Minimum sentences are bad, but it's kind of wild that the Germans are realizing it because apparently they have too much CP going around. Time to reevaluate my stance on the firebombing of Dresden.
“In particular, people who receive such material involuntarily — for example in the context of a WhatsApp parents’ group — risk a minimum sentence of one year,” Buschmann said in a statement. The same, he added, also applies “in the case of teachers who have discovered child pornographic material on students’ cellphones and have forwarded it to alert the affected parents.”
So seems less like they have an excess of CP and more like they have a poorly worded law that allows prosecution of people who aren't the actual problem. Though teachers forwarding it to parents is a bit weird
Exactly my interpretation.
I'd be more worried about people who send and receive images as minors with peer-aged people getting prosecuted too. They shouldn't be keeping those images around, but people do stupid things and overlook their old messages and pictures all the time.
On the flip side, it's easy enough for the teachers to not forward that stuff and still report it to a parent.
Same crack the west Germans have been smoking ever since the US established their regime: https://archive.ph/oS19z
Did you read the article or am I missing something?
They are looking to make the laws more flexible for fringe cases that are accidentally being caught up by the law, not to reduce the minimum sentence for pedophiles and abusers. I'm sure there could be some instances where this will miss the target, but it seems like a reasonable justification to modify the law.
might just be me, but i feel like administering the punishment in a more sensible way sounds like a better option than making it so the possession of CP only gets you a slap on the wrist