Figure 1. Estimated Number of Arrests for Cp Production, by Year Trends in Arrests for Child Pornography Production: the Third National Juvenile Online Victimization Study (njov‐3)

This rise was driven largely by a dramatic increase in cases involving " youth‐produced " sexual images – pictures taken by minors, usually of themselves, which met legal definitions of child pornography. In most of these cases, an adult offender who solicited images from a minor was the person arrested. Reflecting this trend, there were also in‐ creases in the proportion of adolescent victims and of cases in which victims and offenders were face‐to‐face acquaintances. This bulletin tracks trends in arrests in cases involving the pro‐ duction of child pornography (CP), including characteristics of victims and offenders and dynamics of cases. The data come from 3 waves of the National Juvenile Online Victimization (NJOV) Study that examined arrests in 2000, 2006 and 2009. See the end of this report for a description of the methodol‐ ogy of the NJOV Study. What is child pornography production? US federal law states that " any person who employs, uses, persuades, induces, entices or coerces " a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing an im‐ age of such conduct commits a felony (18 USC 2251). Federal statutes that criminalize child p0rnography define " child " as age 17 or younger, and CP as the " visual depiction … of sexu‐ ally explicit conduct " (18 USCS 2256). Sexually explicit con‐ duct includes acts such as intercourse, bestiality and mastur‐ bation, as well as " lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area. " Because the federal statute defines child to include 16 and 17 year old teenagers, youth under 18 who can legally con‐ sent to sexual intercourse (16 in most states) cannot consent to being photographed in sexually explicit poses. Further, adults who persuade or induce minors to create sexually ex‐ plicit images of themselves are generally considered CP pro‐ ducers. Many states mirror federal law, although there is some variation in the definition of child and the content that is pro‐ scribed. Arrests for crimes involving CP production more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2009; the growth is largely attributable to cases of " youth‐ produced sexual images " solicited from minors by adult offenders. In 2009, US law enforcement agencies made an estimated 1,910 arrests for crimes that included CP production, almost 5 times as many as in 2000 and more than twice as many as in 2006 (Figure 1). The largest part of the …