Abstract
We have argued that by framing sex offenders as monsters and sex crimes as monstrous we dehumanize and exclude them, thereby putting them outside the scope of preventive strategies. We have recommended a public health framework, and we have distinguished the two frameworks as “hot” and “cold” approaches to sex offending. However, we must conclude on a cautionary note. If we knit together the chapters of this book, they may constitute an argument for what Eric Janus calls the “preventive state,” in which the paradigm of governmental control is shifted from solving and punishing crimes that have been committed to identifying ‘dangerous’ people and depriving them of their liberty before they can do harm (Janus 2006, 93–94). By adding to criminal justice policy instruments of psychiatric diagnosis and categories of mental disorder – and a public health framework for deploying health care resources to criminal conduct reinterpreted as mental disorder – attention is inevitably directed toward a preventive approach to crime. If we, in addition, frame sex offenders as monsters and predators, we have a recipe for a civil commitment approach to at least one category of crime: sexual violence.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Alexander, L. 2005. Is there a right of freedom of expression? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Alexander, M. 2010. The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press.
Baron-Cohen, S. 2011. The science of evil: On empathy and the origins of cruelty. New York: Basic Books.
Douard, J. 1995. Disability and the persistence of the normal. In Chronic illness: From experience to policy, ed. S.K. Toombs, D. Barnard, and R.A. Carson, 156–177. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Fabian, J.M. 2011. Diagnosing and litigating hebephilia in sexually violent predator civil commitment proceedings. The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law 39: 496–505.
Hunter, S., J. Douard, S. Green, and L. Bembry. 2012. New Jersey‘s drug courts: A fundamental shift from the war on drugs to a public health approach for drug addiction and drug-related crime. Rutgers Law Review 64(3): 795–833.
Husak, D. 2008. Overcriminalization: The limits of the criminal law. New York: Oxford University Press.
Janus, E. 2006. Failure to protect: America’s sexual predator laws and the rise of the preventive state. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Kearney, R. 2003. Strangers, gods and monsters: Interpreting otherness. London/New York: Routledge.
Kuhn, T. 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Logan, W. 1998. The ex-post facto clause and the jurisprudence of punishment. American Criminal Law Review 35: 1261.
Lovett, I. 2012, May 29. Public-place laws Tighten Rein on sex offenders. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/us/sex-offenders-face-growing-restrictions-on-public-places.html?pagewanted=all.
March, A.F. 2012. A dangerous mind? New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/a-dangerous-mind.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www.
Prescott, J.J., and J.E. Rockoff. 2008. Do sex offender registration and notification laws affect criminal behavior? The National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER Working Paper No. 13803. http://www.nber.org/papers/w13803.
Schlosser, E. 1998. The prison industrial complex. Atlantic Monthly, December, 51–77.
Shively, M., and C.F. Mulford. 2007, June 257. Hate crime in America: The debate continues. National Institute of Justice. http://www.nij.gov/journals/257/hate-crime.html.
Slobogin, C. 2003. A jurisprudence of dangerousnous. 98 Nw. U.L. Review 1–62.
Slobogin, C. 2006. Minding justice: Laws that deprive people with mental disability of life and liberty. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Slobogin, C. 2011a. Prevention of sexual violence by those who have been sexually violent. International Journal Law and Psychiatry 34(3): 210–216.
Slobogin, C. 2011b. Legal limitations on the scope of preventive detention. In Dangerous people: Policy, prediction, and practice 37, ed. M.S. Bernadette and K. Patrick. New York: Routledge.
Slobogin, C. 2011c. Prevention as the primary goal of sentencing: The modern case for indeterminate dispositions in criminal cases. Vanderbilt University Law School Working Papers. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1959489.
Steiker, C. 1998. Forward: The limits of the preventive state. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 88(3): 771–808.
Zgoba, K.M., and L.M.J. Simon. 2005. Recidivism rates of sexual offenders up to 7 years later does treatment matter? Criminal Justice Review 30(2): 155–173.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Douard, J., Schultz, P. (2013). Conclusion: A Criminological Paradigm Shift. In: Monstrous Crimes and the Failure of Forensic Psychiatry. International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, vol 53. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5279-5_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5279-5_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-5278-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-5279-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawLaw and Criminology (R0)