The In/visible Stockade: Sex Offender Management, Governmentality, and the Search for Normal Life

摘要: Over the past thirty-five years, the United States has seen a dramatic expansion of regulatory policy around individuals convicted of sexual offenses. Sex offender management policies include national and state registries, notification laws, treatment mandates, residency restrictions, and numerous exclusions from institutions. A growing body of research from sociologists and criminologists has tracked the effects of this sex offender regime by measuring recidivism and collateral consequences among released offenders. Less attention has been paid to how sex offenders adapt to their regulator context—especially the selective public visibility that the registry generates. Furthermore, sociological scholarship has not yet developed strong theoretical tools with which to make sense of sex offense management. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 106 registered citizens in the state of Nevada, I examine how registered …