The summaries are designed to provide a reference for persons researching criminal child abuse legislation; they present an abridged and potentially incomplete picture of charging statutes in various States and is intended only as an initial reference. The entries do not include sentencing information for every statute, although this information is occasionally included in the text of statutes annotated here. This compilation incorporates only crimes involving the production, distribution, and possession of child pornography in any medium, but omits general pornography and obscenity statutes unless referred to in the relevant laws. Provisions that refer to determining the age of a child are also omitted, as are exemptions for legitimate purposes of pornography, such as law enforcement use. Definitions are included only when referred to in the statute and needed for understanding it. Defenses to the crime of child pornography are not included here.