Paedophiles Trading Child Porn to Evade Jail: Court

Under newly proposed rules for British courts, paedophiles who trade in child pornography will be spared jail sentences. The Sentencing Council in the UK suggested community punishments for those convicted of trading or possessing child pornography in its guidelines on dealing with all types of sex crimes.

The council proposed that people caught selling or distributing internet child pornography may receive 'high level community orders', and also for people possessing images of non-penetrative sex between adults and children, the Daily Mail reports.

According to the paper, the current benchmark jail sentence for those with a small number of images in the UK is three months. Only those with pictures of children posing alone or small quantities of images of children engaged in sex acts, but not with adults, are not jailed.

"It is very worrying that they are not going hard on people who distribute child pornography. You need to take a tough line with the distributors or otherwise you are licensing it," a Tory MP said.

Criminologist Dr David Green, of the Civitas think-tank, also reiterated the notion, saying: "The primary question for the courts is what action is most likely to reduce sexual exploitation of children. This is sending the wrong message."

Source-ANI