“A convicted peeping Tom is suing a California city to force the police to return his collection of more than 700 pornographic videos and magazines seized during a criminal investigation. Dennis Saunders, who was jailed in 2002 for secretly videotaping a woman and a 17-year-old woman, sued the city of San Rafael in March after the police refused to return the porn, which his lawyer said was unrelated to Saunders’ criminal case. ‘There’s no legal authority for them to withhold this material,’ said Saunders’ attorney, Jon Rankin. ‘There’s nothing dangerous about this stuff. You can buy it at any corner video store.’ Saunders was convicted in 2002 of more than 40 misdemeanors for secretly taping a 45-year-old woman and 17-year-old woman in their bedrooms and bathrooms inside their San Rafael apartment complex. He was sentenced to more than eight years in jail, but released in August after time off for good behavior… Rankin had a pragmatic take on the case. ‘If he sits there and watches movies all day,’ he said, ‘maybe he won’t be out there looking through windows anymore.’” — ABC News (US)

Mr. Saunders looks rather like a pharmacist who, when handing you your prescription, lets his hand linger too long on yours. When you walk away, you feel stained by the touch. Probably his victims felt the same way when they realized he’d been secretly taping them. He has eyes that could give a girl cooties.

But even if he is a creep, there is no legal reason for the city of San Rafael to impound his porn. Evidently he had about $10,000 invested in legally acquired visual stimulation. If authorities are refusing to return it, the likely reason is that they have “lost” the stuff. They’ll blame databases or warehouse facilities when really there is free porn drifting back to the homes of bailiffs, transcribers, and legal clerks. The city will end up having to buy him a new porn collection. That will make the taxpayers happy.

Meanwhile you have to wonder about the argument made by Mr. Saunders’ lawyer. If the guy’s watching his porn, the lawyer argued, he won’t be out there peeping in windows. On one hand, that’s ridiculous. The guy had all that porn in his possession when he committed his crimes, so obviously the porn did not distract him from his voyeurism. On the other hand, it has a sensible ring to it. If you deprive the guy of all his porn, he’ll probably be more desperate for stimulation and thus more inclined to reoffend. Give him back his porn and maybe he’ll be satisfied, at least for a while.

Of course, this line of thinking also opens up a more general question: can pornography work as a surrogate to drain the danger from deviant impulses? If so, should sex criminals be furnished with free porn in order to keep them from reoffending? After all, heroin addicts are sent to methadone clinics. Should sex criminals be sent to porn clinics?

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