by Deborah Jacobs, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey and Peter G. Verniero, a lawyer and former justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and state attorney generalThe fate of a 14-year old New Jersey student, arrested a few weeks ago on charges of posting pornographic photos of herself online, now rests on the scales of the justice system. The allegations against her follow those in a similar case in which a federal court recently blocked a Pennsylvania prosecutor from filing child pornography charges against teenage girls shown topless or wearing underwear in photos found on the cell phones of some boys.Without commenting on the legal merits of those cases, we hope that their notoriety — and the spirited debate they have sparked — will prompt policymakers to rethink the law’s future application and whether we, as a society, want to jail a generation of young people for engaging in poor judgment. Kids found guilty of so-called “sexting” require education, support from teachers and parents, and, for some, even treatment — but they do not require incarceration.
http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2009/04/sexting_hardly_constitutes_chi.html
Leave a Reply