Record Detail

In England and Wales, Section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act (2003) criminalizes
the act of meeting a child—someone under 16—after grooming. The question to be
pursued in this paper is whether grooming—I confine myself to online grooming—is justly
criminalized. I shall argue that it is. One line of thought will be indirect. I shall first try to
rebut a general argument against the criminalization of acts that are preparatory to the
commission of serious offences. Grooming is one such act, but there are others, sometimes
associated with terrorism. According to me, the general argument misapplies certain
considerations about autonomy that are alleged to be in force in other areas of criminal law.
Contrary to that general argument, criminalization of preparatory acts does not, in general,
bypass the agency of citizens. Moreover, the criminalization of preparatory acts can disrupt
activity that would have led to very serious crime, and with relatively low costs to the
perpetrators, costs that reflect the non-occurrence of the more serious crime. There is
evidence that grooming is harmful in itself, and so another point against the general
argument is its assumption that preparatory offences are often harmless or at least victimless.
There are objections to some of the undercover policing techniques that lead to a
Section 15 prosecution, but these objections are not all weighty.