Book Review: Sex offenders, stigma, and social control

• Author: Angela Silletti
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0734016819833428
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

students and scholars examining policy reform specific to the subsystem of policing. Whether

through a political, public policy, or criminal justice lens, the author provides his reader with

broad, provocative policy alternatives to significant challenges in today’s ever-changing world of

policing.

Rickard, D. (2016). Sex offenders, stigma, and social control. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. vii,

199 pp. (paperback), $28.95, ISBN 978-0-8135-7830-9.

Reviewed by: Angela Silletti, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016819833428

Sex Offenders, Stigma, and Social Control studies the narratives of six sex offenders who have violated

against minors and live in the free community. In doing so, they consider their processing through the

criminal justice system and how it stigmatizes them and further labels them as deviant. Rickard s tudies

how their label impacts their sense of self and highlights their efforts to find meaning postlabel and

offense. Rickard constructs her text through the prism of the “new penology”which minimizes the reha-

bilitative ideal and highlights the net-widening of sex offender laws and policies. Through the men’s

narratives, she investigates how their disproportionate sentences, punishments, and the stigma of offend-

ing against a minor complicate their ability to live normal, prosocial lives in the community.

Chapter 1 begins by framing the men’s narratives within a system of legislationbasedonemotionand

moral panics. She highlights this with an emphasis on the collateral consequences of having the label

“sex offender.”These consequences include degraded civil status, invisible punishments (e.g., sex

offender registries), and disintegrative shaming. Shaming is often done through media outlets which

present sex offenders as horrific, regardless of where their offenses fall on the continuum of behaviors .

Chapter 2 presents the men’s individual stories including personal histories, events leading up to

their offense, and ultimately the violation that put them in contact with the criminal justice system.

She acknowledges that she is looking to find a counternarrative or the “real truth”of what really hap-

pened as she found herself questioning certain accounts of their stories, showing reflexivity.

Nonetheless, I found her portrayal of her respondents as fair and without judgment. The researcher

understands that her position as a female researcher may impact the interviewee’s responses but

states that to what extent that may impact her data collection is unclear.

Chapter 3 investigates the respondent’s ability to maintain bonds within the community. All

respondents reported the ability to maintain social bonds through church, work, family, and

friends. Specifically, Rickard notes that familial relationships remained strong and supportive regard-

less of their offense. This chapter also presents the men’s stories individually.

Chapter 4 investigates how punishments imposed on the men impacted their status in the commu-

nity. Through labeling, shaming, and other sanctions such as Megan’s law, Rickard addresses five

themes that were analyzed through the men’s narratives. Themes included social control and civil

restrictions, employment, housing, subjective experiences of stigma, and the loss of community

(this theme applied to one offender).

Chapter 5 discusses the strategies that the men developed to maintain a sense of social connection

and a “normal”sense of self. Constructed similarly to the previous chapter, Rickard discusses four

themes that are revealed. Themes included the men’s assertion of the “real self”that was separate

from their offense, their concurrence with “mainstream views”of sex offenders, and the need for

Megan’s Law type legislation, while at the same time separating themselves from the need to be clas-

sified as the dangerous other. Additional themes included critiques of sex offender policies and their

victimization by the labeling process.

124 Criminal Justice Review 47(1)