“Secondary registrants”: A new conceptualization of the spread of community control
Published date | 01 July 2023 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221094255 |
Author | Chrysanthi S Leon,Ashley R Kilmer |
Date | 01 July 2023 |
“Secondary registrants”:A
new conceptualization of
the spread of community
control
Chrysanthi S Leon
Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, US
Ashley R Kilmer
Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice, Towson
University, United States
Abstract
U.S. policies influence worldwide responses to sexual offending and community control.
Individuals in the U.S. convicted of sex offenses experience surveillance and control
beyond their sentences, including public registries and residency restrictions. While
the targets are the convicted individuals, many registrants have romantic partners, chil-
dren, and other family members also navigating these restrictions. Findings from a quali-
tative study using written and interview responses from a hard-to-reach group—family
members of registrants (n =58)—reveal legal and extra-legal surveillance and control
beyond the intended target. We argue that family members are “secondary registrants”
enduring both the reach of sex offense policies into their personal lives and targeted
harms because of their relationship with a convicted individual, including vigilantism
and a “sex offender surcharge.”Family members engage in advocacy work to ameliorate
sex offense restrictions to counteract their own stigmatization and social exclusion.
Conceptually, secondary registration captures the unique and expansive reach of policy,
state surveillance, and coercion on registrant family members and raises new concerns
about spillover harm. Secondary registration demonstrates an understudied example of
the neoliberal penal practice of de-centering the state but with the addition of deep stig-
matization and the spread of sovereign and vigilante violence onto families.
Keywords
sex offender registry, Megan’s law, penal control, family impact, qualitative
Corresponding author:
Chrysanthi S Leon, Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware, 18 Amstel Ave, Newark, DE,
19716, US.
Email: santhi@udel.edu
Article
Punishment & Society
2023, Vol. 25(3) 641–664
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14624745221094255
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Introduction
There is above all one form of punishment where this passionate character is more apparent
than anywhere else: it is shame that doubles most punishments, and that increases with
them. …. They are so much the result of instinctive, irresistible feelings that they often
spread to innocent objects. Thus, the scene of the crime, the tools used in it, the relatives
of the guilty person –all sometimes share the opprobrium. (Durkheim, 1984: 47)
Rather than punishing children for the “sins of the fathers,”in the contemporary U.S.
we prefer to see ourselves as more restrained and rational, reserving punishment for the
individual and sparing the family. While the motives and effects of the Enlightenment
have been effectively critiqued (Foucault, 1995) and contemporary scholars point out
the pitfalls inherent in the tendency to describe pendular swings from one totalizing
approach to another (Goodman, Page and Phelps, 2017), Americans still tend to under-
stand our criminal law as having evolved into a rational system that isolates punishment
for the immediate offender and does not visit retribution upon families by association
(Posner, 1980). But even Durkheim, who viewed Western punishment overall as more
advanced and less intensive, noted that when shame is involved, it is “spread to innocent
objects”(Durkheim, 1984: 47).
Criminal status encroaches both symbolically and practically onto families. Empirical
research documents the consequences for children of having incarcerated parents
(Phillips and Gates, 2011; Turney and Goodsell, 2018; Luther, 2016; Saunders, 2018).
Partners and children may lose income or other resources and support. Shame tied to
offending or to receiving state support carries over onto family members (see
Gustafson 2013: 115). Yet research on court decision-making and on re-entry shows
that being “familied”shapes likelihood of re-offending and other measures of success
post-conviction (Andrews and Bonta, 1995; Shanahan and Agudelo, 2012;
Brunton-Smith and McCarthy, 2017).
An emerging body of literature focuses on the subgroup of people convicted of sex
offenses
1
and their families (Levenson and Tewksbury, 2009; Kilmer and Leon, 2017).
Those convicted of sex offenses are subjected to social restrictions, surveillance, and
public display of their offense history that can be lifelong. Such comprehensive social
control and exclusion is not typically experienced by those convicted of other types of
crime. This literature documents the impact of sex offender registration on families as
“unintended”or “collateral consequences.”For example, Levenson and Tewksbury
(2009) find that family members of registrants experience disruptions in housing, finan-
cial strain, harassment, and vigilantism. However, the impact of sex offense-related pun-
ishments on families is underexamined as a case that can contribute to theorizing the
carceral state beyond prison walls.
We situate our empirical research on the effects of sex offense policies in conversation
with Comfort’s groundbreaking work on the “secondary prisonization”of women in rela-
tionships with incarcerated people (2003, 2008). Comfort reveals the control exerted by
correctional institutions on the romantic partners of incarcerated individuals, including
constraints on daily schedules, clothing choices, communication with their loved ones,
642 Punishment & Society 25(3)
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