Violence, Sex Offenders, and Corrections

Rose Ricciardelli, Dale C. Spencer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317393832
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Criminología

Sex offenders remain the most hated group of offenders, subject to a myriad of regulations and punishments beyond imprisonment, including sex offender registries, chemical and surgical castration, and global positioning electronic monitoring systems. While aspects of their experiences of imprisonment are documented, less is known about how sex offenders experience prison and community corrections spaces – and the implications of their status on their treatment and safety in such environments.

Violence, Sex Offenders, and Corrections critically assesses what is meant by the term 'sex offender', and acknowledges that such meanings are socially constructed, situated, and contingent. The book explores the person, crime, penal space, sexual orientation, legislation, and the community experiences of labelled sex offenders as well as the experiences of correctional officers working with said custodial populations. Ricciardelli and Spencer use conceptions of gender and embodiment to analyze how sex offenders are constituted as objects of fear and disgust and as deserving subjects of abjection and violence.

1
Introduction

On April 16, 2006, 20-year-old Canadian Stephen Marshall murdered two men before ending his own life. Joseph Gray, age 57, and William Elliott, age 24, both named on the Maine sex offender registry, were victims of Marshall’s vigilante justice. William Elliott was 19 years old when he had sex with his girlfriend, three weeks prior to her 16th birthday, which was under the age of consent in Maine. Her father, unhappy about the situation, pursued the case that earned Elliott a four-month prison term and a spot on the registry (Zoorob, 2012). Elliott, many would agree, is not the typical sex offender. Gray, conversely, has a different history. He was convicted in 1992 of raping a 14-year-old female, as well as indecent assault and battery.¹ In essence, Gray represents the most vilified of sex offenders, while Elliott’s situation calls the utility of a registry into question. Yet, both men met the same fate. The diverse nature of their cases, however, further complicates any possible clarity about Marshall’s motive when he shot both men in their homes and then proceeded to shoot himself.

Then, we have Brock Turner. In the early hours of January 18, 2015, former Stanford university student and ‘star’ swimmer, Brock Turner, sexually assaulted an unconscious 22-year-old female by a dumpster outside a fraternity house (Edwards, 2016). Two bystanders, both graduate students at Stanford, witnessed Turner atop the motionless and unresponsive woman. Turner, a 20-year-old baby-faced swimmer, educated at an elite school and from a ‘good American family,’ became the face of campus sexual assault (Edwards, 2016; Michallon, 2016). After recants, changing stories, a witness impact statement, and high-profile insensitive remarks from character witnesses and family members (i.e., his father reported to the media that Turner was so distraught he could no longer enjoy steak and that his son was “paying a steep price for 20 minutes of action”) (Rosenblatt & Curran, 2016), Turner was convicted of sexual assault with intent to rape an intoxicated person, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person, and penetration of an unconscious person. The controversy continued, however, when Justice Aaron Persky, rather than sentencing Turner to the six years requested by Deputy District Attorney Alaleh Kianerci, followed the probation department’s recommendation of county jail time and probation (Grindberg, 2016). Turner was sentenced to six months in a county jail with probation, of which he served 12 weeks before being released in light of his ‘good behavior’ (Rosenblatt & Curran, 2016). Turner will spend his life as a registered sex offender; he is forever banned from membership with USA swimming, is no longer enrolled at Stanford, and is even barred from ever stepping foot on campus (Rosenblatt & Curran, 2016; Spanos, 2016). The former Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, penned a ‘powerful letter’ to Turner’s 23-year-old victim, praising her bravery in coming forward (Spanos, 2016; Eleftheriou-Smith, 2016), and citizens have launched a full-fledged attack at Turner through social media outlets. The controversial case becomes ever more complicated as prospective jurors boycott Judge Persky, some going so far as to refuse to serve under him in unrelated criminal trials (Spanos, 2016).

In response to Turner’s case, including the public outrage, California Governor Jerry Brown signed legislation AB 2888, not unlike that already found in Canada with the implementation of the Safe Streets and Community Act (Bill-C10). Effective 2017, the definition of rape under California law includes all non-consensual acts of sexual assault (i.e. AB 701) and mandatory minimums sentences are imposed on crimes of sexual assault (i.e. AB 2888; see Edwards, 2016). Specifically, the bill authored by Democrats Evan Low and Bill Dodd “will prohibit judges from giving convicted offenders probation when they sexually assault someone who is unconscious or intoxicated” (Ulloa, 2016, p. 1). Controversy continues anew as feminist groups, the American Civil Liberties Union, and public defenders all contend that the bill will not only disproportionately affect marginalized groups, but will also continue California’s traditions of reacting to crime with tough sentencing laws with only negative implications for prison overcrowding and offender desistance (Ulloa, 2016).

The cases of Elliott, Gray, and Turner – a few of many – illustrated the complexity inherent in defining the chimeric character of who does versus who does not constitute a sex offender. But what is clear across all cases is that each person is publicly villainized, oft labeled as sick, legally found criminally responsible, placed on a registry of sex offenders, deeply discredited as a person, and viewed with anger, shame, and disgust by the general public. Elliott and Gray were victims of vigilante justice; Turner’s life will never be the same. He is the object of hate, despised by the public, barred from his career aspirations, and will spend his life on a registry. The question we pose is not if sex offenders, male or female, have been or are justly sentenced for their crimes. Instead, we look to unpack what it means to be a sex offender and their chimeric position in society both inside and outside of prison. Moreover, we elucidate the experiences of incarceration, the role of sex offenders in carceral structures, and the interpretations of sex offenders by prisoners and correctional officers. We examine the biopolitical implications of incarcerating sex offenders.

The chimeric ‘offender’

No exploration of sex offenders can be undertaken without a critical assessment of what is meant by the term ‘sex offender’ and an acknowledgment that such meanings are socially constructed, situated, and contingent. We take the position that ‘sex offenders’ are ‘offenders’ because the actions in which they are charged or convicted offend the sexual mores in society. While mores around sex and sexuality have historically served to demarcate cultural boundaries, the spike in the regulation and punishment of sex offenders in the English-speaking West reveals the heightened anxieties surrounding sex or sexual acts between children and adults heretofore arguably unseen or, at a minimum, suppressed and concealed (Kincaid, 2000). It is in this context that sex offenders engage in behaviours that evoke feelings of disgust, fear, and disdain from the public (Brown, Deakin, & Spencer, 2008; Petrunik, 2002); specifically, they fail to abide to the norms of sexual activity and gender (Cowburn & Dominelli, 2001; McAlinden, 2005; Pothast & Allen, 1994; Salter, 2003).

Yet, despite all the different iterations of ‘who’ is (or is not) a sex offender and how sex offenders are responded to, as we have witnessed, many sex offenders are not proud of their actions. Some never show anything less than disdain and disgust about their prior actions, sadness about who they were, who they are, and who they are now marked to be (see Waldram, 2007). This is not surprising at all given the fact that sex offenders, especially in North America, Australia, and Europe, are among the most hated group of criminalized persons. It has been long noted that there are many diverse attributes that can discredit, even ‘shame,’ an individual (Link & Phelan, 2001). Although the status of convict or offender is recognized as one of the most stigmatizing statuses in Western societies (Akerstrom, 1986; Albrecht, Walker, & Levy, 1982; Bontrager, Bales, & Chiricos, 2005; Clear, Rose, & Ryder, 2001; Edwards, 2000; Goffman, 1963), even more stigmatizing is that of ‘sex offender’ (Lacombe, 2008; Levenson & Cotter, 2005; Spencer, 2009; Tewksbury, 2005; Walsh, 1990; Winnick, 2008; Zevitz & Farcus, 2000). Waldram (2007) describes sex offenders as: “those individuals we routinely label as predators” and ‘as evil’ (p. 963). Although sex offenders may be viewed more negatively depending on their crime(s) and victim(s), simply bearing the label itself is reason enough, for, as Simon (1998) and Melossi (2000) show, in line with the historical work of Lombroso, such offenders are viewed as monsters and less than human. They are not tolerated in society, accepted or respected in social circles, and are viewed as perverted and predators (Petrunik, 2002; Gavin, 2005; Robbers, 2009; Soothill & Walby, 1991; Spencer, 2009; Waldram, 2007). Sex offenders are worthy of being feared. Marshall (1996), for example, attributed the fear oriented toward sex offenders as due to the fact that they are largely indistinguishable from others in society. Due to the fact that sex offenders serve as a repository for fear, disgust, and danger, they take on a chimeric character. This is to say that they take on a mythical character, a dark figure to be sure, but also consisting of many different attributes. This chimeric character of contemporary sex offenders, as we will show, explains the many interpretations and treatments of sex offenders in correctional settings. And, much like the Chimera of Greek mythology, the sex offender is viewed as a terrible creature that must be eradicated through containment and violence.

The label of sex offender, imposed on those convicted of any crime associated with sexual interference and non-consensual actions, is arguably intensified by the judicial supervision under which they must live their lives – with or without incarceration (LaFond, 1998; Levi, 2000; Petersilia, 2003; Ricciardelli & Moir, 2013; Robbers, 2009; Sample & Bray, 2003; Schmalleger, 2002; Spencer, 2009; Winick, 1998; Winnick & Bodkin, 2008). In response to their criminality, sex offenders are subject to a myriad of regulations and punishments beyond imprisonment, including sex offender registries, chemical and surgical castration, and global positioning electronic monitoring systems (see Chapter 2). They are subjected to community notifications and alerts under the guise of ensuring the safety of citizens; their label only heightens negative perceptions of the individual and does not disambiguate the criminal acts for which one is convicted (Robbers, 2009; Winnick & Bodkin, 2008). In response, individuals convicted of sex-related offenses are resigned to be social outcasts, often lacking access to any informal networks of support and with few or limited interpersonal relationships (Liamputtong, 2007). They are rejected from their communities and larger society.

As such, life for those convicted of sex offenses has become a deleterious and precarious existence both inside and outside of prisons. In the former, for example, sex offenders’ faces are regularly smeared across the Internet, television, and print media in an effort to expose their sex crimes or ‘criminal potential’ to the general public. Yet in the latter, while aspects of their experiences of imprisonment are documented, less is known about how sex offenders experience prison and community correctional spaces or the implications of their status on their treatment and safety in such environments. Indeed, what little is known in this regard is that life within the walls of prisons is precarious, riddled with the threat and experiences of verbal, physical, and material victimization.

Sex offenders’ experiences with prison, however, cannot be extrapolated from understandings of non-sex offender experiences, nor can they be presumed based on generalizations about sex offenders as a social category. Moreover, experiences cannot be analyzed in abstraction or explained singularly through broader cultural changes. Sex offenders’ lives must be understood at the level of interpretation and the meanings they attach to various aspects of their own existence in prisons. Attention to sex offenders’ interpretations of imprisonment, we argue, should begin from a position of non-linearity and explore the contours, contradictions, positioning, and problems associated with sex offenders. Many scholars writing on sex offenders are removed from firsthand knowledge of offenders or their experiences (i.e., relying on quantitative data collected at the state or federal level) (Sapp & Vaughn, 1990) and fail to fully define what is included under the umbrella of ‘sex offender,’ or focus purely on predicting or intervening in some anticipated future criminal act by sex offenders – too often characteristic of the tendency towards ‘risk’ and actuarial risk assessment in sex offender research endeavours (Petrunik & Weisman, 2005; Petrunik, 2002, 2003). To this end, we take a different path. We explore the person (i.e., the sex offender), the crime (i.e., definitions and understandings of what constitutes a sex offense), and the carceral space (e.g., the experience of assumed sex offenders in prison). We include discussions on sexual orientation (e.g., paedophilia versus a sex crime), experiences of those physically or socially close to sex offenders (e.g., prison staff, parole officers, their families), and the community experiences of labelling sex offenders (e.g., sex offenders in the community), to create a comprehensive ‘picture’ of the lived experiences of sex offenders.

We expose the polysemy of ways that sex offenders are defined and conceived of to reveal the chimeric character of sex offenders and show how this forms the basis of understanding correctional settings as biopolitical interventions. Furthermore, the chimeric nature of sex offenders explains how they are subject to so many direct and indirect forms of violence. We also demonstrate, following Foucault (2009, p. 82), that the ongoing polysemy of constructions of the sex offender and the continuous use of correctional settings to respond to this offender is productive insofar as it continuously forms a dividing line between normal and abnormal sexualities and genders.

Overview of what’s to come

Our work throughout this book is guided by two ways of understanding sex offenses and offenders: as tense and event. The former, tense, refers to an understanding that is based on the past, present, and future as a tool for understanding the position of sex offenders in society and in prisons. In relation to sex offenders, tense provides a way for the nuanced, diversified, and transitional lived experiences of sex offenders to be understood both sequentially and in terms of its role in shaping and engendering their past, present, and future positionality. The latter, event, marks explicit happenings that define sex offenders, often either past criminalized sexual acts or interpretations of said acts. These acts and the interpretations of the circumstances surrounding them are thought of as a marker of their past, a defining characteristic of their present and an enduring feature of their future lives. It is in this context that the sex offender becomes forever trapped by their ‘depraved’ sexual natures. Beyond the defining events underpinning the sex offender identity, there are also violent events – those that fill the everyday present between their entrance into prison, their (possible) exit, and their community experiences. Violent events are a naturalized circumstance for sex offenders, commonplace enough that they are no longer defining features but instead the ‘norm’ and a part of their lived experiences. This is learned quickly given those that seek to hide their past in prison settings face a precarious future; their past can and usually is exposed to the general prison population, if the attempt is to not be placed in a more protective custodial space away from the general population.

In the pages that follow, we draw from several forms of qualitative data – including over 100 interviews with provincial and territorial correctional officers across Canada, close to 60 interviews with former federally incarcerated prisoners, and media and social media reports on sex offenders – to offer a depiction of life for sex offenders in prison environments. We build on current knowledge, both empirical and theoretical, that scholars have put forth through analyses of prisoner testimonials, narratives, or observations (Farmer et al., 2015; Waldram, 2007; Schwaebe, 2005) by adding interview data from both those under supervision and the correctional officers responsible for the sex offenders in their custody. We discuss sex offender registries and community notification (Zevitz & Farcus, 2000; Tewksbury, 2005), as well as public beliefs about such offenders (Winnick, 2008; Winnick & Bodkin, 2008), conjoining this form of data with a broader analysis of media and social media depictions of sex offenders to shed light on the ever-expanding carceral space in which sex offenders are entrapped within and beyond the prison walls. We reflect on the nature of carceral boundaries to produce a level of crystallization (Richardson, 1994, 1997; Ellingson, 2009) that reveals the complexity of experiences of criminalized persons, offenders that have been accused and/or convicted of sex offenses, and correctional officers working with sex offenders.

We begin the book in Chapter 2 by unpacking what or who constitutes a sex offender. The differences in sexual attractions that lead to such labels are analyzed as well as the history of punishment that has followed sex offenders over time. We highlight contradictions in terms of who is prosecuted and who is not, paying heed to the role of status and power in determining how persons are viewed for engaging in offensive sexual behaviours. We draw attention to the application of labels of sex offender and discuss changing trends in rates of convictions for said offenses. In essence, we use this second chapter to offer readers a review of the mainstream, oft-ahistorical literature on sex offenders, and histories of sexual offenses to understand the chimeric aspects of sex offender’s social identities and how deviations from sexual norms were and are interpreted, regulated, and punished.

In the third chapter, we begin to provide the theoretical tools that are deployed throughout the text. Bringing together work on biopolitics, bodies, and violence, we analyze the basis of the victimization of sex offenders. Here, we draw on the extant biopolitics literature, and we probe the intersection of biopolitics, dangerousness, and vulnerability in relation to sex offenders. Biopolitics, we show, is a particularly apposite conceptual framework for understanding the constitution, regulation, and punishment of sex offenders in the English-speaking West, as it points to how sex offender bodies are produced (as sick, corrupt, etc.) and the broader biopolitical decisions tied to which life is worth living and which is not. (Bio)power shapes the lives of sex offenders and is central to understanding the enmity towards and violence committed against those that challenge sexual mores regarding sex and the regulation of sexuality more broadly within corrections settings.

In the fourth chapter, we reveal how gender and sexual identities are viewed as failing masculinities that are marked by a lack of conformance to hegemonic masculine ideals underlying the relational dynamics of masculinities within penal spaces. We also connect how language, specifically gossip, serves to discredit prisoners who have been found guilty of sex offenses as they enter into carceral spaces. In addition, we explore two phenomena – stigma and emotions – that perform as a proverbial glue to connect the chimeric aspects to sex offenders in correctional settings. This chapter operates to transition from broader abstract conversations in the previous two chapters to more grounded discussions of sex offenders in prison settings.

In the fifth chapter, we explore how sex offenders try to ‘pass’ as ‘solid’ or non-sex offenders. We demonstrate that their ability to pass is mediated by the normative masculinity and social hierarchy that exists among male prisoners. We show how despite their best efforts to pass, the true natures of their convictions are eventually exposed to the general prison population. Drawing on the extensive literature on prison masculinities and Judith Butler’s work on gender, abjection, and precarity, we analyze the roles of prison staff, the institution in which the offender has served time, the media, and other prisoners in exposing sex offenders to the general prison population. We elucidate the oft-violent implications of exposure of prisoners in carceral settings.

In Chapter 6, we play with notions of stigma as applied to sex offenders, and we shed light on how correctional staff interpret persons convicted, charged, or suspected of engaging in non-consensual sexual acts. It is in this chapter that we return to the theoretical orientation of stigma, and we expand the discussion to include framing theory, which we employ to draw additional insight into how sex offenders are defined and understood by those with whom they interact. We focus our examinations on correctional staff interactions with and experiences of sex offenders in their custody.

The last substantive chapter, the seventh, is where we discuss the cultural politics of emotions in prison settings and link discussions of emotions to broader bio-political implications of life for sex offenders in prisons. Specifically, we analyze the cultural politics of emotions within carceral spaces and how sex o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The chimeric sex offender
• 3 Biopolitics, ‘vulnerability,’ and sex offenders
• 4 Masculinities, stigma, and failure
• 5 Precarity, exposure, and violence
• 6 Stigma, sex offenders, and correctional staff
• 7 Sex offenders and the cultural politics of emotions in prison environments
• 8 Conclusion
• Appendix: corrections, qualitative methods, and abductive analysis
• References
• Index