The law was not tightened until 2021, now the role follows backwards. In order to give the judiciary more leeway in the prosecution of child pornography, several federal states are calling for the paragraph to be amended. The law is currently also affecting the wrong people.
Several federal states want to defuse the child pornography paragraphs that were only revised last year. In order to comply with the requirement of proportionality, the "threats of punishment would have to be corrected according to the respective unlawful content of the act," said Brandenburg Minister of Justice Susanne Hoffmann of the "Welt".
The initiative is about the recent tightening of paragraph 184b on the distribution, acquisition and possession of child pornography content. With a new regulation from last year, it was determined that the basic offense of sexualized violence against children is classified as a crime - and no longer as a misdemeanour.
Hoffmann complained that with the new regulation, failure to delete a picture sent unintentionally to the recipient in good time is subject to a minimum prison sentence of one year. According to the "Welt", a proposal from Brandenburg for the conference of justice ministers on November 10 now provides for the offenses to be downgraded again to offenses or for less serious cases to be introduced.
Berlin, Saxony, Bavaria and Rhineland-Palatinate announced to the newspaper that they would support the application from Brandenburg. The Rhineland-Palatinate Minister of Justice Herbert Mertin said: "It is not the classification as a crime that protects the weakest in our society, but the prevention of crime opportunities and consistent criminal prosecution."
Representatives of the traffic light coalition in the federal government were open to another change in the law. "We see the practical problems and significant contradictions in valuation that the current version of paragraph 184b of the Criminal Code leads to," said Sonja Eichwede, spokeswoman for legal policy for the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
The Green right-wing politician Canan Bayram told the "Welt": "Public prosecutors and courts must have the opportunity to react to the various case constellations in a way that is appropriate to the crime and guilt." The current version of paragraph 184b StGB does not allow this. For example, young people who send each other photos of themselves invariably commit a crime."
