Attorney General Gonzales Announces Implementation of Project Safe
Childhood
Adapted from the U.S. Department of Justice
May 17, 2006
 Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced the beginning of
the nationwide implementation of Project Safe Childhood (PSC), a Department
of Justice initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation
and abuse.
As technology advances and as the Internet becomes more accessible,
the number of computer-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes committed
against children--including child pornography offenses and enticement
crimes--is expected to continue to grow. Introduced in February 2006,
the goal of Project Safe Childhood is to enhance the national response
to this growing threat to America's youth.
"We are in the midst of an epidemic of sexual abuse and exploitation
of our children," said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "Project
Safe Childhood will help law enforcement and community leaders prevent,
investigate, and prosecute sexual predators and pornographers who target
our children and grandchildren."
In remarks made at a press conference today, the Attorney General
announced the key first steps of the PSC initiative. These steps include
that within two weeks every United States Attorney will designate a
PSC Coordinator, and begin to meet with local partners in developing
a plan for his or her district. As part of the initiative, the Attorney
General asked U.S. Attorneys to develop these localized plans for implementation
of PSC within 90 days after naming a PSC Coordinator. The steps to
implementing PSC were explained in more detail in an official Project
Safe Childhood guide, released by the Department of Justice in conjunction
with the Attorney General's announcement.
A critical element of PSC is for U.S. Attorneys to partner with the
Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces, a national network
of 46 regional task forces funded by the Department's Office of Justice
Programs. The ICAC task forces have been protecting America's children
since 1998. This year, the Department of Justice will award more than
$14 million to the ICAC program in conjunction with PSC. In addition
to the ICAC task forces, U.S. Attorneys will partner with their federal
investigative counterparts, other state and local law enforcement officials
in their districts, and community partners in the districts. In developing
these partnerships and in fashioning strategic plans in consultation
with their partners, U.S. Attorneys will address the five core elements
of the PSC initiative:
*Greater integration of law enforcement efforts. Federal, state, and
local law enforcement officials have to be more coordinated in investigating
and prosecuting child exploitation cases, and in identifying and rescuing
victims.
*Local execution of leads from national operations. There are several
ongoing national investigations and programs - investigative leads
and victim-identification leads from the National Center for Missing
and Exploitation Children (NCMEC), and nationwide investigations of
distribution mechanisms such as file servers or websites conducted
by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, and others, and coordinated by the Criminal Division's
Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section. Local Project Safe Childhood
partnerships are ideally situated to pursue the local leads that are
generated from these national operations.
*Increased federal involvement in child pornography and enticement
cases. Given the beneficial investigative tools and the stiffer penalties
oftentimes available under federal law, U.S. Attorneys and the federal
investigative agencies will be expected to increase the number of child
sexual exploitation investigations and prosecutions. The goal is to
ensure the worst offenders get the maximum amount of jail time possible.
*Training of federal, state, and local law enforcement. A primary
goal of Project Safe Childhood is to substantially increased the number
of officers and prosecutors who are properly trained to investigate
and prosecute computer-facilitated crimes against children. Members
of the Project Safe Childhood partnerships will therefore attend training
programs facilitated by NCMEC, the ICAC program, and other ongoing
programs.
*Community awareness and educational programs. Project Safe Childhood
will partner with existing national public awareness and educational
programs that exist through NCMEC and the ICAC program, as well as
other federal, state, and local prevention programs, in order to raise
national awareness about the threat of online sexual predators and
child pornographers, and to provide the tools and information to parents
and youngsters seeking to use the Internet responsibly or to report
possible violations.
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