"Prosecution of online comments is exceedingly rare. Nationwide, only about 30 such cases are brought each year, according to online hate speech expert and University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron.
“It is quite rare indeed,” Citron said via email about such cases. “When it comes to the enforcement of federal terroristic threat law, there are on average 30 cases brought a year. Of course, that does not count state threat prosecutions (no systematic collection of statistics there). But my work suggests it is quite low.”
“There are several intersecting reasons why threat laws are under enforced,” said Citon, pointing to “social attitudes” in particular.
“Victims are told that they should just ignore the threats, it is just kids being kids. Law enforcement also often receives little to no training on threat and stalking laws. Also, while law enforcement is used to ordinary street crimes, they often don’t know how to go about investigating online crimes,” she said."
- Date Published:12/17/2015
- Original Publication:The Guardian