Monstrous Crimes, Framing, and the Preventive State: The Moral Failure of Forensic Psychiatry
Monsters and predators frighten, entertain, and disgust us. The idea of a creature that is a volatile mixture of human and animal parts (the monster) triggers our visual and visceral imagination perhaps more than any other image. The fear of predation – literally, eating another’s flesh – disgusts and repels, but like rubberneckers who slow down to witness accidents, our voyeurism seems unconstrained by shame. The monster and the predator threaten us by threatening to rend the social fabric and bring about a state of nature in which, as Hobbes famously wrote, we are engaged in a war of all against all, and life is nasty, brutish and short. We demand that the government and its legal process protect us from the monsters and predators in our midst, which has resulted in a quest for security at the expense of the protection of the rights of citizens that runs parallel with the quest for protection from “terrorists,” as reflected in the epigram to this book. The referent of the “terrorist,” however, is often simply somebody who looks, acts, or talks in a way that is vaguely Middle-Eastern. Similarly, people who look, act, or talk like our vaguely sketched stereotype of what constitutes a sex offender, an image that has come to constitute a monstrous predator, trigger a panic as well (Lancaster 2011a, b).
Failure to Protect: America's Sexual Predator Laws and the Rise of the Preventive State
This posting contains the introduction and one chapter from my new book 'Failure to Protect: America's Sexual Predator Laws and the Rise of the Preventive State' (Cornell University Press 2006). Most crimes of sexual violence are committed by people known to the victim - acquaintances and family members. Yet politicians and the media overemphasize predatory strangers when legislating against and reporting on sexual violence. In this book, I seek to look beyond sensational headlines to expose the reality of the laws designed to prevent sexual crimes. I show that sexual predatory laws, which have intense public and political support, are counterproductive. I contend that measures such as civil commitment and Megan's law, which are designed to restrain sex offenders before they commit another crime, are bad policy and do little to reduce sexual violence. Further, these new laws make use of approaches such as preventative detention and actuarial profiling that violate important principles of liberty. I argue that to prevent sexual violence, policymakers must address the deep-seated societal problems that allow it to flourish. In addition to criminal sanctions, I endorse the specific efforts of some advocates, organizations, and social scientists to stop sexual violence by, for example, taking steps to change the attitudes and behaviors of school-age children and adolescents, improving public education and promoting community treatment and supervision of previous offenders. I also warn that the principles underlying the predator laws may be the harbingers of a preventive state in which the government casts nets of surveillance and intervenes to curtail liberty before crimes occur. I also show that the architecture of sexual violence that these new legal approaches nurture is at odds with the advances promoted by feminist thinkers during the last several decades. More than a critique of the status quo, this book discusses alternatives and how best to overcome the political obstacles to achieving rational policy.
Study of External Parasites Infesting Carcharhinus Melanopterus Fish From The Red Sea In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Parasitic diseases are harmful and limiting factors in breeding and rearing ornamental fish industry, such as the Monogenea ( Dactylogyrus sp and Erpocotyletiburonis ) and copepod ( Pandarus sinuatus  and Anchistrotostangi ). The copepod and the monogenean are gill parasites found on the shark; CarcharhinusMelanopterus . The primary purpose of this study was to determine the parasitic infections of sharks in red sea in Jeddah. For this purpose, 19 female C. Melanopterus and 14 male C. Melanopterus were first examined for ectoparasites using wet mount under a light microscope. All male sharks had Monogenea and/or copepod in their gill and only 3 females haven’t infections. Then, we aimed to find a combination of copepod and monogenea infection in C. Melanopterus gills. 50% of male and 42% of female were infected by copepod and monogenea. Our findings revealed that the protozoan infections are very common among sharks. Although, no gross pathology was observed among infected shark, but it is likely that in case of any changes in the environment, then parasitic infections could be harmful.