Submission to Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement: Inquiry into law enforcement capabilities in relation to child exploitation

Abstract

We welcome the opportunity to provide a written submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement’s inquiry into law enforcement capabilities in relation to child exploitation. This submission is informed by the authors’ recently completed research into Boosting Crime Prevention and Crime Detection Capabilities of Online Investigators: A Script Analysis of Creation and Distribution of Child Exploitation Material, a research grant funded by the Australian Institute of Criminology as part of the Child Sexual Abuse Material Reduction Research Program. In various sections of this submission we draw on our research findings from this project including: a systematic review of crime commission processes in child sexual abuse material production and distribution (Cale, Holt, Leclerc, Singh, & Drew, 2021); a review assessing the challenges affecting the investigative methods to combat online child exploitation material offences (Holt, Cale, Leclerc, & Drew, 2020); a report examining how child sexual abuse material offenders operate on the Dark Web (Leclerc, Drew, Holt, & Cale, 2021a; Leclerc, Drew, Holt & Cale, 2021b), and a study providing evidence on training and support needed to combat child sexual exploitation online (Leclerc, Cale, Holt & Drew, in preparation).