100s arrested, ringleader charged after feds crack dark web bitcoin transactions.
A South Korean man has been charged with running the largest-ever dark web child porn ring, hosting nearly eight terabytes of vile videos depicting sexual exploitation of children and infants. Hundreds of users have been arrested.
Jong Woo Son is facing
multiple federal child porn charges for running a massive trove of child
sexual exploitation that investigators have called the “world’s largest dark web child porn marketplace,”
a nine-count indictment unsealed on Wednesday has revealed. The charges
include advertising and distributing child porn as well as money
laundering.
US federal investigators were able to trace the site to Son’s home thanks to a computer glitch that revealed his IP address. Servers that were home to some 200,000 different videos, uploaded by members of the site in exchange for “points” allowing them to view more of the depraved content, were kept in his own bedroom.
Browsers hunting for legal porn were warned away with a red-lettered notice on the site’s front page: “Do not upload adult porn.”
The site’s location on the dark web meant accidental viewers were
unlikely, as it could only be accessed with the exact address. Users
paid for the abhorrent clips in points they bought with Bitcoin, which –
despite its reputation for anonymity – helped investigators track them
down.
“You may try to hide behind technology, but we will find you and arrest you and prosecute you,” US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie Liu said during a press conference on Wednesday.
“The scale of this crime is eye-popping and sickening,” John Fort, chief of IRS criminal investigations, told reporters, crediting “our agency’s ability to analyze the blockchain and de-anonymize Bitcoin transactions” with the “identification of hundreds of predators around the world.”
Among
the hundreds of suspects arrested since the site’s seizure in March
2018 were several former US government employees. Richard Gratkowski, a
former Homeland Security Investigations agent, was sentenced to 70
months in prison in May, after using his own government passport as
identification to open an account with Bitcoin wallet company Coinbase,
which he used to pay for his sick entertainment.
US Army veteran Stephen Langlois received 42 months in prison that same month for downloading 114 videos. Another unidentified former federal law enforcement agent had the equivalent of 50 hours of child porn footage downloaded from the site.
South Korean authorities have arrested over 300 suspects in addition
to Son, noting that most were unmarried office workers in their 20s,
though some had sex crimes on their record. UK authorities have also
nabbed some of the site’s users, including one man sentenced to 22 years
in prison in March for repeatedly abusing two young children and
uploading the footage to Welcome to Video.
Investigators from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children examining the footage were shocked to find that nearly half of it had not previously been encountered and depicted children unknown to authorities.
This 90-minute feature documentary accompanies two serving prisoners on their journeys through a unique training programme – each with a genuine chance of employment on their release.
These journeys are punctuated by encounters with four former prisoners, now Timpson and Max Spielmann employees, who have embraced the world of work and are now living normally outside the walls.
How do you turn your life around when you’ve been written off by society? This is the challenge faced by all prisoners – men and women, career criminals as well as first-timers – who find themselves marginalized and stigmatized on leaving jail.
Providing a unique glimpse of lives regained, this film documents the importance of a second chance through employment and tells the heart-breaking and uplifting stories of prisoners trying to transform their lives.
The new prisons minister, Robert Buckland MP, recently replied to a Parliamentary Question
from Richard Burgon MP, the shadow justice secretary, concerning the
number of people received into prison who are homeless. This was
interesting because most debate has centred around people being homeless
on release from prison, which is, of course, still a major problem.
The response was staggering. The number of people known to be of no
fixed abode when they were received into the 51 prisons listed increased
from 18,493 in 2015 to 23,488 in 2018. This includes men and women but
excludes children. The figures will include people remanded to prison by
the courts and those who are sentenced.
Bizarrely, some big prisons that receive from the courts were missing
from the list and the total number of homeless people sent to prison is
undoubtedly even greater than the information provided by the minister.
Missing from the list were 73 prisons. Most of them do not receive people from the courts, or indeed the streets, because they are high security or training prisons; nevertheless prisons like Wormwood Scrubs and Preston were missing. This means that the full picture of how prisons are being used to sweep up the homeless is not clear and is being under-counted.
We do not know how many children and women who are homeless are being
sent to prison. Missing from the list are prisons like Styal, which
holds women, and Feltham, which holds children.
I have always argued that the penal system is used to sweep up the
poor; now it seems we have definite proof. As the cuts in funding for
local government have sliced into services for people with addiction,
health, mental health problems the number of the homeless has increased
exponentially. They are forced into petty crime to survive.
Spend a few hours in any magistrates courts and you will be
transported back to the eighteenth century. The shock is that anyone
thinks that this is humane, and it certainly is not economically
efficient.
This week an Urgent Notification was issued to Bristol prison
because it is in such dire state. Hidden in the litany of failures the
inspector noted that almost half the men released from the prison were
homeless.
The government admitted that, of the 6,000 women released from prison in 2017/8,
only just over a half had settled accommodation, 240 were known to be
going to rough sleeping and 831 women were ‘other homeless’. Nothing was
known about 778 women released from prisons. Inspectors have noted that
prisons have given sleeping bags and tents to men and women released
from prison.
People who are homeless are being swept into prison and then dumped
back onto the streets. Prisons are a merry-go-round for the people too
poor and too fragile to sort their lives out. But instead of providing
support, we are spending billions every year policing them,
criminalising them and incarcerating them.
There is a chink of light. Overwhelmingly these are the people who are given short sentences by the courts. The government is planning to consult on its plan to get rid of short prison sentences. Let’s hope that this happens expeditiously and that we can close down some of the prisons holding the homeless so that funding is diverted to the local services that would prevent anti-social behaviour and support people to live healthier, happier lives.
Anti-social behaviour covers a wide range of unacceptable
activity that causes harm to an individual, to their community or to
their environment. This could be an action by someone else that leaves
you feeling alarmed, harassed or distressed. It also includes fear of
crime or concern for public safety, public disorder or public nuisance.
Examples of anti-social behaviour include:
Nuisance, rowdy or inconsiderate neighbours
Vandalism, graffiti and fly-posting
Street drinking
Environmental damage including littering, dumping of rubbish and abandonment of cars
Prostitution related activity
Begging and vagrancy
Fireworks misuse
Inconsiderate or inappropriate use of vehicles
The police, local authorities and other community safety
partner agencies, such as Fire & Rescue and social housing
landlords, all have a responsibility to deal with anti-social behaviour
and to help people who are suffering from it.
If you are experiencing problems with anti-social behaviour, or have any concerns about it, or other community safety issues, you should contact your local council or call the non-emergency number, 101. In an emergency, call 999.
Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are stressful or traumatic
experiences that can have a huge impact on children and young people
throughout their lives.
The ten widely recognised ACEs, as identified in a US study from the 1990s, are:
Abuse:
physical
sexual
verbal
Neglect:
emotional
physical
Growing up in a household where:
there are adults with alcohol and drug use problems
there are adults with mental health problems
there is domestic violence
there are adults who have spent time in prison
parents have separated
As well as these 10 ACEs there are a range of other types of
childhood adversity that can have similar negative long term effects.
These include bereavement, bullying, poverty and community adversities
such as living in a deprived area, neighbourhood violence etc.
We are committed to addressing all types of childhood adversity, and this is anchored in our long-standing, national approach of Getting it right for every child.
Why ACEs matter
Childhood adversity can create harmful levels of stress which impact
healthy brain development. This can result in long-term effects on
learning, behaviour and health.
Evidence from ACE surveys in the US, UK and elsewhere demonstrates
that ACEs can exert a significant influence throughout people’s life.
ACEs have been found to be associated with a range of poorer health
and social outcomes in adulthood and that these risks increase as the
number of ACEs increase.
Research from Wales found that people who reported experiencing four or more ACES are:
4x more likely to be a high-risk drinker
16x more likely to have used crack cocaine or heroin
6x increased risk of never or rarely feeling optimistic
3x increased risk of heart disease, respiratory disease and type 2 diabetes
15x more likely to have committed violence
14x more likely to have been victim of violence in the last 12 months
20x more likely to have been in prison at any point in their life
Consideration of ACEs is therefore crucial to thinking about how to
improve the lives of children and young people, to support better
transitions into adulthood, and achieve good outcomes for all adults.
What are we doing to address ACEs
As set out in the Programme for Government 2018 to 2019,
we are committed to preventing ACEs and helping to reduce the negative
impacts of ACEs where they occur and supporting the resilience of
children, families and adults in overcoming adversity.
We are take forward action in four key areas:
1. Providing inter-generational support for parents, families and children to prevent ACEs
2. Reducing the negative impact of ACEs for children and young people
3. Developing adversity and trauma-informed workforce and services
4. Increasing societal awareness and supporting action across communities
We held an ACEs ministerial event
in March 2018 in Glasgow involving people working across a wide-range
of related sectors and Year of Young People Ambassadors. This explored
what was working well, where further action is needed and opportunities
for collaboration.
Through our Getting it right for every child approach,
families and children can be supported by services to prevent and
reduce adversity and the negative outcomes associated with it.
We will build on our existing policies, including:
focusing on achieving equity in education through the Scottish Attainment Challenge and, in combination with the Pupil Equity Fund, allocating funding directly to schools to close the poverty-related attainment gap
putting children’s wellbeing first through the Child Protection Improvement Programme, keeping them safe from abuse and neglect by ensuring effective child protection procedures are in place
Our policies in the following areas are also relevant:
Addressing ACEs is also about better supporting adults who have been through adversity and trauma.
We are working with NHS Education for Scotland and have announced £1.35 million funding to deliver a national trauma training programme.
This will help Scotland’s current and future workforce develop skills
and services that respond appropriately to people’s adverse childhood
experiences and other traumatic experiences.
Consideration of ACEs is increasingly informing the development of national policy. For example, the Justice in Scotland: Vision and Priorities 2017 to 2020
identified ACEs as a key issue. A range of actions are being taken to
reduce their impact e.g. measures to reduce parental incarceration by
moving to a presumption against short prison sentences.
We are also working with the Scottish ACEs Hub (co-ordinated by NHS Health Scotland) which aims to raise awareness and understanding about ACEs and progress national action. For example, the Scottish ACEs Hub, in conjunction with Education Scotland, held a conference in March 2018 on addressing childhood adversity to support children’s learning and wellbeing.
The Scottish criminal justice process leaves those who have reported a rape or serious sexual assault feeling marginalised and with little control regardless of their case’s outcome, a new study has found.
Researchers from the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research
at the University of Glasgow interviewed victim-survivors who have
navigated their way through the system to try and understand their
‘justice journey’.
While some positive experiences were identified, such as support
provided through advocacy services and sensitivity shown by some
specialist criminal justice professionals, victim-survivors also
highlighted the lengthy duration of the process, administrative errors
and poor communication from the police and courts. Other issues such the
physical environments in which statements are given, the removal and
non-return of personal possessions for evidential purposes, and in
particular, being subjected to distressing questioning at trial, were
also raised as significant points of concern.
Most notably none of the 17 victim-survivors, including those whose
cases had resulted in a guilty verdict, believed that justice has been
achieved.
The cumulative impacts of their experience of sexual violence and
going through the criminal justice process led to victim survivors
feeling their relationships with family had become strained, their
health had deteriorated, including suffering night terrors, suicidal
thoughts, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.
Beth said: “…it was three years of re-traumatisation.” Helen felt it
had “totally destroyed everything”, while Lottie said she “didn’t know
how to live for 18 months.”
Overall, the findings suggest there is a considerable gap between how
victim-survivors anticipate their case will be treated and the reality
of the criminal justice process. Victim-survivors felt that the criminal
justice system is weighted in favour of the accused and that it does
not adequately represent their interests.
Dr Oona Brooks-Hay who co-authored the report with Prof Michele Burman and Dr Lisa Bradley said she hoped the research findings would push for real change across the criminal justice system to address the significant concerns raised around how victim-survivors are informed, supported and represented.
Dr Brooks-Hay said: “There is a pressing need to look at how the
criminal justice process can be reformed to meet the needs of
victim-survivors who have had the courage to engage with the system.
“While our research reveals that some relatively minor practical changes could go a long way to improving experiences, more radical change such as the introduction of independent legal representation in serious sexual offence cases, must be given serious consideration. Sexual offences have profound and distinctive impacts, and therefore merit distinctive responses.”
The recommendations are far ranging across the whole of the criminal
justice process, and include specialised sexual assault training for all
police officers, early access to support from specialist agencies,
better protection at court to avoid meeting the accused and his family.
The recommendations also call for a review of the nature and manner of
questioning in the court that infringes on the victim-survivors’ right
to dignity and privacy, and which was found to be a significant source
of distress.
In their own words;
On giving evidence
Pippa: “…when I say you’ve been raped before, it feels the exact same
way when you’re sitting in that courtroom, you have nothing, like you
literally are stripped bare of everything and don’t have any control
over it. You have not had any say in this, all you have told them is
like your story and they just go and do what they want with it.”
Receiving court support from an Advocacy Worker
Beth: “I don’t know if I could have had the courage to say what I did
without, because she [Advocacy Worker] gave me courage. Because I knew
someone had my back.”
On communication and administration
Debbie: “The administration from the criminal justice or whoever deals
with it, the Crown Office, was shocking. A lot of letters were to the
wrong names, to the wrong address, just the mail correspondence thing
was shocking.”
On the police investigation
Nat: “…[the police officer is] a hero […] To have someone listen to you,
after all of that time, and take the little bits that you’re giving
them, and not to dismiss them, but to actually then go off and do
something about it.”
Uncertainty and delays Lottie:” I didn’t know how to live for 18 months. I didn’t know, you know, do I just forget about it, but then it has to be all dragged back up again, or do I just live my life on pause?”
Dr Nina Burrowes asks whether we should scrap the use of juries in rape trials – and if the current system for trying serious sexual assaults needs reform.
Figures from 2017 and 2018 show the number of rape cases being charged by prosecutors in England and Wales falling to the lowest in a decade, despite an increased number of incidents being reported. It was also revealed in September 2018 that less than a third of prosecutions for rape brought against young men by the Crown Prosecution Service result in a conviction.
Now many within the justice system and those who have been through it, say it is time for wholesale reform of the way we try serious sexual assault cases.
Dr Nina Burrowes, a psychologist and activist against sexual violence, investigates the recent calls for UK courts to scrap the use of juries in rape trials. She examines how so-called “rape myths” impact jurors’ decision making.
Dr Dominic Willmott discusses the research he’s conducted on common misunderstandings and misconceptions about rape and the effect they have on how a jury reaches a verdict.
Nina also meets Miss M, an anonymous campaigner who has experienced a rape trial both with and without a jury. She also speaks to Sir John Gillen, a retired Court of Appeal Judge who has reviewed the conduct of rape trials in Northern Ireland and has come up with some innovative ways of improving a “seriously flawed system”.
By Dr Katrina Morrison, Lecturer in Criminology at Edinburgh Napier University and Board Member at Howard League Scotland
The 20th anniversary of the opening of the Scottish
Parliament allows us to pause and reflect on the progress of penal
reform in this time. While criminal justice was under the jurisdiction
of Scottish administrative structures prior to devolution, the
establishment of the Scottish Parliament created policy instruments
which could enable more radical change, and the political and civic
arena in which to affect them.
Assessing anything, including penal reform, is ultimately a
comparative endeavour, everything is relative. In Scotland, our
inevitable comparison is with England and Wales, where we like to
compare ourselves (often favourably). We do much less comparison with Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland, our Celtic neighbours, or with mainland Europe – we know many of the same assessments we make of ourselves would be less favourable if we did, whether in rates of imprisonment (that most dominant penal metric), or in numbers under penal supervision,
a less visible, yet still powerful indictor of Scotland’s approach to
punishment. Whilst not ignoring the perhaps justifiable comparison with
England and Wales given geographical proximity and shared histories, we
could be more ambitious and seek a different measuring rod in our
efforts of comparative analysis.
What assessment can we make around Scottish penal reform over the past 20 years?
Over the past twenty years, Scotland can rightfully be proud of:
Commitments for a new prison estate for women in custody, Community Custody Units
(CCUs), which are small, community facing, and designed to look and
feel like domestic accommodation, rather than a prison. The decision to
build CCUs follows a 2015 Scottish Government decision not to proceed with a large single prison for women following a sustained campaign by women’s and penal reform organisations.
The proposed Community Custodial Unit for women in Maryhill, Glasgow
The development of problem-solving justice in particular for young people, women, repeat offending, domestic abuse, and alcohol abuse, with a recent evaluation showing just how successful such approaches can be.
Whilst we in Scotland can rightly celebrate these developments, we
must also recognise the limits to more radical and progressive reforms
over this time, including:
These examples are by no means exhaustive, but reflect some key
issues captured from my viewpoint (as someone who has worked in
universities, criminal justice and in penal reform), which represent
both developments of which we can be rightly proud in Scotland, and also
the distance we still have to travel. What then does this mean for the
prospects for penal reform in Scotland over the next 20 years and
beyond? I think we need to be looking at reform which is both top-down,
and bottom-up, and also somewhere in between.
Current political party composition of Scottish Parliament
However, we cannot rely on change as a result of political action alone, there is a socio-cultural context which sustains Scotland’s penal approach which must also be addressed. Despite concern over the way we punish in Scotland for many years,
‘policy fixes’ have so far not had the traction we would hope. Perhaps
this could be because the story Scottish people tell themselves about
who they are, and the values they hold, is not always reflected in the
data we have about the way Scottish people feel about a range of social
issues. In 2015, difference in views between Scotland and England and
Wales towards free tuition fees and the EU were much less marked than one might think, and in 2018, social attitude data also revealed that views towards immigration
were very similar in both Scotland and England and Wales (though views
were translated into different voting preferences). In relation to views
on crime and justice, the latest Scottish Crime and Justice Survey
showed that nearly 75% of the representative sample of the Scottish
population did not know ‘very much’ or ‘anything at all’ about the
criminal justice system. Despite this, 75% of those surveyed also felt
either confident or very confident in the delivery of criminal justice
across a range of indicators, an opinion which did not change much
between victims and non-victims. Data showed
that the public believed that support should be provided to people in
prison to assist with later reintegration, but only 53% agreed that only
those who commit the most serious crimes should be in prison. These are
indicators that with careful conversations, and the right information,
public opinion can be led to think about punishment in a different way
than one might first think when reading some of the more sensationalist
headlines.
How then can the cultural context in which the penal system operates
be shaped, in order that positive changes in practice and outcomes be
realised? Possibilities might lie in attempts to engage citizens more
deeply in conversations about crime, punishment, and more broadly, in
social justice. Such work was undertaken as part of the ‘Creating Spaces
for Change’ project, described as ‘part knowledge exchange, part social experiment’,
which sought to capitalise on increased civic engagement in Scotland in
the wake of the 2014 independence referendum, a project which resulted
in a range of collaborative initiatives, dialogues around justice and
influence on practice. However, the very ‘success’ or progress realised
through such projects is difficult to measure
according to conventual methods of evaluation. Nonetheless, such an
approach may have traction in Scotland at this moment: there is an
appetite for deliberative dialogue to facilitate better Scottish public policy reform,
and the commitment to more participatory means of civic engagement has
been further strengthened in the recent announcement for Scotland’s first ever Citizens Assembly
which will focus on the future of Scotland. There is no reason that
conversations around crime, punishment and citizenship, cannot be
included into those processes. This could compliment other smaller scale
means of engaging with the public around these questions which have
recently been launched, including efforts by the Scottish Sentencing Council, Community Justice Scotland, and Release Scotland. Other recent initiatives seeking to engage civic society around justice reform employ more creative methods, such as Distant Voices,
a song-writing project involving groups of people with convictions,
criminal justice staff, victims, academics, artists and musicians, and
families affected by imprisonment, or A Life in Pieces , a graphic novel which conveys routes into custody and the experiences of punishment to different audiences.
Sustained progressive penal change lies in a range of different
factors, both within, and out with the criminal justice system. For
example, Finland succeeded in radically changing the way it uses imprisonment in the 20th Century
by legal and sentencing reform which was also enabled by becoming part
of the Nordic welfare model and building a political consensus for
change involving criminal justice elites, sentencers and experts.
However, there was also a cultural context, including a moderate media,
which facilitated this too. In Scotland, we need both changes to law and
policy around punishment, but also attention to wider questions around
welfare and support, and finally also more deliberate and deliberative
efforts at changing the cultural context in which these all occur.
Devolution is still in its infancy, and the political sphere is maturing after initial haste and impatience in reform across a range of areas including criminal justice.
There is much that be achieved by politicians and policy-makers in this
moment of Scottish history, but solutions to the problems of Scotland’s
enduring approaches to punishment lie outside the political sphere as
well. The growing confidence of Scotland as a nation, both civically and
politically, provide the space and incentives to enable a different
approach (in: rhetoric, policy, values, and ultimately, in practices and
experiences) to the way we respond to harm in Scotland.
Beyond Barriers 