Legislative Origins, Reforms, and Future Directions
Document Type
Contribution to Books
Publication Date
3-2014
Abstract
Throughout history, criminal laws have been created in order to control as well as to protect members of society. As public sentiment and the definitions of crime have changed throughout time, so too have the laws meant to control criminal behavior and alleviate some of the difficulties experienced by crime victims. Sexual victimization is one such category of crime that has been marked by drastic changes in public sentiment and legislation. These changes have affected not only the manner in which offenders are handled by the criminal justice system but the response to survivors of sexual victimization as well.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a general overview of the development of legislative reform pertaining to rape and sexual victimization. In the United States, there have been two prominent avenues of reform: those aimed at revising rape statutes and those aimed at controlling sexual-victimization legislation and the evolving legal definition of rape and sexual assault. The most influential legislative reforms regarding rape began in the 1970s and resulted in what is commonly referred to as the "rape reform movement." Following a discussion of the rape reform movement, this chapter addresses legislative reform pertaining to the control of sex offenders—in particular, the sexual psychopath laws that developed in the early to mid-1900s and the sexually violent predator laws that evolved primarily in the 1990s. This chapter's discussion of the historical evolution of these laws also touches on evaluations of their effectiveness.
Publication Information
Gillespie, Lane Kirkland and King, Laura. (2014). "Legislative Origins, Reforms, and Future Directions". In T.N. Richards and C.D. Marcum (Eds.), Sexual Victimization: Then and Now (pp. 15-32). SAGE Publications Inc.