Abstract:

This report provides the world’s first systematic review of criminal justice responses to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) offending. The systematic search identified 20,820 records, yielding eight eligible impact evaluations. Six studies focused on policing and two on the judicial arm of the criminal justice system. No correctional impact evaluations met our inclusion criteria.

We qualitatively synthesise the evidence and use an evidence and gap map to visualise the current state of the evaluation evidence. Future research needs to prospectively design and rigorously evaluate evidence-informed interventions that are specifically tailored to CSAM offending.