NCJ Number
167955
Journal
Women and Criminal Justice Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Dated: (1996) Pages: 43-68
Date Published
1996
Length
26 pages
Annotation
This article critically examines Washington State's Predator Law (1990), the most controversial part of which provides for the indefinite civil commitment of "sexually violent predators."
Abstract
Under the legislation, husbands who victimize their wives and children cannot be defined as predators. This critique of the law argues that the ideological thrust of the predator law reproduces the power relations of gender by obfuscating systemic social problems such as woman battering, marital rape, and the gendered nature of child sexual abuse. This ideological thrust inherent in the predator law has been reinforced by the sensationalist media treatment of predation. The social construction of sexually violent predators does not confront the very threatening realization that sexually violent predation is but one form of patriarchal violence. The author does not argue that predators who prey on strangers should be ignored or their violence be viewed as insignificant. Rather, lawmakers and the news media, resorting to anecdotal and individualistic attention to violent sexual offenders, fail to consider the systemic sexual violence that characterizes patriarchal relations and the domination of men over women. The construction of the serial rapist and/or sexually violent predator as the most threatening rapist is consistent with the criminal justice system's emphasis on "forcible rape." Russell (1990) has shown that women are much more likely to experience rape or attempted rape at the hands of husbands or ex-husbands than they are from strangers. The author suggests that the predator law and the gendered coverage of sexually violent predators has had the effect of counteracting the feminist push to address the more prevalent threat to women and children from intimates or companions. 44 references