Sociology Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, DE, United States.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2011 May-Jun;34(3):177-85. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2011.04.004. Epub 2011 May 18.
The U.S. has dramatically revised its approach to punishment in the last several decades. In particular, people convicted of sex crimes have experienced a remarkable expansion in social control through a wide-range of post-conviction interventions. While this expansion may be largely explained by general punishment trends, there appear to be unique factors that have prevented other penal reforms from similarly modulating sex offender punishment. In part, this continuation of a "penal harm" approach to sex offenders relates to the past under-valuing of sexual victimization. In the "bad old days," the law and its agents sent mixed messages about sexual violence and sexual offending. Some sexual offending was mere nuisance, some was treatable, and a fraction "deserved" punishment equivalent to other serious criminal offending. In contrast, today's sex offender punishment schemes rarely distinguish formally among gradations of harm or dangerousness. After examining incarceration trends, this article explores the historical context of the current broad brush approach and reviews the unintended consequences. Altogether, this article reinforces the need to return to differentiation among sex offenders, but differentiation based on science and on the experience-based, guided discretion of experts in law enforcement, corrections, and treatment.
美国在过去几十年中大幅调整了其惩罚方式。特别是，被判犯有性犯罪的人通过广泛的定罪后干预措施，经历了社会控制的显著扩大。虽然这种扩张在很大程度上可以归因于一般的惩罚趋势，但似乎存在一些独特的因素，阻止了其他刑罚改革对性犯罪者的惩罚进行类似的调整。部分原因是，对性侵犯者继续采取“惩罚伤害”的方法，与过去对性受害的低估有关。在“过去糟糕的日子”里，法律及其代理人对性暴力和性犯罪发出了相互矛盾的信息。有些性犯罪只是滋扰，有些是可以治疗的，而一小部分“应得”与其他严重刑事犯罪相当的惩罚。相比之下，如今的性犯罪者惩罚方案很少正式区分伤害或危险性的程度。本文在考察监禁趋势后，探讨了当前广泛做法的历史背景，并回顾了其意外后果。总的来说，本文强调了有必要重新对性犯罪者进行区分，但这种区分应基于科学，并基于执法、矫正和治疗方面专家的经验为基础的谨慎判断。
