Smut Review Yields No Prosecutions

An outsourced Justice Department program to review adult Web sites for obscene materials has not resulted in a single prosecution.

It’s not for a lack of referrals, the New York Times reports. The review program, run for two years under an annual grant of about $150,000, has passed along 67,000 complaints deemed legitimate to the DOJ and federal prosecutors.

Two retired law enforcement officers review suspect Web sites based on complaints by citizens through the Web site ObscenityCrimes.org. The program is run by Morality in Media, a conservative religious group.

DOJ officials say they were obliged to fund the program because of a congressional earmark inserted in a spending bill.

Most of the 24 obscenity cases prosecuted by the Justice Department during the Bush administration involved film producers who failed to keep proper records showing actors were not minors, the Times says.