Pornography and Sex Crimes in the Czech Republic

Pornography continues to be a contentious matter with those on the one side arguing it detrimental to society while others
argue it is pleasurable to many and a feature of free speech. The advent of the Internet with the ready availability of sexually
explicit materials thereon particularly has seemed to raise questions of its influence. Following the effects of a new law
in the Czech Republic that allowed pornography to a society previously having forbidden it allowed us to monitor the change
in sex related crime that followed the change. As found in all other countries in which the phenomenon has been studied, rape
and other sex crimes did not increase. Of particular note is that this country, like Denmark and Japan, had a prolonged interval
during which possession of child pornography was not illegal and, like those other countries, showed a significant decrease
in the incidence of child sex abuse.