The state’s top law enforcement agent to those possessing and distributing child porn: If you harm our kids, we’re going to catch and prosecute you.
The number of people charged with possession of child pornography is rising in New Jersey.
During a news conference Thursday afternoon, Attorney General Matt Platkin, the chief law enforcement agent in the Garden State, said over the past several years there has been an uptick in reports of the number of tips about suspected predatory activity online, which has led to more investigations by New Jersey State Police’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, known as ICAC.
“As a result of these efforts, the number of defendants charged and prosecuted in these cases has significantly increased,” Platkin said.
In 2020, the state’s Division of Criminal Justice charged 232 defendants with child sexual abuse offenses. Last year, 404 suspects were arrested and charged, a 74% increase. A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said that 104 individuals have been arrested and charged with related crimes so far in 2025.
What is missing from this article is the number of people convicted for possession of unlawful images. It’s easy to arrest and charge a person. It’s much more difficult to convict them. Makes me wonder how much money was wasted on making arrests and charging people who were not convicted. In addition, those who were arrested and charged, but not convicted, were harmed both financially and psychologically.
Just going to keep getting bigger and bigger!
CP is being used to address other things. Things that have nothing to do with a desire to have sex with children, or sex at all.
There’s a big long list of things that CP did for me, none of which have anything to do with kids or sex. It created an immersive fantasy world that I could escape to, that “addressed” all kinds of emotional needs for me. A Drug Fantasy where I was “Happy” unlike my real life, of endless 💩
Mostly it drugged me into feeling, not alone.
Our increasingly self isolating lives of distrusting, fearful, hateful, resentfulness are going to keep making this, and all other drugs, bigger and bigger.
Human beings are not intended to live in isolation like we do. Millions of people, sitting alone in their fortress of solitude, wishing they weren’t so lonely. Some will be ok, others are going to “Fix that” with drugs… one of the drugs they will use will be CP.
Millions already do.
Pretty easy to get an increase in cp arrests considering the government plants it on its victims. What’s weird is these people in positions of trust never get charged for being in possession of, viewing, or disseminating it. The system is infiltrated by our enemies and Americans are under attack.
So many good points in all the posts here. I would imagine if there is any shred of real evidence such as an image on a device, text, email, social media, or with the internet provider, there will be a conviction. People arrested for possessing illegal images typically don’t plead not guilty, even if it was a plant or sting. The risk is too high for ridiculously long prison sentences so they take a plea.
I do believe there could be an increase in such arrests and convictions because the illegal images are everywhere online. Including planted by LE because they don’t know how to stop the proliferation so they do this instead.
And to AlsoME’s point, sex and porn addiction is on the rise in young people. These generations are alone, isolated, and lost many social bonds of community especially since the pandemic. Sex / porn addiction doesn’t necessary mean minors, but if you’re a minor with this problem, you will likely seek out other minors. And even if not, online porn takes many people down a path they never intended with increasing violent and illegal images.
How exactly do these “tips” come about? I have a hard time believing those hooked on CP are going around to people saying “Hey, check this out.” I have a hard time believing anyone just happened to be walking by and happened to notice someone watching it. And if they did, shouldn’t they be charging the tipster for viewing the same thing?
I have a hunch a lot of these CP charges stemmed from unsolicited sending by the tipster or, ironically, the ICAC agency or collaborators.
The ICAC has been talking about an uptick in cyber tips for nearly a decade, but law enforcement doesn’t act on most tips. I believe the increase in arrests has more to do with LEOs acting on more tips, because they have nothing better to do. Since violent crime is down significantly in New Jersey, LEOs are going after more people on the keyboard. Interesting enough, the opposite was true when I was busted in Milwaukee County, at a time when the city was experiencing its highest homicide rates. But that had more to do with an incompetent DA who knows little about public safety. Evidently, he felt viewing material on a computer deserved more priority & jail time than robbers, drug dealers and carjackers.
The article seems to lump child Predators with CP. the article also says “ related crimes”. What a pile of crap this article is. Nothing more than a slanted opinion piece meant to cause public fear.
The email I sent to the parent PBS station that ran this article.
The reporter’s recent article on child porn arrests in New Jersey was a hack piece if I ever read one.
1. While many might have been arrested, he failed to point out what percentage were convicted. Like the saying goes, you can arrest anyone for anything. Proving guilt is a whole different animal.
2. Equating child porn viewing with dangerous online predators is about as big a stretch as one can possibly make. Study after study over the last 20 yrs. has shown zero correlation between the two offenses. In fact the two are mutually exclusive with little if any overlap.
3. The most relevant truth about child abuse is that the majority is done inside the home by family or friends, not by someone looking at porn a 1000 miles away.
So if he is going to call himself an investigative journalist, then how about a complete and thorough job, instead of one he obviously did in between his afternoon nap and early bird supper at Denny’s.
PS , Janice, Hope you don’t mind that I mimicked your point in my email. 😎🤙🫵🏼
“If you harm our kids..,”
Funny how they’re not this overly-exuberant about preventing school shootings It’s easier to go after porn than guns.