Delegated Protection: Public Power and the Governance of Child Sexual Exploitation Online

Author: Renee Sahatdjian

University of Michigan Ford School of Public Policy

ABSTRACT

Reports of technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation have increased substantially over the past decade, even as governments have expanded criminal penalties and platform-based detection systems. This article examines online child sexual exploitation as a problem of public governance rather than individual deviance or technological misuse. Focusing on sovereign states in high-income democratic contexts, particularly North America and Europe, it analyzes how governments have increasingly delegated core child-protection functions—including detection, reporting, and initial classification of harm—to private technology companies operating through self-regulatory and cooperative regimes. Drawing on public administration and regulatory governance scholarship, the article argues that this delegation reflects a reconfiguration of public power in which states retain punitive authority while exercising limited preventive oversight over the digital environments in which exploitation occurs. The result is a governance arrangement that diffuses accountability, embeds public protection functions within privately governed systems, and constrains institutional capacity for prevention. By conceptualizing technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation as a public harm shaped by governance design, the article reframes the policy problem as one of institutional responsibility rather than enforcement failure and identifies conditions under which public institutions can restore preventive authority while maintaining collaboration with private actors.

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