Recently announced in Vermont, the attorney general and a few law enforcement agencies are hoping to allocate $200,000 out of the $5 billion state budget to expand resources in the fight against child pornography.

Through investigations and monitoring, authorities in VT hope to reduce the amount of child exploitation and to identify sexual predators online. However, those investigations are conducted case-by-case. The majority of people downloading child porn are not investigated due to lack of funds to conduct investigations.

If this grant is approved, law enforcement officials could better focus on investigating said crimes. The funds would provide the department with a full-time investigator to do online monitoring. An attorney would also be provided to coordinate referrals and prosecutions.

In the efforts to stop child exploitation, it all comes down to prevention. Many agencies are only able to respond to incidents. To stop these crimes before they occur, authorities need more resources to do basic investigating/searching. By doing so, the number of child exploitation cases would dramatically decrease.

What is your state government's budget for child exploitation enforcement? You should ask.

For a related story on current GOP candidates who vow to enforce obscenity laws, click here.

I work for ContentWatch and all opinions expressed here are my own.