The Williams Report - Chapter 6 - Harms ?
Analysis of crime statistics
Denmark
6.44 The main international interest in a possible link between pornography
and sex crimes has centred on Denmark and on what was the result in that
country of the abolition of the laws restricting pornography. A feature of the
Danish situation which is thought to make it a helpful subject for study is that
the change was a quick one, with the prohibition on the obscene written word
being abolished in 1967 and that on obscene pictorial matter being abolished
in 1969. Although pornography, particularly of the softer variety, had been
increasingly available before the law was changed, the fairly rapid move from
the restricted availability of pornography to its being widely available, is con-
sidered to facilitate a "before" and "after" study in a way that is impossible
with the more gradual increase in the availability of pornography in countries
such as Britain; and the fact that it has continued to be available would lead one
to expect that any adverse effects there might be would manifest themselves.
Even so, the fact that pornography is freely available does not tell one how much
is in circulation or is being consumed, data which might be the more appropriate
measure with which to compare the incidence of sexual offences; information
suggests that sales of pornography in Denmark slumped drastically after an
initial boom which accompanied the removal of legal restrictions. Nevertheless,
it is reasonable to assume that one is in a better position in the case of Denmark
to provide an index of the availability of pornography than one is in the case
of England and Wales.
6.45 There has grown up something of a folk myth about the effect of the
Danish liberalisation on the incidence of sexual offences. This may have
resulted from the general way in which studies of the Danish situation were
reported, before the studies themselves became available, in the Report of the
United States Commission on Obscenity and Pornography in 1970. It is often
said, and it was said to us, that the freeing of pornography in Denmark
resulted in a decline in sexual offences, but this kind of unguarded statement is
very vulnerable to attack. Authoritative claims about the Danish experience
are a good deal more limited. The most detailed work has been undertaken by
Dr Berl Kutchinsky of the Institute of Criminal Science at the University of
Copenhagen, a preliminary study by him having been commissioned by the
United States Commission in 1969. That study permitted only first impressions
to be given of the results of the changes made in 1967 and 1969, though we
think it right to make the point that even Dr Court, who has sought to detract
from Dr Kutchinsky's work, made it clear to us that he regards those reports
as careful, detailed and appropriately cautious about the conclusion which
might be drawn. Dr Kutchinsky has continued his work since 1970, and we
had the opportunity of discussing it with him, but the more detailed assessment
he has been preparing of the effect of Denmark's legal changes on the incidence
of sexual offences has not yet been published. This means that most of the
debate has so far been based either on a thorough study of statistics up to 1970
or on a more superficial examination of statistics since that date.
6.46 It is useful first to identify some of the problems involved in making
comparisons. First, various changes were made to the Danish law on sexual
offences at about the same time that pornography was legalised; this has led
Mrs Mary Whitehouse to make the point that of course sex crimes will diminish
very significantly if eleven categories of sex crime are removed from the statute
book. Dr Court makes a similar point in a more discreet way by suggesting that
some of Kutchinsky's data apparently were influenced by "legislative changes",
while admitting that "it is true to say that the reported decline does not arise
from legislative change". Dr Kutchinsky assured us that he had been most
careful in excluding from his figures any offence in respect of which any
liberalisation had occurred, in order to avoid the obvious pitfall identified by
Mrs Whitehouse. There are of course other disadvantages in leaving out of
account offences in respect of which there have been legal changes, since it can
be suggested (as by Dr Court) that this itself may lead to serious effects being
masked; but there is really no alternative, from the methodological point of
view, to omitting figures for offences where there can be no proper comparability.
6.47 Second, it can be suggested that there has been an alteration in the rate
of reporting of certain offences because of the different atmosphere itself partly
caused by changes in the law. Dr Kutchinsky has recognised this possibility
and Dr Court has commented that he has made a commendable attempt to
measure changes in the readiness to report offences. Part of Dr Kutchinsky's
study has been of public attitudes towards the criminality of certain acts, which,
for example, demonstrated a generation shift in attitude towards physical
indecency with women, but no similar change in attitude towards the molestation of children. A study was also made of the relative seriousness of reported
offences, the detailed results of which indicated that for such offences as
physical indecency with women the less serious offences were now much less
likely to be considered worth reporting, while there had been no similar
change in the seriousness of the reported offences of molesting children. Dr.
Kutchinsky's conclusion from this is that a drop in the number of reported
assaults on women is at least partly explained by the fact that fewer women
bother to report them, but that, with regard to sexual offences against children,
the fall in the number reported to the police does in fact represent a falling-off
in the number of such offences actually committed.
6.48 It seemed to us, however, that there was still a need for caution in
interpreting these findings. Another factor, for example, to affect the rate of
reporting of offences against children might be a growing belief that a child
could be further harmed by the court procedures involved. This factor might
affect the reporting of offences of all degrees of gravity, and if so, would not be
reflected in any changes in the seriousness of reported offences. Dr Kutchinsky's
extensive studies do go some way to meet this point; they include a survey of
attitudes towards readiness to report, which appears to show that this factor
was of some effect, but that the decrease in readiness to report offences against
children was less, relatively, than it was with other offences studied.
6.49 According to Dr Kutchinsky, the incidence of reported sex offences
before the liberalisation of pornography had remained steady for twenty years,
at about 85 cases per annum per 100,000 of the population. In 1967 this
dropped to 67 and continued to fall to a level of about 40. This was very much
an urban phenomenon, offences in the capital, having decreased by 75-80%
compared with very little change in the already lower level in rural areas.
Ordinary heterosexual crimes unaffected by changes in the law dropped consistently, most noticeably after 1966, from just over 100 per 100,000 to less
than 30 in 1973. and then levelled off.
6.50 This overall trend, however, conceals a variety of changes in relation
to particular types of offence, and it is more instructive to examine what happened to different types. Dr Court has, as in respect of other countries,
concentrated on rape. Figure 5 shows offences of rape and attempted rape
reported to the police in Copenhagen, based both on figures for the years since
1965 given to us by the Police Commissioner for Copenhagen, and on figures
published by Dr Kutchinsky in 1973. Even these are not the only figures which
have been quoted, and Dr Court has commented that the incidence of rape in
Copenhagen over the past 15 years is more difficult to establish than might be
supposed. The variation evident in Figure 5 arises from reservations which
Dr Kutchinsky has had about the recording practice of the police. His workers
have examined police records to reassess against agreed criteria the nature of
every reported case, including those where complaints had been withdrawn or
where the police had decided that no offence had been committed. As a result,
Dr Kutchinsky has a statistical record of sexual offences which differs from
that issued by the police but which he regards as more accurate and reliable.
This explains the discrepancy in the figures up to 1970 which Dr Kutchinsky
has already published, and which he will be bringing up to date when he
publishes his forthcoming book.
6.51 Whichever set of figures is regarded as the more reliable, it is
impossible to discern a significant trend in rape which could be linked in any
way with the free availability of pornography since the late nineteen-sixties.
Dr Kutchinsky emphasises that he has never suggested that such a link
exists, and said to us that be believed that the availability of pornography had
not affected the incidence of rape, one way or the other. Dr Court sees the
figures as evidence that generalised statements about the "sudden fall-off in
sex crimes" are based on an illusion, but he has gone further, and, lacking the
figures for recent years which we have included in Figure 5, has stated that
by 1974 at least "the trend towards an increase in reports of rape and
attempted rape was clear" - a statement which he has not supported with
figures. Figures for the years since 1972 show that there is in fact no such
trend, and although Figure 5 stands as a reproof to those who have drawn
a conclusion that serious sex crimes have declined since pornography became
widely available in Denmark, it certainly provides no support at all for the
thesis put to us by Dr Court.
6.52 Dr Kutchinsky has made a particular study of four types of offences
which were among those showing the largest decline in numbers since 1965.
These are: peeping, exhibitionism, indecent assaults on women and indecent
assaults on young girls. The preliminary conclusions which Dr Kutchinsky
reported to the United States Commission - which he emphasised to be only
tentative - were that changes in the readiness of women to report sexual
assaults were apparently large enough to account for the decrease in reported
offences of that type during the nineteen-sixties; that the reduction in reported
cases of indecent exposure could also be explained by a decrease in readiness
to report, but that this reduction seemed to parallel more closely the availability
of pornography, something which might possibly be explained by the effect
of pornography having been that fewer women were so shocked by real-life
exposure as to think it worth reporting, and that the reduction in reported
cases of peeping and of indecent assaults on children could not be explained
by lower reporting rates, but reflected an actual drop in the number of such
offences committed, and that this could be tentatively explained by the effect
of pornography being available.
6.53 Since peeping does not even constitute an offence in England and
Wales (those indulging in the practice are sometimes bound over to be
of good behaviour), the most significant of these tentative findings for us
is that concerning offences against children. We discussed it with Dr Kutchinsky
who confirmed that his later work has supported his view that there has been
a real and significant reduction in indecent assaults on female children, and
that this very closely correlated with the availability of pornography. The
dramatic reduction of two-thirds in the number of sex offences against
children between 1967 and 1969 was difficult to explain other than in relation
to the availability of pornography. and it was also notable that 1973 was the
last year in which a significant increase occurred in the availability of child
pornography, and was also the year after which the drop in offences levelled
off.
6.54 In looking for an explanation of this perceived relationship, Dr
Kutchinsky suggests that the literature concerning this type of offender indicates
that those who interfere with children typically do so not because they are
irresistibly attracted to children, but as a substitute for a preferred relationship
with a woman which they find difficult to achieve; but if there is another
substitute available in the form of pornography, then that serves the purpose
just as well. The fact that the reduction was most significant in offences
involving younger children and loss so in relation to more "normal" offences
against older girls supported the hypothesis.
6.55 We find it difficult to draw any firm conclusions about these more
specific matters. While we were impressed by the thoroughness with which
Dr Kutchinsky had studied the situation and the restraint with which he
sought to derive lessons from his findings, the fact remains that correlation
studies are a weak research tool, partly because of the difficulties of measurement - which still exist in relation to both the availability of pornography and
the incidence of offences in Denmark, in spite of Dr Kutchinsky's considerable
efforts to overcome them - and partly because of the impossibility of translating
a correlation into cause and effect. A common explanation of a correlation
between two sets of social data is that each is affected by some third, possibly
unknown, factor and no matter how strong a correlation, it can never, bearing
in mind all the other factors and influences that are also present, "Prove" any-
thing. We recognise, however, that Dr Kutchinsky has identified a very
dramatic reduction in reported offences against children which coincided with
the sudden upsurge in the availability of pornography and which, in consequence
of the careful studies undertaken by Dr Kutchinsky, cannot readily be
explained by any other likely factor. While Dr Kutchinsky's explanation can not be conclusive, we have to admit that it is plausible.
6.56 Dr Court has not commented at all on this finding of Dr Kutchinsky,
other than in making general criticisms of Dr Kutchinsky's work, some Of
which are patently mistaken and others apparently unjust, and in stressing
that a direct causal relationship, given the nature of the problem, could never
be demonstrated. It seemed to us that because the Danish experience is in
Dr Court's description "counter-intuitive", his faith in his intuition has led
him to the view "that it must be assumed to be false". In these circumstances
he has sought to cast as much doubt as he can on the findings, even when
that has meant attacking secondary reporting rather than the original work,
persisting in allegations of error which we were assured he had been told were
false, quoting polemicists as if they were scientific sources, and resorting to
a general broadside on Dr Kutchinsky's figures as being "utterly misleading".
We have examined with some care the work of both Dr Kutchinsky and
Dr Court in relation to the situation in Denmark and have to say that
Dr Kutchinsky's is in every respect more impressive: it is comprehensive,
detailed and scrupulously careful. Dr Court has made no pretensions to a
study of equal thoroughness and, having looked at each of the points he has
made about Dr Kutchinsky's work, we find that the one to which most weight
attaches concerns just the absolutely general difficulty of trying to draw
conclusions from the examination of statistics of this kind. However, the
conclusion which is inevitable from reading the voluminous papers by Dr
Court and Dr Kutchinsky is that it is Dr Court who has felt the less inhibited
by the argument and who has based far broader conclusions on a much more
rudimentary framework of information. If Dr Court were to be bound by
the restraints which he urges the reader to apply in judging Dr Kutchinsky's
work, his case would collapse entirely.
Other countries
6.57 We have discussed the incidence of sexual offences in England and
Wales and in Denmark at greater length than Dr Court has in any of the
papers he submitted to us because we think it important that more light
should be thrown on the subject so that the objective reader may reach his
own conclusions about Dr Court's case. Dr Court has additionally referred to
a number of other countries, such as Australia, the United States of America,
New Zealand, Sweden, South Africa, Japan and Singapore, but we do not
think it necessary to deal in detail with the situation in all of these countries.
This reference to Sweden, for example, appeared to be based on nothing more
in the way of evidence than one sentence from an article published in 1962
in The Spectator; and all his other references were subject to the same
severe criticisms that we have already mentioned, in that he produces no
evidence on which an index of the availability of pornography may be constructed; his treatment of statistics of criminal offences is superficial and
fluctuations in the figures for rape are never viewed in the context of trends
in crime as a whole; and he shows an unscientific readiness to associate any
rise in rape statistics with the influence of pornography.
6.58 A fellow South Australian writer who has criticised Dr Court 1 has
drawn attention to the fact that although Dr Court picks out Singapore as
illustrating the association between the restriction of pornography and a
stable rate of rape, in order to contrast it with a city such as London where
a permissive attitude towards pornography is coupled with an increasing
incidence of rape, rapes are, on the figures quoted by Dr Court, actually more
common in Singapore than in London. Dr Court may retort that to make
such a comparison ignores the difficulties in assuming a similarity of legal
definition cultural attitudes, police strength etc, but it seems to us that it is
equally hazardous to take the statistics of rape for an unfamiliar country and
to attempt to relate them to a vague idea of the extent to which pornography
is and has been available in that country, again in total isolation from cultural
traditions, the state of the law and social developments. Dr Court has made
no attempt to place the developments he briefly chronicles in their social
context.
6.59 We are satisfied that Dr Court's publications about pornography are
more successful in expressing condemnation of pornography than they are in
giving the study of its effects a sound scientific basis. We discount his evidence
and, to the extent that they rely on his work, the evidence of those who quote
him.
