This book seeks to provide the first serious and detailed narrative of the conception and implementation of the sex offender registers. It seeks to do so in a clear and easy to follow text that will be both informed and critical. It will also serve as a resource book for those wanting to make further study of the process of registration and monitoring.
Societies have long sought security by identifying potentially dangerous individuals in their midst. America is surely no exception. Knowledge as Power traces the evolution of a modern technique that has come to enjoy nationwide popularity—criminal registration laws. Registration, which originated in the 1930s as a means of monitoring gangsters, went largely unused for decades before experiencing a dramatic resurgence in the 1990s. Since then it has been complemented by community notification laws which, like the "Wanted" posters of the Frontier West, publicly disclose registrants' identifying information, involving entire communities in the criminal monitoring process. Knowledge as Power provides the first in-depth history and analysis of criminal registration and community notification laws, examining the potent forces driving their rapid nationwide proliferation in the 1990s through today, as well as exploring how the laws have affected the nation's law, society, and governance. In doing so, the book provides compelling insights into the manifold ways in which registration and notification reflect and influence life in modern America.
The 1990s witnessed a flurry of legislative initiatives—most notably, “Megan’s Law”—designed to control a population of sex offenders (child abusers) widely reviled as sick, evil, and incurable. In Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control, Diana Rickard provides the reader with an in-depth view of six such men, exploring how they manage to cope with their highly stigmatized role as social outcasts. The six men discussed in the book are typical convicted sex offenders—neither serial pedophiles nor individuals convicted of the type of brutal act that looms large in public perceptions about sex crimes. Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control explores how these individuals, who have been cast as social pariahs, construct their sense of self. How does being labeled in this way and controlled by measures such as Megan’s Law affect one’s identity and sense of social being? Unlike traditional criminological and psychological studies of this population, this book frames their experiences in concepts of both deviance and identity, asking how men so highly stigmatized cope with the most extreme form of social marginality. Placing their stories within the context of the current culture of mass incarceration and zero-tolerance, Rickard provides a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between public policy and lived experience, as well as an understanding of the social challenges faced by this population, whose re-integration into society is far from simple or assured. Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control makes a significant contribution to our understanding of sex offenders, offering a unique window into how individuals make meaning out of their experiences and present a viable—not monstrous—social self to themselves and others.
This report details the harm public registration laws cause for youth sex offenders. The laws, which can apply for decades or even a lifetime and are layered on top of time in prison or juvenile detention, require placing offenders' personal information on online registries, often making them targets for harassment, humiliation, and even violence. The laws also severely restrict where, and with whom, youth sex offenders may live, work, attend school, or even spend time.
This book surveys the history, current status, and critical issues regarding the various mechanisms designed to control sex offenders. It shows that the social problem of sex offending is not apparently resolvable by any of the means currently employed. A large array of procedures are used in the attempt to control the difficult population of sex offenders, including: imprisonment, institutional and community treatment, community monitoring by probation and parole, electronic monitoring, registration as a sex offender, community notification of an offender’s status, strict limits on behavioral movement in the community, and residence restrictions. However, these constraints on behavior are almost completely the result of public outrage regarding sensational sex crimes, overreaction of media coverage that produce inaccurate statements of potential community risk, and the efforts of the legal profession and politicians to quell this anger and foreboding by enacting legislation that supposedly confronts the risk. This book demonstrates that we have constructed a massive edifice of community control that is socially and politically driven and which has largely failed to contain sex crime.
This article discusses the effects of Wisconsin's community notification statute that authorizes officials to alert residents about the release and reintegration of sex offenders in their communities.
"When a South Carolina couple killed a registered sex offender and his wife after they moved into their neighborhood in 2013, the story exposed an extreme and relatively rare instance of violence against sex offenders. While media accounts would have us believe that vigilantes across the country lie in wait for predators who move into their neighborhoods, responses to sex offenders more often involve collective campaigns that direct outrage toward political and criminal justice systems. No community wants a sex offender in its midst, but instead of vigilantism, [the author] argues, citizens often leverage moral, political, and/or legal authority to keep these offenders out of local neighborhoods. Her book, the culmination of four years of research, 70 in-depth interviews, participant observations, and studies of numerous media sources, reveals the origins and characteristics of community responses to sexually violent predators (SVP) in the U.S. Specifically, [this book] examines the placement process for released SVPs in California and the communities’ responses to those placements. Taking the reader into the center of these related issues, [the author] provokes debate on the role of communities in the execution of criminal justice policies, while also addressing the responsibility of government institutions to both groups of citizens."--
