This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.
(Now that I’m watching the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)
“Crush” Season 10. Wikipedia summary is: “A high school student (Carly Schroeder) falls down a flight of stairs sending her into a coma. The SVU is alerted when the doctor's examination reveals signs of physical abuse. Upon waking, the girl refuses to name her attacker, even though the detectives already have two suspects: the girl's boyfriend and a self-described 'drama-geek' (Ezra Miller) with a crush on her. Frustrated, a family court prosecutor (Melinda McGraw) convinces Benson to use sexting as a pretext for arresting her for distributing child pornography. Faced with this ultimatum and helped by Stabler's daughter Kathleen (Allison Siko), the victim admits to being abused by her boyfriend. Afterwards, the detectives plan a sting operation against a biased judge (Swoosie Kurtz) and her clerk (Geoffrey Cantor) after they are unable to make the child pornography charges disappear. “
This episode is partly about teenagers 13-17yo creating their own porn without any adult involvement (and without any little kids). In this episode a new ADA working with SVU charges a 15-year old girl with creating and distributing child porn (she took pictures of herself and sent them to her boyfriend) and detective Benson initially but reluctantly cooperates. Although in a season 16 episode SVU comes down pretty hard on some teenagers for creating and sharing similar porn (only teenage minors, no little kids or adults), in this episode Benson says a few things about how inappropriate the charges are.
Those two episodes are the only ones where I disagree with more than a tiny chunk of what the SVU does- scattered throughout the series there are some very minor story elements (i.e. some of the tricks they use to get a confession) that I don’t like, but I approve of them going after the perps they go after about 99.9% of the time. But I have a problem with them going after teenage minors for creating child porn when everyone involved is 13-17yo. A child porn charge is a very serious thing and a conviction can probably ruin your life.
I have already admitted twice on this blog that I like porn. Although I generally support our laws on child porn, in the season 16 episode I mentioned above, I feel like the detectives came down too hard on the teens. If minor teens want to create porn with their peers (no adults or little kids), they shouldn’t be criminalized. I have heard that in real life some under-18 teens have been charged with child porn crimes for making porn with their peers and that’s wrong. On the other hand, adults shouldn’t be looking at that stuff for the following reasons: 1) you can’t be certain that it ISN’T created by sick adults, 2) if it is porn that exclusively involves teen minors, the odds are they don’t want adults looking at it, and 3) even if they are pics and videos taken/made by (and of) teens 13-17yo, they’re at least a year from living on their own- they’re still KIDS living at home with their parents. And although I don’t think those teens should be charged with child porn crimes for the kind of porn I'm discussing here, discouraging them from putting that stuff on the web is a good idea- they might regret it later on in life and adults looking at it might get the idea of trying to have sex with a teenage minor when that’s almost always wrong or at least inappropriate.
UPDATE 4/21/21 At some point in the last several years Connecticut made this a less serious crime. And in 2016 New Mexico legalized it for teenage minors completely. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few other states that have also done this. UPDATE 4/25/21 Colorado also made it a less serious crime in 2018; Washington made it a less serious crime in 2019; According to this, as of 2017, the following states have made it a less serious crime: AZ, FL, IL, LA, MO, NE, NV, NJ, TX, UT, VT. (UPDATE 4/29/21 You should also look at some of the web-pages here (the ACLU more or less agrees with me about this)).
UPDATE 4/5/22 I just watched, for the first time in 3-4 years, the season 16 episode I have mentioned. I am reluctant to get into all the details of what happened in that episode and what should happen in similar situations in real life. But I feel pretty much the same as before. Possession and creating and sharing this kind of child porn should be either a less serious crime for minors or no crime at all for minors. But I think that it should be a crime for minors to put it on the Web- much less serious than a felony, but some kind of misdemeanor. And I still feel that the police came down too hard on the teens in the season 16 episode.
At the very end there’s another thing that deserves a note. The judge is sentencing people to a private corrections institution in Ohio that is run by her cousin. SVU exposes her.
“Solitary” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “When a woman (Deborah Ann Woll) is reported missing, her boyfriend (Bobby Campo) points Detectives Benson and Stabler in the direction of her downstairs neighbor (Stephen Rea), a convicted bank robber who spent nineteen years in solitary confinement. A surprising twist to the case exposes more of the ex-con's dark past.”
There are two note-worthy things.
1) The ADA refers to water-boarding as torture.
2) The negative effects of solitary confinement in prison are illustrated when Stabler spends 3 days in solitary as an experiment and says that it felt like a week.
“Hammered” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “After a night of heavy drinking, an alcoholic (Scott Foley) wakes up to a bloody apartment, a terrible cut on his head and a dead woman in his bed. Unable to recall the night before, he immediately calls the police. Benson and Stabler suspect the crime is the result of a deadly love triangle while Munch and Tutuola discover that the victim was an abortion doctor. After talking to her ex-husband (Chris McKinney), the detectives learn about the numerous death threats that were sent to her. The squad arrests the man who originally called them when they find him beating up his business partner (Chris Bauer) for convincing him to drink again. This leads to a trial which exposes Sonya Paxton's drinking problem.”
There’s briefly some good pro-choice stuff. Not every detective in SVU is onboard with that but overall it’s a pro-choice show.
Although they say this to someone they think might be more of a suspect than a victim, they do say that they don’t care if he was using illegal drugs, they just want the truth.
“Users” Season 11. Wikipedia summary is: “After a crime scene photo of a murdered teenage girl (iJustine) rapidly becomes an Internet phenomenon, the police initiate an investigation with the victim's father (James Colby). When he points the detectives towards his daughter's suspicious therapist (James Frain), it turns out that the man's alibi is airtight. While Munch and Fin are busy tracking down the girl's stolen credit card, Warner and Stabler discover that one of the other therapy patients (Ryan Kelley) has broken into the morgue. The case takes an unexpected turn when the SVU realizes that their best potential witness is desperate for heroin. Huang puts his medical license on the line to get him an illegal drug with a high effectiveness for treating addiction.”
There’s talk at one point about how the pharmaceutical industry won’t produce an alternative to both heroin and methadone called Ibogaine or Ibogaine hydochloride. It’s apparently much better than methadone at helping heroin addicts but the patent expired and drug companies can’t make a lot of money off of it so no company is willing to pay for it to go through FDA trials and it’s therefore illegal in America. If this episode is right, corporate greed among pharmaceutical companies is blocking something that can end heroin addiction better than methadone does.
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