Vigilante Justice in Jail: Extending Punishment for Sex Offenders Beyond Incapacitation

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

Criminal justice literature richly documents offenders’ use of five “techniques of neutralization” (Marolla & Scully, 1984). Marolla and Scully’s research, though expressed in language specific to rapists, has broad implications for how crime is justified. Using qualitative data collected during six months in a local jail, the following project finds these techniques and—with a particular inmate population—a sixth technique. Inmates justify their actions against sex offenders as a means of vigilante justice. This sixth technique uses societal values, in this case the exceptional treatment of sex offenders in the media and post-release, to fuel the justification of other inmates for expanding the punishment of sex offenders inside correctional facilities. In much the same was as society believes that typical sanctions for monitoring inmates post-release are inadequate for sex offenders, many inmates believe that incapacitation in a facility as “comfortable” as jail is an inadequate punishment in light of the way that sex offenders uniquely offend against society. Inmates, then, take it upon themselves to extend the punishment of these individuals through harassment and, in extreme cases, physical violence. This extension of punishment ultimately harms society by increasing the likelihood that sex offenders are caught in the “revolving door.”

Author

• Jordan Leigh Nichols, George Mason University