation were reported, before the studies themselves became available, in the Report of the United States Commission on Obscenity and
Pornography in 1970. It is often said. and it was said to us, that the freeing of pornography in Denmark resulted in a decline in sexual offences, but this kind of unguarded statement is very vulnerable to attack. Authoritative claims about the Danish
experience are a good deal more limited. The most detailed work has been undertaken by Dr Berl Kutchinsky of the Institute of Criminal Science at the University of Copenhagen, a preliminary study by him having been commissioned by the United States
Commission in 1969. That study permitted only first impressions to be given of the results of the changes made in 1967 and 1969. though we think it right to make the point that even Dr Court, who has sought to detract from Dr Kutchinsky's work. made it
clear to us that he regards those reports as careful, detailed and appropriately cautious about the conclusion which might be drawn. Dr Kutchinsky has continued his work since 1970. and we had the opportunity of discussing it with him,. but the more
detailed assessment he has been preparing of the effect of Denmark's legal changes on the incidence of sexual offences has not yet been published. This means that most of the debate has so far been based either on a thorough study of statistics up to
1970 or on a more. superficial examination of statistics since that date.
6.46 It is useful first to identify some of the problems involved in making comparisons. First, various changes were made to the Danish law on sexual offences at about the
same time that pornography was legalised; this has led Mrs Mary Whitehouse, to make the point that of course sex crimes will diminish very significantly if eleven categories of sex crime are removed from the statute book. Dr Court makes a similar point
in a more discreet way by suggesting that some of Kutchinsky's data apparently were influenced by legislative changes", while admitting that "it is true to say that the reported decline does not arise from legislative change,". Dr
Kutchinsky assured us that he had been most careful in excluding from his figures any offence in respect of which any liberalisation had occurred, in order to avoid the obvious pitfall identified by Mrs Whitehouse. There are of course other disadvantages
in leaving out of account offences in respect of which there have been legal changes, since it can. be suggested (as by Dr Court) that this itself may lead to serious effects being masked; but there is really no alternative, from the methodological point
of view. to omitting figures for offences where there can be no proper compara- bility.
6.47 Second, it can be suggested that there has been an alteration in the rate of reporting of certain offences because of the different atmosphere itself
partly caused by changes in *e law. Dr Kutchinsky has recognised this possibility and Dr Court has commented that he has made a commendable attempt to measure changes in the readiness to report offences. Part of Dr Kutchinsky's study has been of public
attitudes towards the criminality of certain acts, which, for example, demonstrated a generation shift in attitude towards physical indecency with women, but no similar change in attitude towards the molesta- tion of children. A study was also made of
the relative seriousness of reported offences, the detailed results of which indicated that for such offences as physical indecency with women the less serious offences were now much less likely to be considered worth reporting, while there had been no
similar change in the seriousness of the reported offences of molesting children. Dr. Kutchinsky's conclusion from this is that a drop in the number of reported assaults on women is at least partly explained by the fact that fewer women bother to report
them, but that, with regard to sexual offences against children, the fall in the number reported to the police does in fact represent a falling-off in the number of such offences actually committed.
6.48 It seemed to us, however, that there was
still a need for caution in interpreting these findings. Another factor. for example, to affect the rate of reporting of offences against children might be a growing belief that a child could be further harmed by the court procedures involved. This
factor might affect the reporting of offences of all degrees of gravity, and if so, would not be reflected in any changes in the seriousness of reported offences. Dr Kutchinsky's extensive studies do go some way to meet this point: they include a survey
of attitudes towards readiness to report, which appears to show that this factor was of some effect. but that the decrease in readiness to report offences against children was less, relatively. than it was with other offences studied.
6.49
According to Dr Kutchinsky, the incidence of reported sex offences before the liberalisation of pornography had remained steady for twenty. years, at about 85 cases per annum per 100,000 of the population. In 1967 this dropped to 67 and continued to fall
to a level of about 40. This was very much an urban phenomenon, offences in the capital, having decreased by 75-80% compared with very little change in the already lower level in rural areas. Ordinary heterosexual crimes unaffected by changes in the law
dropped con- sistently, most noticeably after 1966, from just over 100 per 100,000 to less than 30 in 1973. and then levelled off.
6.50 This overall trend, however, conceals a variety of changes in relation to particular types of offence, and it
is more instructive to examine what hap- pened to different types. Dr Court has. as in respect of other countries, concentrated on rape. Figure 5 shows offences of rape and attempted rape reported to the police in Copenhagen, based both on figures for
the years since 1965 given to us by the Police Commissioner for Copenhagen, and on figures published by Dr Kutchinsky in 1973. Even these are not the only figures which have been quoted, and Dr Court has commented that the incidence of rape in Copenhagen
over the past 15 years is more difficult to establish than might be supposed. The variation evident in Figure 5 arises from reservations which Dr Kutchinsky has had about the recording practice of the police. His workers have examined police records to
reassess against agreed criteria the nature of every reported case, including those where complaints had been withdrawn or where the police had decided that no offence had been committed. As a result. Dr Kutchinsky has a statistical record of sexual
offences which differs from that issued by the police. but which he regards as more accurate and reliable. This explains the discrepancy 'm the figures up to 1970 which Dr Kutchinsky has already published, and which he will be bringing up to date when he
publishes his forthcoming book.
6.51 Whichever set of figures is regarded as the more reliable, it is impossible to discern a significant trend in rape which could be linked in any way with the free availability of pornography since the late
nineteen-sixties. Dr Kutchinsky emphasises that he has never suggested that such a link exists, and said to us that be believed that the availability of pornography had not affected the incidence of rape, one way or the other. Dr Court sees the figures
as evidence that generalised statements about the "sudden fall-off in sex crimes" are based on an illusion., but he has gone further, and, lacking the figures for recent years which we have included in Figure 5, has stated that by 1974 at least
"the trend towards an increase in reports of rape and attempted rape was clear"-a statement which he has not supported with figures. Figures for the years since 1972 show that there is in fact no such, trend, and although Figure 5 stands as a
reproof to those who have drawn a conclusion that serious sex crimes have declined since pornography became widely available in Denmark, it certainly provides no support at all for the thesis put to us by Dr Court.
6.52 Dr Kutchinsky has made a
particular study of four types of offences which were among those showing the largest decline in numbers since 1965. These are: peeping, exhibitionism, indecent assaults on women and indecent assaults on young girls. The preliminary conclusions which Dr
Kutchinsky reported to the United States Commission-which he emphasised to be only tentative-were that changes in the readiness of women to report sexual assaults were apparently large enough to account for the decrease in reported offences of that type
during the nineteen-sixties; that the reduction in reported cases of indecent exposure could also be explained by a decrease in readiness to report. but that this reduction seemed to parallel more closely the availability of pornography, something which
might possibly be explained by the effect of pornography having been that fewer women were so shocked by real-life exposure as to think it worth reporting., and that the reduction in reported cases of peeping and of indecent assaults on children could
not be explained by lower reporting rates, but reflected an actual drop in the number of such offences committed, and that this could be tentatively explained by the effect of pornography being available.
6.53 Since peeping does not even
constitute an offence in England and Wales (those indulging in the practice are sometimes bound over to DC of good behaviour), the most significant of these tentative findings for us is that concerning offences against children. We discussed it with Dr
Kutchinsky who confirmed that his later work has supported his view that there has been a real and significant reduction in indecent assaults on female children, and that this very closely correlated with the availability of pornography. The dramatic
reduction of two-thirds in the number of sex offences against children between 1967 and 1969 was difficult to explain other than in relation to the availability of pornography. and it was also notable that 1973 was the last year in which a significant,
increase occurred in the availability of child pornography. and was also the year after which the drop in offences levelled off.
6.54 In looking for an explanation of this perceived relationship, Dr Kutchinsky suggests that the literature
concerning this type of offender indicates that those who interfere with children typically do so not because they are irresistibly attracted to children, but as a substitute for a preferred relationship with a woman which they find difficult to achieve;
but if there is another substitute available in the form of pornography. then that serves the purpose just as well. The fact that the reduction was most significant in offences involving younger children and loss so in relation to more "normal"
offences against older. girls supported the hypothesis.
6.55 We find it difficult to draw any firm conclusions about these more specific matters. While we were impressed by the thoroughness with which Dr Kutchinsky had studied the situation and
the restraint with which he sought to derive lessons from his findings, the fact remains that correlation studies are a weak research tool, partly because of the difficulties of measure- ment-which still exist in relation to both the availability of
pornography and the incidence of offences in Denmark, in spite of Dr Kutchinsky's considerable efforts to overcome them-and partly because of the impossibility of translating a correlation into cause and effect. A common explanation of a correlation
between two sets of social data is that each is affected by some third, possibly unknown, factor and no matter how strong a correlation, it can never, bearing in mind all the other factors and influences that are also present, "Prove" any-
thing. We recognise, however, that Dr Kutchinsky has identified a very dramatic reduction in reported offences against children which coincided with the sudden upsurge in the availability of pornography and which, in consequence of the careful studies
undertaken by Dr Kutchinsky, cannot readily be explained by any other likely factor. While Dr Kutchinsky's explanation can- not be conclusive, we have to admit that it is plausible.
6.56 Dr Court has not commented at all on this finding of Dr
Kutchinsky, other than in making general criticisms of Dr Kutchinsky's work, some Of which are patently mistaken and others apparently unjust, and in stressing that a direct causal relationship. given the nature of the problem, could never be
demonstrated. It seemed to us that because the Danish experience is in Dr Court's description "counter-intuitive"', his faith in his intuition has led him to the view "that it must be assumed to be false". In these circumstances he
has sought to cast as much doubt as he can on the findings, even when that has meant attacking secondary reporting rather than the original work, Persisting in allegations of error which we were assured he had been told were false, quoting polemicists as
if they were scientific sources. and resorting to a general broadside on Dr Kutchinsky's figures as being "utterly misleading". We have examined with some care the work of both Dr Kutchinsky and Dr Court in relation to the situation in Denmark
and have to say that Dr Kutchinsky's is in every respect more impressive: it is comprehensive, detailed and scrupulously careful. Dr Court has made no pretensions to a study of equal thoroughness and, having looked at each of the points he has made about
Dr Kutchinsky's work, we find that the one to which most weight attaches concerns just the absolutely general difficulty of trying to draw conclusions from the examination of statistics of this kind. However. the conclusion which is inevitable from
reading the voluminous papers by Dr Court and Dr Kutchinsky is that it is Dr Court who has felt the less inhibited by the argument and who has based far broader conclusions on a much more rudimentary framework of information. If Dr Court were to be bound
by the restraints which he urges the reader to apply in judging Dr Kutchinsky's work, his case would collapse entirely.
Other countries
6.57 We have discussed the incidence of sexual offences in England and Wales and in Denmark at greater
length than Dr Court has in any of the papers he submitted to us because we think it important that more light should be thrown on the subject so that the objective reader may reach his own conclusions about Dr Court's case. Dr Court has additionally
referred to a number of other countries, such as Australia, the United States of America, New Zealand, Sweden, South Africa, Japan and Singapore, but we do not think it necessary to deal in detail with the situation in all of these countries. This
reference to Sweden, for example, appeared to be based on nothing more in the way of evidence than one sentence from an article published in 1962 in The Spectator; and all his other references were subject to the same severe criticisms that we have
already mentioned, in that he produces no evidence on which an index of the availability of pornography may be con- structed; his treatment of statistics of criminal offences is superficial and fluctuations in the figures for rape are never viewed in the
context of trends in crime as a whole; and he shows an unscientific readiness to associate any rise in rape statistics with the influence of pornography.
6.58 A fellow South Australian writer who has criticised Dr Court 1 has drawn attention to
the fact that although Dr Court Picks out Singapore as illustrating the association between the restriction of pornography and a stable rate of rape, in order to contrast it with a city such as London where a permissive attitude towards pornography is
coupled with an increasing incidence of rape, rapes are, on the figures quoted by Dr Court, actually more common in Singapore than in London. Dr Court may retort that to make such a comparison ignores the difficulties in assuming a similarity of legal
definition cultural attitudes, police strength etc, but it seems to us that it is equally hazardous to take the statistics of rape for an unfamiliar country and to attempt to relate them to a vague idea of the extent to which pornography is and has been
available in that country. again in total isolation from cultural traditions, the state of the law and social developments. Dr Court has made no attempt to place the developments he briefly chronicles in their social context.
------------------------------------------------------------
1 P Cochrane, Sex crimes and pornography revisited. International Journal of Criminology
and Penology 1978, 6, 307-317.
6.59 We are satisfied that Dr Court's publications about pornography are more successful in expressing condemnation of
pornography than they are in giving the study of its effects a sound scientific basis. We discount his evidence and, to the extent that they rely on his work, the evidence of those who quote him. |
