IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v376y1968i1p148-155.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sex Offenses and Sex Offenders

Author

Listed:
  • Donal E.J. Macnamara

    (American League to Abolish Capital Punishment)

Abstract

Sex and sex-related conduct is rigidly circum scribed by law in the United States, and rigorous penalties are provided for deviations from the limited forms of sexual expression (or choice of sexual partners) permitted. These laws reflect a puritanical sociosexual culture, strangled in taboos, but do not accurately depict either the incidence or modes of sexual conduct. They do, however, create a body of sexual offenders (perhaps exaggerated as to numbers and certainly exaggerated as to degree of social danger) who are differentially subjected to hysterical, almost sadistically punitive sanctions by public, police, courts, and corrections authorities. Little research and experimentation is supported in this field, and less treatment is provided in the nation's penal institutions. While sex acts committed by force or threat, and sexual advances to very young children, must be restrained by penal sanctions (at least in the absence of effective therapeutic techniques), many of the sex statutes punishing consensual or autoerotic conduct, or nuisance manifestations of minor sexual pathology, might well be repealed. This would permit the development of a legal code more consistent with the changing sociosexual mores and folkways of our culture.

Suggested Citation

  • Donal E.J. Macnamara, 1968. "Sex Offenses and Sex Offenders," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 376(1), pages 148-155, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:376:y:1968:i:1:p:148-155
    DOI: 10.1177/000271626837600114
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000271626837600114
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/000271626837600114?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:376:y:1968:i:1:p:148-155. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.