Josh Hawley and the Show-Me State's obsession with Child Porn

or things one should not bring up in SCOTUS nominee hearing

The average child porn freak is a 42 white male from Missouri or Florida¹.

That’s not to give Texas or Virginia the brush off. They along with the Show-Me State lead the nation for federal convictions for possession of child pornography². And Florida is hardly slack in this category.

So Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), the raised fist provocateur of the January 6th Insurrection, decided to go after Judge Kentaji Brown Jackson for her sentencings in a handful of child porn cases. Judge Brown adriotly pointed out a federal judge in Hawley’s home state gave lighter sentences than her. And Hawley himself voted to confirm 3 federal judges who sentenced child porn possessors below the guidelines as well.

If child pornography sentencing is going to be Hawley’s cause celebre, he may want to rethink it first. Thirty-seven point two percent of child porn offenders received sentences under the guidelines and another 28.4% were sentenced within the guidelines. Nearly two-thirds of all child porn offenders get average to below average sentences.

Statistically most child porn offenders are also first time offenders - that’s the basis of lighter sentences. But those average to below average sentences are abetted by the fact that the offense is mostly commited by middle aged white males (86%) and the same racial disparities in sentencings for crack versus cocaine show themselves in federal sex crime cases³. And while the disparity is less stark in child pornography possession cases, it’s still statistically significant⁴.

The real reason to rethink it though is that white males in their 30s, 40s, and 50s vote Republican 60% of the time on average. And in Missouri, it happens a lot more than anywhere else in America.

When confronted with the hypocrisy of voting for three judges who sentenced child porn offender well below the guidelines, Senator Hawley replied "If I had known about -- and I'm not sure which judges you are referring to -- but if there are judges who are soft on child porn offenders in a systematic kind of pattern, then that would be a big problem, and if I had known that at the time, then it would hurt my support.”

Hawley’s parsed response makes it painfully obvious he wants Judge Kentaji Brown Jackson’s record on sentencings in child porn possession cases (all 9 of them) to be crack, unfortunately the reality is more akin to a line of coke that runs as long as I-44 does in the Show-Me State.

1. https://coferluster.com/child-pornography-offenders-statistics/

2. https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/quick-facts/Child_Pornography_FY18.pdf

3. https://thecrimereport.org/2021/02/10/racial-disparities-found-in-federal-sex-crime-sentencing/

4. Ibid.