Indecent images are graded according to severity by the courts. Find out about the different categories of indecent images and UK sentencing guidelines. Indecent image offences are grouped into three categories - A, B and C, here is what each category means.
What is a Category C Image? In the UK, indecent images of children are divided into three categories by severity: Category A (most serious), B, and C. Category C images are the lowest in seriousness, but they are still illegal and can carry serious consequences if found in possession, made, or distributed. Category C - Indecent images not falling in categories A or B In practice, the police will count and categorise these images, the officer supplying descriptions of specimen images taken from each category.
What are Category C images? Category C indecent images are the least severe of the three categories and can contain images of children in erotic or sexual poses. Level 3 - Non-penetrative sexual activity between adults and children. What is a Category C indecent image of a child? Category C offences are the least severe.
Images of children in erotic poses fall into this category. In most cases, images found on a defendant's devices fall into two or more categories. Child abuse images are graded by trained officers who assign them a category based on their content: category A - images involving penetrative sexual activity, sexual activity with an animal or sadism; category B - images involving non-penetrative sexual activity; and category C - other indecent images not classed within categories A or B, which do.
Definition of indecentThis is an issue for the Court to decide in accordance with established standards of propriety. It is an objective test for the jury. The age of the child is a relevant consideration.
The circumstances in which the photograph came to be taken and motive of the taker are not relevant; it is not the defendant's conduct which must be indecent but the photograph of the child. Category C images Indecent images in the C category are generally images depicting some sexually suggestive content or posing, either indicatively or in a nudist environment. Even if there were a realistic prospect of conviction in the case of a child making an indecent image of themselves, it is highly unlikely to be in the public interest to prosecute that child.
A prosecution for the consensual taking and sharing of images by children with children as part of sexual experimentation is unlikely to require prosecution.