Week 6
Stranger Danger
Key Questions
How has the sex registry regime developed? How has its development been entangled with anti-queerness, anti-Blackness, and paternalism?
What is the purported purpose of sex registries? How do sex registries rely on myths about sexual violence?
What do sex registries expose about the resonance of “protecting children” in carceral discourse? Which children are deemed in need of protection?
Required Materials
Paul Renfro, Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State, “Circling the Wagon: Child Safety and the Punitive State in the Clinton Years”
Judith Levine and Erica Meiners, The Feminist and the Sex Offender, “Punishment and ‘Management’: The Sex Offender Registry”
Erica Meiners, For the Children?: Protecting Innocence In a Carceral State, "Registering Sex, Rethinking Safety"
Supplementary Materials
Judith Levine and Erica Meiners, The Feminist and the Sex Offender, “Protecting (White) Innocence”
Judith Levine and Erica Meiners, The Feminist and the Sex Offender, “Policing Deviance: What Is a ‘Sex Offender’?”
Erica Meiners, Liam Michaud, Josh Pavan, and Bridget Simpson, “‘Worst of the Worst’? Queer Investments in Challenging Sex Offender Registries”
Paul Renfro, Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State, “‘Great Surface Appeal’: The Department of Justice and the Affective Politics of Child Safety”
Paul Renfro, Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State, “Kids in Custody: Protection and Punishment in the Reagan Era”
Paul Renfro, Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State, “‘The Business of Missing Children’: Child Protection in Public and Private”
Marie Gottschalk, Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics, “The New Untouchables: The War on Sex Offenders”
Regina Kunzel, The War on Sex, "Sex Panic, Psychiatry, and the Expansion of the Carceral State"
Scott De Orio, The War on Sex, “The Creation of the Modern Sex Offender”
Paul Renfro, "Sex Offender Registries Are Fueling Mass Incarceration — And They Aren't Helping Survivors"
You’re Wrong About, “Stranger Danger”
Beth Schwartzapfel and Emily Kassie, "Banished"
Exercise
People designated as a "sexually violent person" or "sexually violent predator" can be confined indefinitely beyond the term of their incarceration. Look through this report on civil commitment to learn more about this carceral practice. Which states have these laws and policies? How many people are detained under these policies in each state? What kinds of people are committed under these statutes?