Among the endless flood of press releases that cross my desk each week is a steady stream coming from the U.S. Attorney's office. Lots of juicy stuff such as embezzlement, fraud and plenty of drug busts. It isn't those that have me wondering today. Instead, it is what seems to be an increasing number of arrests, indictments and convictions stemming from child sexual assault/pornography cases.

A week doesn't go by that I don't receimultiple releases announcing some case involving an adult acting in a deplorable way with a child. Just this morning as I sat down to begin this column, one popped up in my inbox. This gem involved a 43-year-old man who admitted to coercing a 13-year-old girl to take sexually explicit photos and video of herself and then send them to him. Truthfully, it was one of the more tame releases of this sort that come my way. Many involve children much younger and instances of contact between the perpetrator and the victim.

Nonetheless, it has me wondering: With the advances in technology making it infinitely easier for predators to stalk and lure their prey, not to mention the simplicity of producing high-quality images and videos with a device small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand, is enough being done by the legal system to stop the exploitation of our children?

A while ago, during an interview with U.S. Attorney William Hochul, I asked him if my assessment was correct that these types of crimes were on the rise. Hochul attributed it more to a crackdown on the part of law enforcement rather than some epidemic rise in sex crimes against children.

This is where I begin to question whether we as a society are missing the bigger picture.

Kudos to federal and local agencies that are making the eradication of these types of crimes a priority. The sentences are harsh (five years is the minimum for the case I just mentioned, with as much as 20 years), and there is the sex offender status that will hang over the perpetrator when they are released. The problem with harsh sentencing (besides the fact that it certainly hasn't proven to be a deterrent to crime) is the fact that it is treating the symptom rather than the illness.

If sexually based crimes such as these are in fact rooted in disease - and according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V, they are - then how effective can a lengthy prison term really be?

Please don't misread this; offenders of this type without question need to be removed from society. But from a legal standpoint, are they not going to return five, six, 10 years later with the same mental illness for which they landed in prison in the first place, ready to resume their criminal activities?

I also wonder if more should be done in a preventive manner to stop these individuals before they offend. The Internet has created a feeding ground for the sexually deviant, and given the added social stigma of the disease, few individuals are likely to seek help prior to being caught. Add to that the fact that there is virtually unlimited access to the Internet for children and you have a recipe for disaster.

There isn't a quick fix to the proliferation of these crimes against children.

There will always be a segment of children in our population vulnerable to these types of individuals, and there will always be these individuals seeking to prey on the weakest members of our society. But it is clearly something that must be addressed.

If you want to see something sobering, go to criminaljustice.state.ny.us/nsor/, the New York State Sex Offender Registry. Type your ZIP code into the search engine and you will soon find out exactly how many sex offenders are living in your neighborhood - and those are only the ones that have been caught.

I don't profess to have the answers to this problem, but it does seem to me that the answer of "lock ‘em up and throw away the key" isn't working.

Maybe it's time to re-examine this epidemic from a fresh angle.

Matt Chandler: mchandler@bizjournals.com