"After These Horrendous Crimes, that Creature Forfeits his Right": The Sexually Violent Offender as Exceptional Criminal Open Access

Abstract

This project argues that sex crime laws created in the United States over the past two decades have been overwhelmingly influenced by the category of the sexually violent offender, who is also called the sexually violent predator. This project uses feminist, queer and disability theory to examine the sexually violent offender as a form of sexuality and to critique the structures changed by this sexuality. Each chapter examines a different aspect of this figure: that the concept of the sexual predator is directly related to the inheritance of a certain criminological concept of moral insanity (the subject of Chapter One), led to a shift in the use of forensic psychiatry in response to public fears about the untreatably mentally ill (the subject of Chapter Two), has created a system in which all sex offenders are considered preternaturally dangerous and incurable (the subject of Chapter Three), constituted a new form of monstrosity and the embodiment of evil (the subject of Chapter Four). Using feminist and queer theories of sexual identity as a material somatic truth that is revealed through behavior and action, it is possible to see how the sexuality attributed to the sexually violent offender is a form of criminal sexual identity (the subject of Chapter Five).

Table of Contents

Introduction........... 1

1. Morality, Free Will, and Responsibility for Criminal Actions ........... 39

2. Preventive Corrections: Earl Shriner and the

Creation of the Washington Community Protection Act........... 77

3. The Most Vile Example:

Framing the Sexual Predator in the United States...... 119

4. Evil and Monstrosity: The Dehumanization of Violent Sexual Offenders........ 162

5. Criminal Sexual Identity........... 204

Conclusion: Exception and Continuum........... 258

Bibliography........... 267

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Women's Studies
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Gender Studies Women's Studies
Keyword	legislative history forensic psychiatry theology sex crimes disability studies feminist theory history of medicine sexuality studies criminal law
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie, Emory University
Committee Members	Gilman, Sander L, Emory University McDougall, Joy, Emory University Levine, Kay L, Emory University

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