More than monsters: Penal imaginaries and the specter of the dangerous sex offender
| Published date | 01 October 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221118883 |
| Author | Robert Werth |
| Date | 01 October 2023 |
More than monsters: Penal
imaginaries and the specter
of the dangerous sex
offender
Robert Werth
University of Southern California, USA
Abstract
Drawing from ethnographic data, this article examines parole personnel’s imaginaries of
dangerous sex offenders: individuals perceived as especially aberrant, predatory and irre-
deemable. While the dangerous sex offender is perceived as a monster, this article con-
tends that we also need to attend to the spectral characteristics ascribed to this subject.
For parole personnel, the dangerous sex offender is a monster, but this is a monster that
haunts; a monster that represents a spectral figure. The spectrality of this figure mani-
fests in two overlapping ways. First, parole personnel perceive the dangerous sex
offender –as a person –as a ghostly figure: a mobile, roving, nearly omnipresent indi-
vidual that is difficult to locate or contain. Second, they perceive the threat posed by this
subject –the commission of future sex crimes –as a pervasive absent presence. Even
when it is not occurring, recidivism is imagined as an emergent, already unfolding
event. In this way, dangerous sex offenders and their presumptive reoffending represent
haunting figures that trouble the distinctions between absence/presence, visible/invisible
and knowable/unknowable. Through tracing the convergence of monstrosity and spec-
trality, this article shows how parole personnel’s imaginaries undergird the extremely
exclusionary ways that they govern dangerous sex offenders.
Keywords
carceral studies, monsters, parole, punishment, sex offenders, social imaginaries,
spectral turn, spectrality
Corresponding author:
Robert Werth, Department of Sociology, University of Southern California, USA.
Email: rwerth@usc.edu
Article
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(4) 977–997
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14624745221118883
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
“The objects of collective outbreaks of fear and loathing are complex entities: part real, part
imagined; part one thing, part another.”
- Lancaster (2011: 25)
“To study social life, one must confront the ghostly aspects of it.”- Gordon (2011: 7)
This article explores how the dangerous sex offender is understood within parole in the
United States. The term dangerous sex offender refers to a subset of “sex offenders”who
are perceived as especially aberrant, predatory and irredeemable. It overlaps with what
has been referred to elsewhere as the sexual psychopath, sexually violent predator, or
sexual monster (Freedman, 1987; Lancaster, 2011; Vogler, 2018). Drawing from ethno-
graphic and interview data, this article examines how ground-level parole personnel
(parole agents and their on-site supervisors) in California perceive and make sense of
this subject, and how these understandings undergird an exclusionary, carceral,
security-oriented style of parole supervision.
A substantial body of scholarship documents the highly punitive governance of sex
offenders in the penal realm (e.g. Cowburn & Dominelli, 2001; Freedman, 1987;
Hebenton & Thomas, 1996; Kitzinger, 1999; McAlinden, 2007; Meiners, 2016;
Pratt, 2000; Renfro, 2020; Schaefer & Williamson, 2018; Spencer & Ricciardelli,
2017; Williams, 2018). Moreover, it is well established that sex offenders are often
governed via a logic of security –of risk management –that seeks to continuously
preempt and prevent harm before it happens (Harkins 2020; Hebenton & Seddon,
2009; Kemshall & Maguire, 2001; Lancaster, 2011; Lecoq, Ballucci & Spencer,
2020; Simon, 1999). Echoing this work, data for this article show that the vast majority
of parole personnel adopted a highly exclusionary approach to the supervision of dan-
gerous sex offenders that equated to a de facto policy of preemptive carceral banish-
ment. Regardless of how individuals fared on parole –whether or not they complied
with rules or were perceived as ‘doing well’–research participants consistently
sought to revoke the parole of dangerous sex offenders, thereby returning them to
prison. I refer to this as a de facto policy because formally the parole agency was com-
mitted to governing sex offenders in a way that integrated public safety (supervision)
with parolee support (for rehabilitation and reintegration). Yet, in their everyday prac-
tices, ground-level parole personnel enacted an approach that aimed to preemptively
purge sex offenders from the community. This article takes this approach of carceral
banishment as a point of departure. Rather than detailing the everyday practices
involved, I focus on the beliefs, assumptions and affects towards dangerous sex offen-
ders that make this approach possible and, in parole personnel’s eyes, necessary. That
is, this article explores research participants’imaginaries of the dangerous sex
offender.
1
A number of scholarly accounts document that sex offenders –especially ‘pedophiles’
and ‘serial recidivists’–are understood as monsters beyond repair or redemption by crim-
inal justice personnel (Cowburn & Dominelli, 2001; Fischel, 2010; Spencer &
Ricciardelli, 2017; Troshynski & Weiner, 2014), legislators and policy makers
(Chenier, 2008; Lancaster, 2011; Lynch, 2002; Simon, 1999) and the ‘general public’
978 Punishment & Society 25(4)
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