Situating Contemporary Attitudes towards Sex Offenders from the Durkheimian Perspective of Punishment

• In Event: 477 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable: Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtables. Table 01. Punishment and Incarceration 1

Abstract

ABSTRACT
Sexual offending in general qualifies as high consensus deviance. As societal responses --both sex offender registration and notification can potentially inflict a lifelong sentence beyond the immediate premises of imprisonment, based on strong community reaction to the offender (Bedarf 1995). This paper examines contemporary attitudes towards sex offenders in a southern metroplex from the Durkheimian framework of retributive versus restorative justice. The data for this research comes from a longitudinal survey titled “An Opinion Survey of Contemporary Issues Impacting Children in America collected in 2012 (N=300) and 2013(N=400). Two focal variables were used as measures of attitudes towards sex offender notification from the Durkheimian perspective. These include attitudes towards (1) sex offenders registering for life (retributive measure) and (2) reentry into the community after rehabilitation (restorative). Initial findings from descriptive analysis reveals high mean scores endorsing registration, and a relatively comparable support for sex offender rehabilitation as well, thus demonstrating an amalgam of punitive tendencies towards sex offenders rather than pure retributive/rehabilitative predispositions. Results from independent sample t tests suggest significant differences in support for sex offender registration by gender, parental status, religiosity and income. In addition, less support for registration and advocacy for sex offender rehabilitation also differs by political affiliation, political ideology, minority status, and education credentials.

Authors

• Tanni Chaudhuri, Rhode Island College

• Jacyl Calico, University of Texas-Arlington