Classing Sex Offenders: How Prosecutors and Defense Attorneys Differentiate Men Accused of Sexual Assault

Abstract

As public awareness of and concern about sexual victimization has increased in recent decades, stigmatization of sex offenders has also increased considerably. Contemporary sex offender policies transform discrete criminal behaviors into lifelong social identities. Although there is much debate about the efficacy and constitutionality of such policies, we know little about how the category of “sex offender” is constituted in the first place. In this article, I reveal how prosecutors and defense attorneys construct sex offenders, not as monsterous or racialized as is commonly thought, but as “lower class” men. This analysis is based on 30 in‐depth interviews with prosecutors and defense attorneys in Michigan. These legal actors wield disproportionate power in defining the boundaries of criminal behaviors and individuals. That they associate sexual criminality with lower class men demonstrates yet another way that class‐based inequalities are reproduced in the legal field.

“This is My Girl”: How Men’s Desires Obscure Women’s Sexual Aggression Experiences in Public Drinking Settings

“…For example, our sample is primarily middle-class undergraduate students. Because sexual offenders are often legally constructed as lower class (Small 2015), interviewees may be less inclined to perceive perpetrators as aggressive because they seem middle class. A study comparing spaces with different patron demographics would be important for teasing out how context and identity intersect to shape unwanted sexual contact and responses to it.…”

“Kind of Natural, Kind of Wrong”: Young People's Beliefs about the Morality, Legality, and Normalcy of Sexual Aggression in Public Drinking Settings

“…Future research should further examine how race and class influence attitudes about the legal regulation of sexual aggression. Men who are lower class (Small 2015) and men of color are disproportionately punished for sexual harassment (Giuffre and Williams 1994) and rape (LaFree 1980). Women of color are less likely to see their reports of sexual assault result in arrests and convictions (LaFree 1980; Crenshaw 1991).…”

Child Marriage or Statutory Rape? A Comparison of Law and Practice Across the United States

“…Evidence suggests that this flexibility results in unequal treatment under the law that may entrench gendered stereotypes of statutory rape and disadvantage vulnerable populations [34,35]. For example, in cases where both sexual partners are too young to legally consent to sex and could both be considered to have violated statutory rape laws, boys are more likely to be prosecuted than girls [27,33,36]. There is also evidence that perpetrators who are in ongoing opposite-sex relationships with their victims, have a higher level of education, and come from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are less likely to be arrested and prosecuted for statutory rape [33,34,36].…”