United States Attorney General Edwin Meese III has announced plans to form a “center for obscenity prosecution” within the Justice Department. The center is part of a seven-point plan to implement some of the 92 recommendations of the major report on pornography presented to Meese’s office in July (CT, July 11, 1986, p. 26).
The center’s functions will include gathering and assessing information on child pornography and other forms of illegal obscenity. It will also analyze obscenity-related court cases, assist and train U.S. attorneys and local prosecutors, and draft model anti-obscenity statutes aimed at the state and local levels.
In addition to establishing the center, Meese has appointed a task force of attorneys who will assist federal prosecutors active in obscenity litigation. The task force will also help coordinate the activities of various federal law enforcement agencies responsible for investigating obscenity cases. These agencies include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Postal Service, and U.S. Customs.
Meese’s plan calls for at least one attorney in the office of each U.S. attorney throughout the country to develop an expertise in combating illegal pornography. The program also proposes more vigorous efforts to oppose organized crime.
Meese said legislation will be introduced in Congress proposing that prosecutors be allowed to confiscate profits and property from those violating obscenity laws. He suggested laws are needed as well to make it a felony to sell or purchase a child’s services for use in the production of child pornography.
In addition, Meese proposed laws banning obscene cable television programming and “Dial-a-Porn” telephone messages. He also said laws should require records of consent and proof of age of performers, who, he said, should be barred from participating in sexually explicit productions until age 21.
When the pornography report was published in July, Meese declined to comment because he had not read it. However, the attorney general’s new proposals seem satisfactory to critics who had charged that Meese was trying to distance himself from the findings of his controversial pornography commission. The proposals support the commission’s general conclusion that pornography can be harmful to society.
At last month’s press conference, Meese said his office had received 150,000 letters in favor of tough prosecution for obscenity crimes. Many of these, no doubt, came from listeners to Christian author James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” radio program. Dobson, who served on the commission, mobilized his radio audience to write letters to Meese and President Reagan urging action on the report.
Meese said his newly launched program “recognizes the need for an expanded and intensified federal response to meet the growing international and interstate exploitation of citizens through the marketing and distribution of obscene materials.”
Dobson said he was “very excited and pleased by the stance taken by the attorney general” and that he would “watch with interest to see how these commitments are implemented.”
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