Berl Kutchinsky

Berl Kutchinsky (1935-1995) was a Danish professor of criminology at the University of Copenhagen, internationally recognized for his research into the public health effects of pornography. Working from Denmark, the first nation to legalize hardcore pornography in 1969, he spent two decades studying crime statistics across three countries and found that increased availability of pornography had not led to increased sexual violence, and that certain sex crimes, including child sexual abuse, had declined in Denmark over the period he studied. He helped draft Denmark's 1980 child pornography ban, and his final work, Law, Pornography, and Crime: The Danish Experience, was published posthumously in 1999.