Refining the contours of intimate image abuse offences

Research continues to bring to public consciousness the range of ways in which intimate images may culpably be used to cause significant harm to individual and collective interests. This is causing jurisdictions to compare notes and assess whether there is coherency and adequacy in the coverage of existing offences and whether reforms are necessary. The challenge is to develop offences that are wide enough to capture behaviours that are sufficiently culpable to be deserving of criminalization without bringing less harmful or less culpable behaviours within the reach of the criminal law. This requires a careful balancing of the physical, mental, and defence elements of intimate image abuse offences. With this in mind this chapter takes a comparative approach to evaluating how offences can optimally be designed to address intimate image abuse. Overall, it is argued that a ladder approach, with scaffolded offences, can best reflect harms and degrees of culpability so that the specific wrongdoing in intimate image abuse is accurately captured, packaged, and labelled.

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