Presentation Type
Poster Presentation
Category
Social Sciences/Humanities
Abstract/Artist Statement
Across U.S. history, sexual regulation has operated as a powerful tool for producing racial hierarchy, defining moral boundaries, and legitimating punishment. From the colonial construction of Indigenous “savagery” to the hypersexualization of Black Americans under slavery and Jim Crow, sexual deviance has repeatedly been mobilized to justify surveillance, punishment, and racial terror. This project argues that the contemporary sex offender registry, widely understood as a neutral mechanism of public safety, is best understood as a modern extension of long-standing racialized narratives that link sexuality, danger, and exclusion.
The purpose of this study is to examine how offender race and age, alongside offense severity, relationship to the victim, and victim age, shape public perceptions of punishment, rehabilitation, and social exclusion. Drawing on theories of group position, racial threat, and retributive impulses, the project investigates how moral emotions such as fear, disgust, and the desire for symbolic purification continue to structure punitive judgment today. This study employs a nationally representative survey experiment conducted through YouGov where respondents evaluate paired hypothetical male sex offenders who vary across experimentally manipulated characteristics. Participants allocate prison sentences, assess rehabilitative potential, and indicate comfort with social proximity, allowing for causal identification of how racialized and contextual cues shape punitive decision-making.
This project is original in its integration of historical analysis of racialized sexual mythmaking with experimental methods typically divorced from sociohistorical inquiry. By operationalizing centuries-old racial-sexual narratives within a contemporary survey experiment, the study bridges a critical gap between theory and empirical research. The project challenges the assumption that punishment is a rational response to risk, revealing how the American state continues to define safety, citizenship, and belonging through the regulation of racialized sexuality.
Mentor Name
Andrew Thompson
Edith Meade poster presentation
Race, Sexual Danger, and the Moral Logic of Punishment in the Registry Era
UC North Ballroom
Across U.S. history, sexual regulation has operated as a powerful tool for producing racial hierarchy, defining moral boundaries, and legitimating punishment. From the colonial construction of Indigenous “savagery” to the hypersexualization of Black Americans under slavery and Jim Crow, sexual deviance has repeatedly been mobilized to justify surveillance, punishment, and racial terror. This project argues that the contemporary sex offender registry, widely understood as a neutral mechanism of public safety, is best understood as a modern extension of long-standing racialized narratives that link sexuality, danger, and exclusion.
The purpose of this study is to examine how offender race and age, alongside offense severity, relationship to the victim, and victim age, shape public perceptions of punishment, rehabilitation, and social exclusion. Drawing on theories of group position, racial threat, and retributive impulses, the project investigates how moral emotions such as fear, disgust, and the desire for symbolic purification continue to structure punitive judgment today. This study employs a nationally representative survey experiment conducted through YouGov where respondents evaluate paired hypothetical male sex offenders who vary across experimentally manipulated characteristics. Participants allocate prison sentences, assess rehabilitative potential, and indicate comfort with social proximity, allowing for causal identification of how racialized and contextual cues shape punitive decision-making.
This project is original in its integration of historical analysis of racialized sexual mythmaking with experimental methods typically divorced from sociohistorical inquiry. By operationalizing centuries-old racial-sexual narratives within a contemporary survey experiment, the study bridges a critical gap between theory and empirical research. The project challenges the assumption that punishment is a rational response to risk, revealing how the American state continues to define safety, citizenship, and belonging through the regulation of racialized sexuality.