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Full-Text Articles in Criminology
Delineating Victims From Perpetrators: Prosecuting Self-Produced Child Pornography In Youth Criminal Justice Systems, Bryce Westlake
Delineating Victims From Perpetrators: Prosecuting Self-Produced Child Pornography In Youth Criminal Justice Systems, Bryce Westlake
Faculty Publications
Video recording technology advancements and accessibility has been paralleled by a growth in self-produced child pornography (SPCP). Although social and judicial attention has been given to instances of teenage sexting, Internet-based forms of SPCP, such as webcam/website sex tourism, have almost been ignored. While some of the proposed legislation reform has referenced video-based SPCP, the majority has focused on SPCP distributed through cellular phones; excluding that which is manifested online or through entrepreneurial efforts. The purpose of this article is to introduce non-sexting SPCP, using the case study of Justin Berry (in the United States), and to propose a broad …
Comparing Methods For Detecting Child Exploitation Content Online, Bryce Westlake, Martin Bouchard, Richard Frank
Comparing Methods For Detecting Child Exploitation Content Online, Bryce Westlake, Martin Bouchard, Richard Frank
Faculty Publications
The sexual exploitation of children online is seen as a global issue and has been addressed by both governments and private organizations. Efforts thus far have focused primarily on the use of image hash value databases to find content. However, recently researchers have begun to use keywords as a way to detect child exploitation content. Within the current study we explore both of these methodologies. Using a custom designed web-crawler, we create three networks using the hash value method, keywords method, and a hybrid method combining the first two. Results first show that the three million images found in our …
Strategies To Disrupt Online Child Pornography Networks, Kila Joffres, Martin Bouchard, Richard Frank, Bryce Westlake
Strategies To Disrupt Online Child Pornography Networks, Kila Joffres, Martin Bouchard, Richard Frank, Bryce Westlake
Faculty Publications
This paper seeks to determine which attack strategies (hub, bridge, or fragmentation) are most effective at disrupting two online child pornography networks in terms of outcome measures that include density, clustering, compactness, and average path length. For this purpose, two networks were extracted using a web-crawler that recursively follows child exploitation sites. It was found that different attack strategies were warranted depending on the outcome measure and the network structure. Overall, hub attacks were most effective at reducing network density and clustering, whereas fragmentation attacks were most effective at reducing the network's distance-based cohesion and average path length. In certain …
The Structure And Content Of Online Child Exploitation Networks, Richard Frank, Bryce Westlake, Martin Bouchard
The Structure And Content Of Online Child Exploitation Networks, Richard Frank, Bryce Westlake, Martin Bouchard
Faculty Publications
The emergence of the Internet has provided people with the ability to find and communicate with others of common interests. Unfortunately, those involved in the practices of child exploitation have also received the same benefits. Although law enforcement continues its efforts to shut down websites dedicated to child exploitation, the problem remains uncurbed. Despite this, law enforcement has yet to examine these websites as a network and determine their structure, stability and susceptibleness to attack. We extract the structure and features of four online child exploitation networks using a custom-written webpage crawler. Social network analysis is then applied with the …