Durkheim's Theories Of Sex Offender Restrictions

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Being convicted as a sex offender has unique restrictions and sanctions compared to other crimes. For the rest of their lives, sex offenders are within the public eye with their offenses on display. Sex offenders must register every year on a sex offender register which allows for their name, birthday, crime, and living address to be broadcasted to the entire public. Most also can't be within 2000 feet of a school, which can very difficult to fulfill within cities. These sanctions can largely influence individual’s lives, so how are they created? Durkheim's theory can help explain how society’s collective conscious and emotions influence specific sanctions, while Foucault’s theory explains how modern punishment calls for the removal of …show more content…

Megan’s Law enacted the sex offender register while Jessica’s Law enacted that most sex offenders can't live within 2000 feet from a school. Megan and Jessica were little girls who were raped and killed by known sex offenders. Both these cases caught a significant amount of media exposure which enraged the public to do something about sex offenders’ punishments. Durkheim's theory believes that heinous crimes brings people together to agree as a society what is morally wrong. (Durkheim, 1983, p. 69). Durkheim (1983) believes that the function of punishment is not to deter criminals from crime, but the purpose of punishment is to bring honest people together (p. 69). He states that crime is a part of …show more content…

Both Durkheim and Foucault were not around to see its implementation, but their theories help explain the progression of modern punishment and the influence society still plays on punishment. Durkheim’s theory highlights that society plays a major in role deciding punishments and that the process is deeply emotional. The purpose of sex offender restrictions is to allow society to build a collective moral against sex offenders. Foucault’s theory highlights that punishment is changing to inflict the soul than inflicting pain on the body. The purpose of sex offender restrictions is to progress punishment towards a modern era that focuses on taking away liberty through control of living arrangements and lack of privacy. Foucault also believes that modern punishment is turning to be

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