Sex offender as homo sacer

Abstract

The political and legal theory of Giorgio Agamben, specifically his concept of homo sacer, can be usefully deployed to understand the regulation and treatment of sex offenders. It is argued that the sex offender can be conceived of as a non-citizen or bare life — the homo sacer — and that this elucidates the degrees of violence and forms of abjection visited upon sex offenders in western societies. Through the institution of laws aimed at protecting communities from sex offenders, specifically community notification and civil commitment laws, there is the production of a ban, whereby the sex offender is displaced into a lawless space — a camp. In this `camp', the sex offender is subjected to GPS electronic monitoring, surgical/chemical castration and various other forms of sovereign violence at the hands of professionals and anti-paedophile vigilante groups. This article shows that in the exertion of sovereign power, where the sex offender is placed in the ambiguous terrain of the camp, there is a restoration of order and maintenance of the sacred.

Organised Criminals as “Agents of Obligation”: The Case of Ireland

“…He cites the uncertain legal status allocated to Guantanamo Bay detainees as "illegal enemy combatants" as an example of how modern day laws can result in the "death" of the juridical figure (Brown 2008). In a similar manner, Spencer (2009), also drawing on Arendt (1951) has written of the abandonment of the sex offender by the law and his or her exclusion into a "lawless space". Cruft (2008: 60) too, responding to Ashworth and Zedner (2008), expresses concern that a simple liberal individualism may lend support to what he terms the "them and us" view of the criminal law "where the law is conceived as imposed on people who, by their criminal behaviour, have opted out of our community of law-abiding ordinary people."…”

Sex Offending and Situational Motivation

“…Interviewees expressed particular concern about the perception of immutability associated with sexual offending, the notion that "once a sex offender, always a sex offender" and the essential otherness of the person convicted of such crimes (Spencer, 2009). The situational self-narratives of desisting individuals, therefore enable them to construct their sexual crimes as aberrations, unrelated to their true self-identities, and hence maintain a positive self-image in their own and others' eyes (Maruna & Copes, 2005).…”

“…Within popular discourses, men who have been convicted of sexual offences have been deemed to be fundamentally sexually deviant and incapable of change, constantly seeking out opportunities to sexually re-offend (see Levenson et al, 2007;Spencer, 2009;Simon & Felthous, 2000;McAlinden, 2012). In recent years, this view has been challenged by research which demonstrates that, on the whole, reoffending rates for sex offending are comparatively very low (Harris and Hanson, 2004;Lussier & Cale, 2013) and a single conviction for sexual offending very rarely predicts a lifetime of predatory behavior (Lussier et al, 2010;Hanson et al, 2014).…”

Deciphering the Ambiguous Menace of Sexuality for the Innocence of Childhood

“…This duality facilitates an explicit discourse; a polar diagram of pure innocence and malevolent danger (Douglas 1966;Pratt 2005;Spencer 2009). However, as will be demonstrated in the second section, there are also more ambiguous forces.…”