Sexual Abuse as a Deviant Behavior - Term Paper Example

 «Sexual Abuse as a Deviant Behavior» Sexual abuse and sexual crimes are the most typical crimes in the USA affected 1,477 people in 2007. The problem with sex is that people are all vulnerable. The truth is that comparatively few people are murdered in the course of muggings, kidnaps or armed robberies. Many more are slain by rapists, sex attackers and jealous lovers. The problem is that many sex offenders are not imprisoned but subjected to residency laws and released. Thesis Stronger laws should be in place for Sex Offenders because current laws do not protect innocent population from cruelties and sexual abuse. The main problem is that most sexual behavior has a very low visibility. It typically takes place away from public view, in those back regions of life where it may pass unnoticed, and is immune from public labeling. Current residency laws do not protect families and partners from sexual abuse and sexual crimes (Serran et al 54; Salter 72). Far more important is the degree to which the sexual activity disturbs the equilibrium of the community or family. Much sexuality flows privately between one, two, or more individuals. In this case, imprisonment and stricter laws will play the role of deterrent (Groth 23). Every day the problem of dealing with crime and the criminal is addressed in thousands of courtrooms by doling out one form of punishment or another. The different forms of punishment meted out distribute the benefits and burdens of engaging in criminal activity differently. Punishment for sexual abuse, for example, has traditionally been such that it significantly decreases the burden of engaging in such activities as compared to engaging in street crimes. Similarly, different forms of punishment shift the costs of dealing with crime and the criminal to different sectors of society (Serran et al 56; Thrnhill and Pahner 51). Stronger laws should be in place for Sex Offenders because many women do not report sexual abuse afraid of revenge and further cruelty. Punishment as deterrence also raises sets of important questions to consider in arguing for punishment as restitution. It means that the state should be a positive factor in the area of criminal law. The state should not passively await criminal activity before it deals with those involved and its consequences (Groth 29). It should take some action to anticipate and preclude criminal activity before it manifests itself clearly (Serran et al 87). Those of critics who support restitution believe very strongly and will argue that the proper foci of the criminal law are the victims and others directly affected by the criminal act as well as the good of society in a practical (i.e., economic or institutional sense), rather than a moral sense. Consequently, critics are convinced that punishment should become operative as an award of damages to victims, other injured parties, and society in the person of its political institutions (Serran et al 51). To convince most people that deterrence is a way of increasing the total social good through punishment (rather than merely reducing the total social evil), since it benefits victims, injured parties, and political institutions, as well as the criminal, the penal system, and the courts. Consequently, restitution is the most economical and ethical way in which the state can take positive action to secure human welfare (i.e., the benefits of social living) and avoid its opposite (Groth 65; Ward 41). Stricter laws should be imposed on sex offenders because the authorities cannot control their lives and actions after the release. Oklahoma state Rep. Lucky Lamons “says it forces many offenders to live in rural areas where they are difficult for authorities to monitor. Also, he says, it does not differentiate between real predators and the type of men he recalls arresting for urinating in public, a sex offense in Oklahoma” (Koch 2007). These law has definitive social goals and purposes (not all necessarily "moral"), and ensures that the state accommodates simultaneously both these objectives and the diverse moral claims of the citizenry. The point is that in the area of criminal jurisprudence should be seen as a body of positive rules varying with time and place according to the usefulness of certain conducts toward accomplishing certain ends (Groth 64). Stricter laws against sexual offenders are required because sexual abuse is difficult to predict and prevent. To say that people have a legal obligation to do or to forbear doing something is to say that there is a readily identifiable and formally promulgated rule already alerting them to their responsibilities (Serran et al 72). This requirement is, of course, born of the positivists and is open to all of the usual objections to that philosophy of law, that (1) it is difficult to identify a single sovereign promulgating rules in a pluralistic and shifting political environment, (2) many (if not most) laws are not orders to do or forbear, but means of facilitating social arrangements, and so on. These objections need not concern us here, though, because it is possible to say that although the position does not hold in general, it nevertheless holds in the particular case of crimes and punishments, that is, all of the positivist requirements should be fulfilled in order to "punish." “Broad restrictions provide a "false sense of security," says Nancy Sabin of the Jacob Wetterling Foundation, which fights child exploitation. Such laws do not protect the more than 90% of abused children who suffer at the hands of people they know. And many of the laws bar offenders from living near schools but do not stop them from loitering there, she says” (Koch 2007). The growth of strict liability paralleled the development of industrialized society (Groth 59; Thrnhill and Pahner 73). As the primary purposes and values of social policies became economic in nature, the stability and welfare of the society itself increasingly became dependent upon the economic welfare of the total population. The paramount concern shifted from individual responsibility and fault to distributing losses as widely as possible. Sexual experiences become qualitatively different when labeled by self or other as deviant, it has sketched the passage of an individual from a situation of random sexual differentiation through to stabilized sexual deviance. It has looked at the questions (causes, characteristics and consequences) and problem areas (action, reaction and interaction) that need to be taken into account by criminal justice (Serran et al 72; Ward 34). According to psychologists, sexual abuse is considered a deviant behavior which is difficult to predict and control. The interactionist approach to sexuality takes as one of its fundamental concerns the problematic and socially constructed nature of sexual meanings (Thrnhill and Pahner 61). With process as a pivotal feature of the interactionist approach to deviancy, the interest in 'given structures' and 'static conditions' becomes strictly limited. Imprisonment fits well with this condition, regardless of whether the person considered socially responsible is a wrongdoer in the strictest sense. Strict liability recognized that what gives any physical act its criminal character has nothing to do with the intrinsic nature of the act, but with the framework of social relationships within which it occurs. Since it is the violation of the social framework that is punished, it is only the reparation of that framework which the society, through its authoritative structures, has a right to demand (Thrnhill and Pahner 43). Disruption of the socioeconomic framework gives rise to a claim on the part of those affected. But it is not a claim on the comfort of the person punished. It is a claim to be made whole. Similarly, an obligation arises on the part of those benefiting from the violation of the framework, and there is no necessity that he who benefits need only be the actual agent of disruption. Often (if not usually) the benefiter and the disrupter will be identical, but this will not invariably be the case. Strict liability recognized this most directly (Groth 77). The obligation of the state is to the injured members of society, to protect them from the adverse consequences of the disrupting act, and therefore, to provide a mechanism through which reparation might be efficiently realized (Serran et al 98; Ward 82). To refute these arguments, it is possible to say that criminal justice system has not possibilities to imprison all criminals including sex offenders. Today, burden on criminal justice system is so heavy that it has to introduce less strict laws for murders and killers in order to decrease number of imprisoned population and burden on tax payers (Thrnhill and Pahner 43). Also, some of the more widely known and interesting speculations on the roots of punishment include: (1) the intoxicating joy of cruelty stimulated by an offending act, (2) the desire for self-expansion after the "self" has been humiliated by the infliction of injury, (3) an ambiguous human nature expressing a combination of cruelty and compassion, and (4) a reflexive action to pain modified by reason and calculation. In short, punishment is some act (usually painful) reasonably calculated to appease the desire for vengeance excited in victims or other private individuals with interests in the victims. It should be noted in passing that there is a kind of restitutionary aspect to these speculations (Serran et al 18; Thrnhill, R., Pahner 92). In sum, stronger laws should be in place for Sex Offenders because current laws do not protect victims from cruelties and sexual abuse, but criminal justice system has no possibilities to imprison sex offenders and abusers. In short, punishment is some act (usually painful) reasonably calculated to incarnate the compassion, social hatred, and demand for vengeance (as opposed to a private hatred and demand for vengeance) excited by the commission of a crime Works Cited 1. Groth, A. N. Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender. Perseus Publishing, 2001. 2. Koch, W. Sex-offender residency laws get second look. 2007. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-25-sex-offender-laws-cover_x.htm 3. Salter, A. C. Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders. Basic Books Inc.,U.S., 2004. 4. Serran, G., Marshall, W. L., Fernandez, Y. Sexual Offender Treatment: Controversial Issues. John Wiley & Sons. 5. Thrnhill, R., Pahner, C. T. A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion. MIT Press, 2000. 6. Ward, T., Polaschek, D., Beech, A. Theories of Sexual Offending. John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Read More