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The Social Construction Of The Sex Offender, Lisa L. Sample

Dissertations

Over the last two decades, Americans have come to perceive sex offending as a serious and widespread problem. As a response to the public's concern, new sex offender legislation has been enacted. This dissertation examines the contemporary sex offender problem and the legislative responses, within a social constructionist framework. I performed a content analysis of newspaper accounts, conducted interviews with public officials, and analyzed arrest data to determine the current definitions of sex offenders, the process by which those definitions found their way into law, and how they were applied to offenders.

I found that the media depict and policy …