Child pornography should be legal to posses.

And I agree that the production o CP is a criminal exploitation of a child- however, when somebody producers CP who is doing the exploiting? Who is the person who is actually harming the child? Obviously the producer is the person who made the video or took the photos, and is thusly the one who harmed the child. The producer is the one whom distributed the CP, further causing harm to the child. The viewer caused no harm to the child at all. Pictures and videos of other crimes such as murder, arson, and other serious criminal offenses are all widely available- both real and fake. Few people, however, would suggest that possession of videos or pictures depicting other tragedies cause them to happen more often, as there is more 'demand' for them. The video or pictures of the abuse is happenstance, and unrelated to it in the way you're trying to relate it to. People do not abuse their children to pleasure people on the internet. If you claim that my claim that 60% of the people arrested are innocent, you deny your very own statistics, which state "40% of all child pornography arrestees in the US are dual offenders who have sexually victimized children in the past (http://www.missingkids.com......).", meaning that 60% of all CP offenders had no prior convictions of child abuse. Regardless of whether or not you contradict your own statements, it is clear that you are trying to correlate CP with child sexual abuse, why? Because child sexual abuse is the BAD thing- CP itself is not legally bad. Even if a single person is arrested for possession of CP, even if he had molested a child, is unjust. They have already committed a crime, the crime of child sexual abuse (if they had committed such), and therefore will already be punished for it. There is absolutely no sense in punishing somebody for the chance that they may be committing another crime when you can simply charge the real criminals. You yourself claim that the "perpetrator" is knowingly taking advantage of a child- I contend that the perpetrator should indeed be punished severely. The viewer of the CP is not taking advantage of a child, the producer is. Laws against theft, while not deterring thieves strongly, are absolute. If somebody stole my laptop, he stole something of mine. I am the victim, my rights have been violated. As far as CP goes, it is simply a deterrent crime, such as outlawing guns, alcohol, colored people, knifes, or anything else that 'might' correlate with another serious crime with a victim. Each arrest could not take away as much of the market as arresting a producer, the real criminal, could. You suggest we throw innocent people* in jail for thoughtcrime, before they even made the move to molest a child. *I know you don't like me calling them innocent, because you believe they have committed a crime- however, they have not committed a crime against a person. You can not name a victim they harmed directly. The producer of the CP harmed the child by not only producing the material, but molesting the child and distributing it across the net, or other media, causing substantial damage. The viewer is just a by-product, and has had no direct contact in the abusing of the child or the distribution of the material, both of which can be pinned on the producer.