Protecting Our Kids?: How Sex Offender Laws Are Failing Us - Hardcover

Horowitz, Emily

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1440838623 ISBN 13: 9781440838620

Publisher: Praeger, 2015

Synopsis

This thought-provoking work raises important questions about sex offender laws, drawing from personal stories, research, and data to prove the policies promote fear, destroy lives, and fail to protect children.

Do sex offender laws protect children, or are they inherently unfair practices that, at their worst, promote vigilante justice? The latter, this book argues. By analyzing the social, political, historical, and cultural context surrounding the emergence of current sex offender policies and laws, the work shows how sex offenders have come to loom as greater-than-life monsters when, in many cases, that is not true at all. Looking at its subject from a fresh viewpoint, the book shares research and new analyses of data and qualitative evidence to show how sex-offender laws are not only ineffective, but engender destructive fear and anxiety.

To help readers understand the impact of these laws, the author presents interviews with sex offenders and their families as they describe the day-to-day reality of living on the sex offender registry. Citing research and statistics, the book challenges the idea that sex offenders must be continually monitored and publicly identified because they are incurably predatory. Most important, the study shows that undue sex offender panic is preventing policymakers from addressing the true threats to children―poverty and growing inequality.

About this title

About the Author

Emily Horowitz, PhD, is professor of sociology and criminal justice at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, NY.

Edition details

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1440838623
• ISBN 13: 9781440838620
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208