On Wednesday, Germany’s parliament voted to reduce the minimum penalties applied to those convicted of possession of child pornography. According to the draft bill, a minimum penalty should include three months imprisonment for acquisition and possession.
The press release from Germany’s parliament wrote that distribution of child pornographic materials would incur a minimum of six months imprisonment. The changes made to the bill classify the offense as a misdemeanor rather than a crime, however, it is still pending parliamentary approval.
The original bill that criminalized the possession and distribution of child pornography came into effect less than three years ago. The higher penalty of 5 years imprisonment will remain, AP News quoted Justice Minister Marco Buschmann as saying.
The minister specified the bill’s adaptation was needed as the previous law was too “inflexible” and had “numerous problems in practice.”
He cited that this particularly refers to: “People who receive such material involuntarily — for example in the context of a WhatsApp parents’ group — risk a minimum sentence of one year.” The same, he noted, applies to teachers who happen across pornographic material on students’ cellphones and have forwarded it to the child’s parents, Buschmann explained.
Buschmann stated that this change will enable courts and prosecutors to “react flexibly and proportionately to each individual case.” He also noted that investigators, courts, and state-level justice ministers had advocated for this adjustment.
The parliament’s statement read: “At the request of the coalition factions, the committee decided to make a consequential change to Section 127 of the Criminal Code, Operating criminal trading platforms on the Internet.”
Changing this section of the code means that offenses have been downgraded. Upon presenting the draft bill, the federal government cited “feedback and demands from practice for a tightening of the penalty range in 2021 as justification.”