Abstract
This article focuses on interviews with two Australian young adults (and their parents) who were placed on Victoria’s Sex Offender Register after being convicted of child pornography offences for non-consensually distributing intimate images. It examines Victoria’s modality of automatic registration—which simultaneously constitutes registrants as paedophilic and responsibilised subjects—and the extent to which this modality was negotiated by both young men. This article also explores the collateral socio-political consequences of registration on career opportunities, mental health and family relationships, and details how these impacts are modulated by young adulthood.
Highlights
In 2011, it emerged that young adults in the Australian state of Victoria were being charged with the production, possession and distribution of child pornography1 after receiving or distributing images of aged naked minors via their mobile phones (Brady 2011)
This case study draws from in‐depth interviews with two young adult Victorian registrants who were convicted of child pornography offences after non‐consensually distributing intimate images 2 of aged peers
This research contributes to existing scholarship by highlighting that collateral consequences are modulated by the social condition of young adulthood, career opportunities and relationships with young family members
Summary
In 2011, it emerged that young adults (aged 18 or 19 years) in the Australian state of Victoria were being charged with the production, possession and distribution of child pornography after receiving or distributing images of aged naked minors via their mobile phones ( referred to as sexting) (Brady 2011). The focus of this case study is two‐fold It examines how Victoria’s modality of registration— largely mandatory, standardised, absent community notification, and designed for adult paedophilic perpetrators—was negotiated by these two young men who had not committed offences envisaged by the apparatus, yet were still subjected to conditions treating them as such. The analysis begins by exploring participants’ experiences of adhering to and negotiating the administrational vagaries and nuances of registration conditions underpinned by an imagined paedophilic registrant This piece continues the ongoing criminological project of examining the collateral consequences of registration (Levenson and Tewkesbury 2009; Tewksbury and Lees 2007; Tewksbury and Zgoba 2010) which ‘permeate ... This analysis reflects on the ‘everyday’ impacts of registration which may appear ‘trivial’ yet reveal the depth and complexity of participant experiences (Halsey and Harris 2011) and offer theoretical insight into the form and function of contemporary penal technologies
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