The War on Sex Across Borders: Globalizing U.S. Sex Offender Policies Through Antitrafficking Campaigns

• In Event: Fear and Loathing?: Sex Offender Registries and the War on Sex

Abstract

In the 1990s, a series of tragic cases of child abduction and sex abuse led to a wave of new federal and state laws that aimed to identify and monitor sexual “predators.” Two decades later, campaigns to combat sex trafficking and the commercial sexual exploitation of children abroad have extended the war on sex across borders, promoting the institutionalization of sex crimes legislation and new law enforcement strategies around the world. This paper examines the socio-legal construction of the international “sex predator” through an examination of legislative histories and agency guidelines regarding human trafficking and laws prohibiting child sex tourism from the 1990s to the 2010s. Contributing to the growing field of critical scholarship assessing the implementation and efficacy of sex offender policies as well as critical antitrafficking studies, this paper illuminates how antitrafficking campaigns serve to extend the long arm of the law abroad to globalize U.S.-style sex offender policies.

Author

• Edith Kinney, San Jose State University