By John Woodhouse

What is the law in England and Wales and Northern Ireland? It is an offence to possess an extreme pornographic image in England and Wales and Northern Ireland under section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008. An “extreme pornographic image” is an image which is both pornographic and extreme.2 An image is “pornographic” if it is of “such a nature that it must reasonably be assumed to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal.”3 An image is “extreme” if it is “grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character” and depicts “in an explicit and realistic way” any of the following: • an act which threatens a person's life • an act which results, or is likely to result, in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals • an act which involves sexual interference with a human corpse • a person performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal (whether dead or alive)an act which involves the non-consensual penetration of a person's vagina, anus or mouth by another with the other person's penis, or • an act which involves the non-consensual sexual penetration of a person's vagina or anus by another with a part of the other person's body or anything else The latter two categories of prohibited material were added through section 37 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015. This followed criticism from academics and women’s groups that the 2008 act originally failed to make it an offence to possess “rape pornography”.