The rise and fall of homophobia and sexual psychopath legislation in postwar society.

Abstract

This article examines the reasons behind the rise and subsequent fall of homophobia and sexual psychopath laws in postwar Western societies. Although, in many ways, these concerns can be seen as the antecedents of those underlying current sexual predator legislation, it is argued that the antecedents were themselves the product of a particular formulation of the concept of “risk.” The article illustrates how this risk formulation came to be articulated—and then disarticulated—over these concerns.

Legislation Targeting Sex Offenders: Are Recent Policies Effective in Reducing Rape?

“…Men engaging in or soliciting consensual sexual relations with other men were frequent targets of prosecution (Jacobson, 1999;Karpman, 1954;Tappan, 1950). As the popularity of "sexual psychopath" laws or mentally disordered sex offender (MDSO) legislation grew, 29 states enacted such laws (Pratt, 1998;Schwartz, 1995), but the assumptions on which they were based were questioned by prominent researchers at the time. Tappan (1950), a professor of law and criminology at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley and chairman of the US Board of Parole, argued that not enough information existed on sexual deviancy to warrant the legislation and the exorbitant cost to taxpayers.…”

A time-series analysis of the effectiveness of sex offender notification laws in the USA

“…These laws allowed for the civil commitment of habitual sex offenders classified as incapable of controlling their own sexual impulses as they underwent rehabilitation (Pratt, 1998). Michigan passed the first sexual psychopath law in 1937, and between 1940 and 1990, 28 additional states adopted similar laws (Hodgson & Kelley, 2002;Sample & Bray, 2006).…”

Menacing Dennis: Representing ‘Australia’s most hated man’ and popular protests for policy change

“…Philip Jenkins (1998) also tracks the transformations of concepts around 'the child molester'. This includes the appearance of categories of sexual perversion through to the emergence of 'sex offender' as a term connoting violent offenders and instigating the sexual psychopath statutes across the United States during the 1930s and 1940s (see Kittrie, 1971;Pratt, 1998Pratt, , 2000. This dominant figure transitioned into an understanding of sex offending as a nonthreatening expression of sexual inadequacy for which therapeutic intervention was required, and was subsequently produced relative to the establishment of child sexual abuse as a popular concern in the 1980s, as antecedent feminist discourses on rape coalesced with psychological discourses on child physical abuse.…”