Predators: The Social Construction of “Stranger-Danger” in Washington State as a Form of Patriarchal Ideology^*

Edwin Sutherland (1950) argued that the emergence of sexual psychopathy laws from the late 1930s was heavily influenced by the media and the psychiatric community. The media manipulated public opinion and sensationalized sex offenses. This manipulation created an overreaction on the part of the public, which was further seized upon by the media and whipped into hysteria. The psychiatric community sought to colonize the problem of sex offenses and thereby bolster its own professional standing and influence. For Sutherland, the sexual psychopathy laws represented a shift from punishment to medical treatment of sex offenders. In 1937, Michigan became the first state to enact a sexual psychopathy law. By the mid-1980s over half of the states had followed suit. However, these statutes fell into disuse with the growing realization that sex offenders did not suffer from any mental illness and were not therefore amenable to treatment. This left treatment programs open to the possibility of legal attack. According to Brakel, Perry, and Weiner, this possibility was one of the reasons states shied away from using these laws (1985:739-43). By 1990, only a handful of states had sexual psychopathy laws on their books and few made regular use of them.