Social Construction and Identity Management in Sexual Offender Narratives

• Sarah Petrie, Criminal Justice, University of Delaware

• Chrysanthi Leon, Sociology and Criminal Justice, University of Delaware

Sexual offenders are a highly stigmatized group, often labeled as monsters, unworthy, and incapable of rehabilitation. They serve lifelong sentences of public shame and stigmatization through registries that not only impact the way the public views them, but the way they perceive themselves. This project does not seek to examine the appropriateness of their narratives, but rather examines how these labels often push offenders to internalize this stigma and endorse them as their own identity. After coding and analyzing a subsample of three interviews from a broader study of interview transcripts conducted with people convicted of sexual offenses, we were able to establish a deeper understanding of how people position themselves into specific roles to present their preferred self. Social constructionism helps us understand the way that people use transactional forms of communication to develop their perceptions and experiences. This perspective helped us contextualize the self-narratives of sex offenders and understand how different elements of these narratives are intertwined and arise from social constructs. The existing social construction of child sexual abuse manipulates the way in which we interpret sexual offenders. By acknowledging the active being behind the labels, we can allow for a more nuanced understanding of rehabilitation and the construction of a prosocial narrative identity rather than the permanence of an identity rejected by the public.