Loosening the gag: the Crown Prosecution Service's revised legal guidance on the Obscene Publications Act 1959

ABSTRACT

In July 2018, the Crown Prosecution Service published a consultation document relating to the Obscene Publications Act 1959. This contained indications of a number of changes in the advice which the CPS wished to give to prosecutors considering possible obscenity cases, and consultees were asked for their views on the proposed changes. The CPS produced a summary of the responses, and revised prosecution guidelines were issued in January 2019, which took account of some of the points made by consultees. This article considers the major changes proposed in the consultation, indicates the extent to which these were modified as a result of the responses received by the CPS, and examines the extent to which the revised prosecution guidelines mark a liberalization of prosecution practice in this area of the law.

KEYWORDS:

• Crown Prosecution Service
• Obscene Publications Act 1959
• British Board of Film Classification
• Video Recordings Act 1984
• guidelines
• BDSM
• pornography
• pornographic
• harm

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Julian Petley is Professor of Journalism at Brunel University London. He is the author of Censorship: a Beginner's Guide (Oneworld 2009) and Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain (Edinburgh University Press 2011), and his most recent book is the second edition of the co-authored Culture Wars: the Media and the British Left (Routledge 2019).