What percentage of CSAM cases are prosecuted?
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Executive summary
Reported prosecution rates for child sexual offences and CSAM vary widely by country and measure; some reports say India’s POCSO prosecution rate is “above 90%” for reported offences [1] [2]. Academic and enforcement reporting from the U.S. and elsewhere documents a growing gap between volumes of identified CSAM and the number of criminal prosecutions, with researchers and prosecutors noting prosecutions have not risen at the same rate as detections [3] [4] [5].
1. What people mean by “prosecuted” — one metric, many meanings
“Prosecuted” can mean several things: a charge filed, a case reaching court, or a conviction after trial. Public reports often quote prosecution or charge rates for statutory child‑sexual‑offence frameworks (for example POCSO in India), while academic literature about CSAM focuses on the disconnect between reports/detections and actual criminal proceedings. The India report frames “prosecution rate” as the proportion of POCSO cases that proceed in the criminal justice system and reports it as “above 90%” [1] [2]. In contrast, U.S. practitioner studies describe many CSAM reports that never translate into prosecutions because of workload, evidentiary complexity and resource limits [3] [4] [5].
2. India: high prosecution rate for POCSO reported — but context matters
Into the Light Index 2025 and media coverage cite a rise in reported POCSO offences in India from 33,210 to 64,469 and state the country’s “prosecution rate remains above 90%” [1] [2]. That figure refers to prosecutions under the POCSO framework as reported by the study and relayed by news outlets [1] [2]. Available sources do not provide granular breakdowns in these citations (for example, how “prosecution” is defined, attrition between charge and conviction, or differences across regions) beyond the headline rate [1] [2].
3. United States and academic findings: detection outpaces prosecutions
Academic and practitioner research in the U.S. shows a different picture: law enforcement and NGOs detect exponentially more CSAM than are ultimately prosecuted, and prosecutors report barriers — massive caseloads, complex digital evidence, and burnout — that limit prosecutions [3] [4] [5]. The qualitative study of 24 U.S. prosecutors concludes that prosecutions have not risen at the same rate as law‑enforcement identified CSAM and highlights gaps between CyberTips/reports and criminal proceedings [3] [5].
4. Why a large gap can exist between reports and prosecutions
Researchers and prosecutors identify practical causes for the gap: the volume of reports and data, difficulties establishing identity and jurisdiction, resource and staffing limits in ICAC task forces, and legal or evidentiary hurdles in proving production/distribution cases [3] [4]. The academic work notes 61 ICAC Task Forces affiliated with thousands of agencies but still stresses high caseloads and complexity that can impede prosecutions [3] [4].
5. Different datasets produce different headline percentages
Governmental prosecutorial statistics (as in India’s POCSO headline) can produce high prosecution‑rate figures; prosecution and conviction percentages reported by prosecution services (for example CPS area conviction ranges cited in quarterly UK data) vary by jurisdiction and offence type [1] [2] [6]. By contrast, research into CSAM as a category often highlights the mismatch between huge volumes of platform/NGO reports (e.g., CyberTips) and the far smaller number of individual criminal cases pursued [3] [5]. The two approaches measure different slices of the problem.
6. What the sources do and do not say
The Into the Light Index coverage reports India’s POCSO prosecution rate as “above 90%” but the articles do not supply detailed methodology or downstream conviction rates in these snippets [1] [2]. Scholarly and practitioner sources document that CSAM detections have grown exponentially and that prosecutions have lagged, but they do not produce a single global “percentage prosecuted” number that would cover all jurisdictions [3] [4] [5]. Available sources do not mention a definitive global prosecution percentage for CSAM prosecutions across countries.
7. Bottom line for readers — numbers need definitions
If you see a headline like “>90% prosecuted,” ask what exactly is counted: reported offences under a specific statute, cases charged, first‑hearing appearances, or convictions [1] [2] [6]. Scholarly work warns that massive rises in CSAM detection do not reliably translate into equivalent rises in prosecutions, especially in contexts where digital evidence and resource constraints impede case progression [3] [4] [5]. To evaluate any single percentage, request the underlying dataset and the operational definition of “prosecuted.”