Becoming a Sex Offender: A Study of Constitution at the Intersection of the Mental Health and Legal Systems

This research conceptualizes "sex offender" as an institutional category. The purpose of this research is to show how people become constituted as sex offenders in the context of the two systems that make demands of them: the mental health and legal systems. These systems view sex offenders in ways that contradict, in that they are viewed as sick by the mental health system and as criminal or bad by the legal system. As a result, the demands these systems make contradict and at times impose double binds on the people who have to navigate them. The data I collected demonstrate how these contractions and double binds occur, creating practices that are impractical (they do not do what they intend to) and unethical (they do more harm than good). There are three methods of data collection: field work, two focus groups, and interviews. In most research the voice of the sex offender is silenced, but this research makes a point to emphasize the voices of those participants known as "sex offender."

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Immediate Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Clinical Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Callanan, Jessica

Contributors dc:contributor

• Martin Packer
• Jessie Goicoechea
• Scott Churchill

• Contradictory Demands
• Double Binds
• Ethics
• Sex Offender
• Treatment

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/378

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dsc.duq.edu:etd-1391