In an effort to stop the opening of Very Intimate Pleasures adult store, opponents again tried to pair the presence of an adult store in their neighborhood to a rise in sexually related violent crime. They claim the store would attract unsavory characters and endanger children that live in the area.
“We can link it [pornography] to attitude; we can't link it to sexually-related behavior,” Lori Sudderth, an associate professor at Quinnipiac University told the Connecticut Journal Enquirer. Sudderth also deflates the notion that an adult bookstore attracts more dangerous people, explaining that Internet sales and distribution has replaced a trip to the local store.
Clinton Sanders, a University of Connecticut professor and an expert in deviant behavior, said, “All those arguments are a smokescreen for the main concern: That these are dirty things and we don't want dirty people coming here.”
Amazing Superstore, an adult store that features DVDs, toys and lingerie, has operated in town for more than seven years, and its presence has not caused a spike in crime in the community. Mainstream movie retailer Hollywood Video has generated close to twice the amount of calls to police than its adult counterpart.
“There was no spike in crime from the opening of that business, [Amazing Superstore]” said police Capt. Marc Montminy. “Certainly, facilities like pool halls and bars require more police service than a book store, but drawing a correlation between an adult store and crime in the area is pretty thin.”
Montminy added that an additional patrol around an adult store is needless because crime statistics skew toward heavily populated areas, with no relation to surrounding businesses.
Federal studies back up the comments of Sudderth, Sanders and Montminy. The President’s Commission on Obscenity in 1970 found that exposure to pornography has no causal relationship to violent crime. The Meese commission, convened 15 years later, reached the same conclusion.