The author said he had a good friend who was imprisoned for downloading child porn.
Best-selling author John Grisham has claimed men who view child pornography online should be given lighter prison sentences.
In an interview with the Telegraph , the 59-year-old said those who were jailed for downloading illegal images of children had probably had “too much to drink”.
The American writer claimed there were now too many people in prison in the US.
J. Countess / WireImage
"We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who've never harmed anybody, would never touch a child.
"But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn."
Grisham revealed he had a “good buddy” who was sent to prison for three years after getting caught in a child porn sting operation in Canada.
The author said: "His drinking was out of control, and he went to a website. It was labelled 'sixteen year old wannabee hookers’ or something like that. And it said '16-year-old girls'. So he went there. Downloaded some stuff – it was 16 year old girls who looked 30.
"He shouldn't ’a done it. It was stupid, but it wasn't 10-year-old boys. He didn't touch anything. And God, a week later there was a knock on the door: ‘FBI!’ and it was sting set up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to catch people – sex offenders – and he went to prison for three years."
The Associated Press
Grisham told the Telegraph he thought America had gone “nuts with this incarceration”.
He explained he had no sympathy for “real paedophiles” but believed many of the men imprisoned for watching and downloading child porn didn’t deserved the sentences they were given.
The BBC reports America currently has 2.2 million adults behind bars, the largest prison population in the world.
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John Grisham Says Child Porn Offenders Should Be Given Lighter Sentences