In Pursuit of the Pervert: Sexual Dangerousness and the Carceral State

• In Event: Justice and Injustice: Political Science Perspectives on Crime and Punishment Mini-Conference Lunchtime Poster Session: New Questions in the Politics of Punishment

Abstract

We are in a moment where the development and expansion of mass incarceration in the U.S. is
being critically reevaluated. Yet, while criminal justice reforms begin to slowly catch on, laws
and policies relating to sexual perversion have paradoxically continued to grow more draconian,
expanding the reach of the American carceral state. In this project I examine the relationship
between anxiety over sexual perversion and the growth and development of the carceral state by
tracing the emergence and continued development of sex offender registries in the U.S. I argue
that America has historically responded to the specter of the sexual pervert with massive state
building efforts and redefinitions of citizenship. Such efforts allow government reach to extend
well beyond previously articulated boundaries, often at the expense of fundamental civil,
political, and social rights. Further, state responses to sexual perversion have created an entire
underclass of citizens who are discursively and legally constructed as outside of the family of
rightsdeserving
citizens. Finally, state expansions that occur during these moments of public
sexual anxieties often turn out to be the vanguard of developments in state surveillance and
control—testing the legal waters for the surveillance and control of other groups.

Author

• Chelsea Moore, University of Washington