Book Review: The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex, and Sin in the New American Heartland

• DOI: 10.1177/1057567711419658
• Published date: 01 December 2011
• Date: 01 December 2011
• Author: Edward J. Schauer
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

goes on to fashion a restorative framework that meets these publics where they are . He does so by

proposing a model of restorative justice that has what he believes is the potential to reach wide

popular acceptance. This is important, since Cornwell states that the biggest challenge facing the

implementation of a restorative justice model lies in changing the perceptions of the public and

government leaders.

Much of the book is dedicated to describing and explaining issues found within penal systems and

offeringways forward from a standpointthat nowadays is often referredto as restorative practice.With

these proposedsolutions to internal penal systemmechanisms come financialand material benefits for

the state, as wellas healing and reintegration benefits afforded tovictims, offenders, and communities.

The book directlyconfronts public concernsover the increased use of community sanctionsfor felons.

The author makes clear his understanding that the broader society is deeplycomplicit in the problems

bedeviling penal systems, and so communities must play a major role in any proposed solutions.

Cornwell makes effective use of diagrams and charts to help illustrate his concepts, arguments,

and models for restorative justice. This is particularly true in the charts he uses to describe proposed

restorative and reparative correctional services and his bifurcated model of criminal justice. The text

aims to open our eyes to key problems, help alleviate long-standing fears, and offer solutions that put

restorative justice in a workable context. The clear writing style and use of numerous learning aids

help to accomplish this.

Finally, we feel compelled to add that by now it is well documented that minority males, partic-

ularly those hailing from poor, mostly minority neighborhoods, bear the brunt of penal system

growth. This nation’s War on Drugs is largely blamed for a pattern of justice system encroachment

that many are calling ‘‘mass incarceration.’’ The War on Drugs has increased the number of police

on the streets, intensified the surveillance of relatively poor, minority residents, and brought so many

young African American and Latino males into the penal system, that ‘‘doing time’’ is said to have

become something of a normal rite of passage, and ‘‘the new Jim Crow.’’ And these punitive ten-

dencies are not unique to the United States but are only most pronounced in this country.

For these reasons, we would suggest that any meaningful penal system reform must engage the

issue of race. We would further suggest that merely admitting the reality of skewed racial propor-

tionality patterns is not enough. Nations wishing to unlock their reliance on criminal sanctions need

to ask the difficult questions concerning why the current state of affairs has come into being. What is

it about Western-style democracies that seem to lead to scapegoating aimed at racial/ethnic mino-

rities? Until these fundamental questions are asked and addressed, we fear that the public debate will

remain at the level presented in this thoughtful but largely technocratic text.

This book will work well in graduate courses concerned with restorative justice, penal systems,

and criminal justice policy. Its value, we hope to have made clear, will lie in examining what is

found within its pages and, perhaps especially, in discussing what is not.

B. G. Brents, C. A. Jackson, and K. Hausbeck

The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex, and Sin in the New American Heartland New York, NY: Routledge, 2010. xvii, 302

pp. $31.95. ISBN 978-0-415-92948-6

Reviewed by: Edward J. Schauer, Equip the Saints (NPO/NGO), Prairie View, TX, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567711419658

In The State of Sex, the authors, Brents, Jackson, and Hausbeck, combine several decades of

sociological research and analysis of the legal brothel industry in the State of Nevada. As

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