View source for Book review - The feminist and the sex offender: confronting harm, ending state violence

Review of Judith Levine & Erica R. Meiners, <i>The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Harm, Ending State Violence</i> (London & New York: Verso, 2020) vi+213 pp. [...]<br>
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The book is always ready with a handy statistic or study to illustrate the absurdity and futility of the surveillance regime that the war on sex offending has created. As laws and sentencing guidelines have grown progressively more punitive, sex offenders are the most rapidly increasing segment of the incarcerated population (12% of those in state prisons, 10% in federal facilities - p. 46), despite a decline in the absolute number of sex offense cases. A Minnesota study of the small number of sex offenders who re-offended showed that residency restrictions would not have prevented a single case of re-offense, and a New York study showed that the institution of community notification had no effect on rates of sex offending (pp. 51-52). Girls spend twice as long in juvenile detention for sex offenses as boys (p. 56). A California study showed that released felons who had been through a sex offender treatment program in prison were no more or less likely to re-offend than those who received no treatment (p. 73). Individuals with strong religious involvement throughout their lives actually have higher rates of sex offending, more victims, and younger victims (p. 108). A meta-analysis showed that the most commonly used instrument for assessing the risk of recidivism was accurate only 60% of the time, "not much better than a coin toss" (p. 75). This entire vastly expensive and bureaucratic system is nothing but security theater for the benefit of an anxious and fearful population, unsupported by even a sliver of empirical evidence for its effectiveness. [...]<br>
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In keeping with their aspirational mission, Levine and Meiners end the book with ten concrete recommendations. Most of these are obvious and would receive our wholehearted support: end the Registry, end civil commitment and the medicalization of sexual deviance, rationalize the laws pertaining to teenage sexuality, provide positive sex education that does not focus on sexuality only in terms of risk, but as a collaborative interaction that aims at reinforcing social bonds through mutual pleasure. I particularly like their proposal to "complicate consent" beyond the simple-minded strictures that imagine every sexual exploration must be desiccated into a constantly affirmed checklist of "Yes" and "No." As they point out, there is a lot that even vanilla practitioners can learn about consent from the BDSM community; I would add that cruising spaces of the gay community have also evolved codes of communicating consent and non-consent that are not always verbal and from which heterosexuals can derive valuable lessons.<br>
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<i>source: 'Book Review - The Feminist and the Sex Offender: Confronting Harm, Ending State Violence' by 'TKH'; Posted by 'guidemag'; wapercyfoundation.org/?p=925; William A. Percy Foundation; 30 May 2020</i>

[[Category:Judith Levine]]
[[Category:Erica R. Meiners]]
[[Category:Treatment]]
[[Category:Behandeling]]
[[Category:USA]]
[[Category:Sex offender registries]]
[[Category:Lijsten van zedenwetsovertreders]]