+xThis is actually something I've been mildly interested in but not sure where to look for the data and it's certainly not something I want in my search history at the moment haha.
But basically - The officers (I assume officers?) that dig through hard drives and look at all the images to catalogue them and tally them up for offences etc. I wonder how many of them have gone on to commit offences of image possession/develop some kind of addiction or attraction to the material.
I believe they get regular counselling to keep them on the straight and narrow but it's certainly something that pops into my head.
This is a very good point. Some time ago, I saw an advert from a police force, who were recruiting civilians, to grade these kinds of images. I was shocked that somebody other than the police, were allowed to do that. Obviously, the people recruited would have to pass all sorts of psychological tests, to determine if they were suitable, but it is a job that is done by non-police as well. The official terminology for these staff is "law enforcement employees, that provide tactical support to various areas of operation at the police force". But they are civilians, not police officers.
The other people who regularly look at these kinds of images for work, are the people working for the Internet Watch Foundation, an organisation who take down images and websites. At the same time, a journalist, who might be investigating these crimes, or an academic, who might be investigating why people look at these images, can still be prosecuted, for simply being in possession of such images, because there is no automatic defence for either of these professions.
So it raises an interesting question. If simply looking at an image harms a child, then how can it be ok, for any person to look at these images? But also, what effect does it have on the viewer? The argument has always been, that some images are obscene, because they "deprave and corrupt" the viewer. That was the old law, used to prosecute people for selling hard core porn, in the UK, back in the pre internet days. It has now been abandoned, largely because the internet made it impossible to enforce, but also because it was too difficult to prove in court. Cases would go to court and the jury would say; "we are not corrupted and depraved, when we see porn, so nobody else would be either". A number of high profile prosecutions of porn sellers, in the 1970s, collapsed, because of this.
But the basic idea, that just seeing an image corrupts somebody and makes them depraved, never really went away. It is still the rationale, put forward by people like the NSPCC, Barnados, etc, as the reason for making possession of images of children illegal. They still argue that just seeing an image, will make somebody go out and harm a child.
The courts have fudged the issue, by saying that it is causing demand for more images, that is the problem, not the viewing of any particular image. That suggests that the real crime somebody is committing, is not harming a child, by viewing their image, but harming FUTURE children, who might be abused, by a producer of images, IN THE FUTURE, because of the demand that somebody has created, by viewing an image today. So I would argue, that if this is the case, then you need to look at how the person acquired the images, not whether they looked at them. It is the act of acquiring the image, which creates the demand, not the viewing of it.
The second argument, put forward by the courts, sometimes alongside, or instead of, the creating demand argument, is the argument that viewing causes harm to the child directly. This argument fails to distinguish between why somebody looks at an image, because the child is always harmed, either by having their privacy invaded, or by being reminded of the abuse they suffered, REGARDLESS of why the image was viewed. But that means a police officer harms the child too. They invade the child's privacy by looking at the image too. This would be an argument for saying that nobody, including the police, should ever be allowed to look at these images. But you never hear this argument being made, in court.
Although it is never stated by any judge, there is a presumption, which goes to the heart of the question, you are asking, which is that SOME people, can view an image and do no harm, because SOME people are corrupted and depraved, when they see an image and other people are not. This has always been the logic, behind all censorship. When a middle class person looks at a picture of a naked person, it is called art, but when a poor person looks at the same naked picture, it is called pornographic. That is because the people who set the rules, usually come from middle class backgrounds and don't believe that THEY can be corrupted by nudity, but at the same time, they DO believe that poorer people, or people who are not like them, CAN be corrupted, by seeing nude images.
This same argument underlies the law's thinking about images of children. The belief is that SOME people will be corrupted, by seeing these images and they are monsters, who need to be thrown in jail, but at the same time, others who see the exact same images won't be corrupted by them and those people are allowed to live perfectly normal lives, without ever needing to be monitored or risk assessed. But how do you tell the difference, between the two groups? At the moment, we only have one way of doing that, which is to check their browsing history and use that to read the person's mind. In the absence of a pre-crime division, in the police, which can predict who will abuse a child, after looking at an image, this is the best we can do. I guess it is an argument for saying that everybody who looks at these kinds of images, should be monitored by the police, irrespective of whether they are police themselves, or civilians working for the police, or just members of the general public. They should all receive unannounced visits, every 6 months, to check if they have been corrupted or depraved by the images they have seen. They should all have monitoring software installed on their devices, to make sure they have not committed a thought crime.
Neither one of these arguments has anything to do with possession though. It is not the act of possession that harms the child, it is the thoughts that exist in the mind of the person viewing the image, which matter. It is not about possession, or viewing, or creating demand. This all about thought crimes.