posted 08-16-2008 04:36 PM            

You have already said that this type of test following a misdemeanor and cases where identifying a victim is slim aren't the same. Sound like 2 rules to me even if you don’t choose to identify them as such. Now, you have taken the position that a legal activity that may be indicative of illegal behavior is different too. That sounds like 3rd rule Let us suppose that our viewer of legal pornography is not reading Playboy Magazine but instead looking at disgusting but legal "Snuff Fantasy Bondage Porn. Do you think that would be any more likely that this guy would have physical contact victims? Why? Why Not?

You have also said “They're not innocent. They're guys in possession of child porn. The public won't mind what you do to them, fair or not. (That doesn't make it right either.)”

Well you are just plain wrong. Until they have been convicted they are in fact innocent. Right or wrong that annoying presumption of innocence thing is one of the foundation blocks of our system of justice and investigators don’t get to decide guilt or innocence. Even our FBI has been embarrassed in court because they overstated their expert’s ability to distinguish real kiddy porn from digitally altered adult images. I would presume that field types may have even less experience and expertise than their senior computer imagery geeks. An investigators inability to accurately identify child porn could easily lead to running one of these exams on someone who has committed no crime at all. Would that be a violation of rule 3?

You ask us to make an unsupported leap of faith that people who look at child porn have physical contact victims. Where is a study that supports your hypothesis? Wait now none of that anecdotal stuff unless you have a real big stack of it.

Can you point to a study that people who possess child porn are more likely to have child physical contact victims than they are likely to rob banks or consort with prostitutes? Perhaps you should tell us what percentage of child porn collectors are pedophiles versus what percentage of child molesters collect kiddy porn? Even if you could prove that people who molest children like kiddy porn, you still haven't established a reasonable suspicion that people who like kiddy porn actually molest children.

You claim my analogy fails because adult porn is legal. Are you saying that back before child porn was illegal that a polygraph on a person who looked at it would not identify someone with physical contact victims?

If I were going to construct a guide for conducting pre conviction sexual history screening, I would probably favor a guideline that’s places it somewhere in the plea negotiation process. I’m not saying that is where it should be, but at least there would have been some prosecutorial review of the evidence and if the defendant refused the exam, the refusal could have some meaning to the prosecutor regarding how soon the perv should see daylight.

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Ex scientia veritas

posted 08-16-2008 06:02 PM            

The misdemeanor issue isn't a different rule. In police work, time is money, and most agencies don't allow polygraph time to be wasted non-felony cases.

posted 08-16-2008 06:39 PM            

How is "we're not going to do this unless the subject has committed a crime? not a rule.

How is "We're not going to do this on misdemeanor suspects because it's a waste of time", not a rule? Even if you are the only one that uses that justification it is still a rule.

Are you saying that only people that are accused of felony crimes are likely to have committed other felony crimes? Where does that come from?

Based on your argument it seems to me that you think that individual examiners or police administrators should be allowed to set their own guidelines concerning these examinations based on their workload and personal beilefs. The problem I have with that is your line of argument flies in the face of standardization which is a subject that the majority of examiners I have spoken to say is needed in our profession. This lack of rules and standardization may very well lead to the Pervert Polygraph rotection Act.

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Ex scientia veritas

posted 08-16-2008 07:06 PM            

Right up front, just so you know, I don’t support this utilization of the polygraph for a determination of deception or non-deception. There is a study posted early in this thread via a link that suggests that a vast majority of internet kiddie porn types also have undetected/unreported physical contact. Based upon that, we apparently would expect a vast majority of our tests to be DI. Since we already highly suspect that most are involved in physical contact, why should we “waste our time” with them. Let the investigator do the interrogation. We can spend that time on felonies (and misdemeanors) that have an actual reported victim and we have some case facts and actual issues to test. I may be wrong, but I don’t differentiate between a felony or misdemeanor test.

posted 08-17-2008 04:07 AM            

It appears to me that Mr. Hernandez is simply calling attention to these similarities in order to generate interest in a scientific study. In his conclusory remarks he states:

quote:

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" The state of knowledge with respect to Internet child pornography offenders is in its infancy. My observations of the 217 offenders described above who participated in the SOTP indicate that these Internet child pornographers are far more dangerous to society than we previously thought. But, I caution the law enforcement community and others against generalizing beyond the offenders who were the subjects of my treatment interviews. I urge the professional and scientific community to attend to this understudied group of offenders "

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The theory that child pornographers have physical contact victims and using that theory to support the use of polygraph examinations as described in this forum is precisely the type of generalization that Mr. Hernandez is cautioning us about.

To date his summary is the closest thing we have to a study (and it isnt very close at all) and HE says we shouldn't be jumping to conlusions based on his anecdotal information.
I really wonder if we should be running polygraphs based on a theory that the author says we shouldn't rely on until further study is done to support the theory.

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Ex scientia veritas

posted 08-17-2008 10:45 AM         

It my experience with child porn viewers, they generally have emails or on line chat sessions with potential victims. In law enforcement we would follow the trail and try to identify the victim(s) if there are actually victims. Then polygraph if the offender is in denial.

As far as ethical goes, I believe we are using the wrong term. Is it where we want our profession to go. I don't fish with a polygraph, I use a fishing pole for that. Polygraph is used for investigation once we have a crime, suspect and case facts.

posted 08-24-2008 12:00 PM            

My point is simple. We, as a professional community have certain standards of practice and we still don't fully agree to conduct ourselves by those standards. Althewhile, we present ourselves outside our profession as doing so.

Now, some are suggesting we extend ourselves to other aplications of polygraph which have not been researched or validated or reviewed as appropriate? I simply disagree with the idea of using polygraph as anything more than an investigative tool for specific actions by certain people. If, this ever became a standard practice, our detractors will be sharpening their swords very soon thereafter.

Jim

posted 08-24-2008 03:08 PM            

You must have missed Jos Buschman's presentation on PCSOT in the Netherlands, which left me thinking these exams are a good idea. Most of the child porn downloaders did admit to offending during polygraph interviews. It's something that we haven't heard here in the US. What his research has shown is that child porn is the "catalog" the users search to look for their victims, which is consistent with the language in the NCMEC's book I cited earlier.

They don't call it child porn, which I found interesting too. They think that's too sterile and almost deceiving. They call them downloaders of child sexual abuse images (or something like that) to better explain what they do.

In any event, there is now real research supporting this concept.