NCJ Number
224419
Date Published
2008
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This chapter analyzes how and why governments in Great Britain and North America have attempted to “protect” their publics from sexual offenders through the use of particular regulatory arrangements, notably sex offender registration and third-party disclosure and notification.
Abstract
The focus on regulatory measures and risk management is part of what has been called the “preventive state.” The preventive state is not just committed to dealing with an offender’s past wrongdoing through the administration of a prescribed penal sanction; the power of the state (and, in the case of Megan’s Law and community notification, the power of civil society as well) is used preventively by anticipating future conduct and employing various constraints and demands on those who have served their sentences in order to ensure they are prevented from future offenses. This is done through legislation that mandates intensified surveillance and lower due process standards. Since there is no assessment that provides certain scientific evidence about a person’s future behavior in given circumstances, the preventive state is regulating those who have committed sex offenses in the past based on suspicion, premonition, foreboding, mistrust, fear, and anxiety, rather than in a context of certainty about how a sex offender will behave in the future if not constrained through prescribed regulations for surveillance and monitoring. Such precaution requires administrative decisions in situations of uncertainty. There is no reliance on expert knowledge or statistical and actuarial data. Under such a regimen, the “burden of proof” is no longer on the state to show guilt, but on the offender to prove innocence even before any event warrants a criminal charge being brought. 1 table, 1 note and 57 references