Sex Offenses and Sex Offenders

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punishing consensual or autoerotic conduct, or nuisance manifestations of minor sexual pathology, might well be repealed.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.