Ashenden 2002

This article was downloaded by: [University of Chicago Library]
On: 18 November 2014, At: 02:20

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered
office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Cultural Values
Publication details, including instructions for authors and
subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcuv19
Policing Perversion: The Contemporary

Governance of Paedophilia
Samantha Ashenden
Published online: 09 Nov 2010.
To cite this article: Samantha Ashenden (2002) Policing Perversion: The Contemporary Governance
of Paedophilia, Cultural Values, 6:1-2, 197-222, DOI: 10.1080/1362517022019829
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1362517022019829
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the
“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,
our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to
the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,
and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content
should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources
of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or
howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising
out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any
substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,
systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &
Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-
and-conditions
Cultural Values, Vol. 6, Nos. 1 & 2, 2002, 197± 222
Policing Perversion: The Contemporary

Governance of Paedophilia
Samantha Ashenden
Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 02:20 18 November 2014
Abstract
This paper explores recent vigilance attending pedophilia in the UK context. It
examines governmental and popular responses to the perceived threat posed by child sex
offenders, exhibited respectively in provisions for sex offender orders within the Crime and
Disorder Act 1998, and in press and public campaigns for the ª naming and shamingº of
paedophiles. These two responses cohabit in current contexts of concern about childhood
as innocence and vulnerability, and are worked out against the figure of the paedophile as
a ª dangerous individualº ; nevertheless, they invoke different visions of political
community. Developing Foucault’s observation that contemporary political rationalities
combine two distinct models of political community, that of the juridically constituted
polity and that of the society rendered calculable and organized through normalizing
models of risk, the paper argues that both of these models are evident in governmental and
popular responses to paedophilia. However, where the former, a technical and
administrative response to a problem of social order, aims to achieve public safety through
the professional prediction and management of risk, the latter is premised on the
elimination of danger, demanding the public outing of paedophiles and their exorcism from
the community. While these responses contest whether danger can be turned into risk
through professional management, they are mutually enhancing in fostering govern-
mental and popular concern with public and community safety.
vigil n. a watching, watch. Probably before 1200 vigile the eve of a religious
festival as an occasion for devotional watching or observance, in Ancrene Riwle;
later, the watch kept on the eve of a festival, nocturnal service (about 1395);
borrowed from Anglo-French and Old French vigile, learned borrowing from
Latin vigilia watch, watchfulness, wakefulness, from vigil watchful, awake, related
to vigere be lively, thrive, and vegere to enliven; see WAKE.
vigilante n. member of a self-appointed group of citizens organized to keep order
and punish criminals. 1856, American English, borrowing of Spanish vigilante,
literally, watchman, from Latin vigilantem (nominative vigilans) wakeful, watch-
ful, present participle of vigilare keep watch, from vigil watchful; see VIGIL.1
In the UK, there have recently been a number of developments in the forms of
vigilance attending paedophilia. These developments can be characterized as
taking two forms. First, and most notoriously, in the summer of 2000 this
vigilance took the form of the ª naming and shamingº of suspected and known
paedophiles by the popular press and within local communities, most notably
by the News of the World, a UK Sunday tabloid that published the faces, names
ISSN 1362-5179 Print/ISSN 1467-8713 online/02/010197-26 © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/136251702201982 9
198 S. Ashenden
and whereabouts of individuals with previous convictions for sex offenses

against children, and among residents of the Paulsgrove Estate in Portsmouth,
where a week of violent attacks on suspected paedophiles erupted in August
2000. Second, under the provisions concerning sex offender orders within the
Crime and Disorder Act,2 police have new powers to take out an order against
any sex offender ª whose present behaviour in the community gives the police
reasonable cause for concern that an order is necessary to protect the public
from serious harm from him [sic]º .3 These orders form an extension to the Sex
Offenders Act 1997, which requires that newly convicted offenders, those
supervised in the community, those cautioned, and offenders released from
prison on or after 1 September 1997 register with the police and keep the police
informed of their current address. Under the provisions of the Crime and
Disorder Act 1998 sex offender orders can be taken out against individuals with
convictions and/or cautions for sex offenses committed and tried before 1997,
where their behaviour causes concern that they continue to present a threat.
This provision therefore extends the scope of the administrative regulation of
sex offenders to include programmes for the supervision of those convicted or
cautioned prior to the 1997 Act where current behavior is regarded as indicating
danger. The duration of the required period of registration depends on length
of sentence, type of offense, age of offender, and age and gender of victim.4 The
intention of the orders is preventative: they are aimed at ª fill[ing] a gap in the
provisions available to protect the public from risk from sex offendersº .5 Breach
of such an order is a criminal offense.
Both of these developments are responses to the perceived threat entailed by
the term ª paedophiliaº . As Ian Hacking has recently pointed out, in an age in
which we are supposedly drowning in value-relativism, there is striking
consensus concerning the wrong of sexual contacts and relationships between
adults and children. Hacking points out the unlikelihood of most people simply
having a dictionary definition of the term ª paedophileº .6 So apparent consensus
between the press, local communities and the Home Office on the need for
vigilance concerning paedophiles is not surprising.7 Beyond this, though, the
responses of the popular press and local community action groups and those of
the Home Office, to a considerable degree, part company. While the former
engages in a strategy of ª naming and shamingº , with the aim of eliminating the
danger presented by paedophiles by ousting them from the community, the latter
proceeds by attempting to manage risk through a strategy of knowing,
containing, and perhaps reforming, individuals considered a threat, with the aim
of achieving a safe society.8
This paper examines these two responses to the perceived threat presented by
paedophiles living within communities, paying particular attention to the ways in
which each of these responses suggests a particular image of the political
community and of how that community is to deal with dangerous individuals in
its midst. In order to frame this discussion, I take a cue from Foucault’s
observation that contemporary strategies of governance combine what he called
the ª city-citizen gameº and the ª shepherd-flock gameº ; that is, within contempo-
rary governmental imaginations we are figured simultaneously as citizens with
rights as part of a juridically constituted polity, and as members of a society
rendered calculable through various strategies for assessing and attempting to
manage risk and achieve security. My aim is to examine how different
The Contemporary Governance of Pedophilia 199
articulations of the felt need for vigilance concerning paedophiles provoke

distinct but mutually enhancing ways of addressing this problem.
The first section of this paper contextualizes these concerns by taking a brief
look at contemporary conceptions of childhood and at understandings of the
danger considered to be posed by paedophiles. This section also develops some
coordinates for beginning to read the contemporary forms of vigilance attending
paedophiles as witnessed within recent legal and administrative reforms and
among press reports and campaigning activities. The second section examines the
provisions for sex offender orders under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 for the
way they extend attempts to govern risk by more closely monitoring and
proscribing the activities of sex offenders. The third section examines campaign-
ing by the News of the World in the summer of 2000 to ª name and shameº
pedophiles and to bring ª Sarah’s Lawº to the statute books. The final section
draws together the preceding discussion, to reflect on the ways in which the
boundaries between vigilance and vigilante action are constituted within
contemporary strategies for the governance of paedophiles.
1. Contexts of Concern: Childhood, Paedophilia and Conceptions of Political

Community
In focusing on paedophilia, current concerns about the threat posed to children
by adult desires have taken a particular form and direction;9 however, the context
for this current consternation is one in which childhood has become an enduring
and privileged site of anxiety. Over the past 40 years, concerns about child
development and child abuse have been perennial features of public discourse. At
various times and in various localities, there has been concern surrounding child
physical abuse and neglect, sexual abuse, satanic or ritual abuse, emotional abuse,
institutional abuse, concern about children abusing other children, and so on.
During the UK General Election campaign of 2001, the term ª abuseº was
extended to encompass ª political abuseº as the opponents of Tony Blair’s Labour
Party attacked his decision to announce the election while visiting a school.
While concerns about and prohibitions regarding adult sexual relations with
children have deep cultural roots, such that following Levi Strauss the incest
taboo can be regarded as a condition of culture,10 contemporary concerns with
child sexual abuse are historically quite specific. They are the product of a
particular conception of childhood as a stage of innocence and dependence prior
to the autonomy of adulthood, and more specifically of medical and psycho-
logical accounts that stress that childhood is a stage of development requiring
particular attention to the physical, sexual, and emotional well-being of the child
and future adult.
The idea of the child as vulnerable, innocent, and in need of protection is central
to current concerns with paedophilia.11 Childhood has become subject: the idea of
childhood as a phase of development from innocence and dependence to
maturity sets up a space of anxiety and establishes a problem space for
governance. 12 It is this specific historical configuration that forms the context of
contemporary vigilance concerning adult relations with children.
Alongside this conception of childhood as a stage of innocence and vulnerabil-
ity is the idea of the pedophile as ª pervertº , as a ª dangerous individualº whose
very identity threatens society and the individual. The idea of perversion
200 S. Ashenden
emerged in the context of nineteenth-century psychiatry, as part of the

medicalization of sex and of the intervention of psychiatry into the legal
apparatus. 13 It is part of a shift from an older language of criminal acts as
infractions to the idea of the normal versus the pathological, where in the case of
paedophiles the term ª pathologicalº combines the designations sick and criminal:
paedophiles are regarded ª a-priori as criminalsº ,14 as the individual rather than
his/her acts form the locus of the designation ª dangerº . With the idea of
dangerousness, the figure of the criminal displaces the event of the crime, so that
ª pervertsº form an omnipresent danger. This in turn provides the conditions for
the mobilization of public opinion in the direction of ª man-hunting, lynching, or
moral mobilizationº .15
In the present context, therefore, we have a situation in which specific sorts of

subjects, children, are regarded as by their nature vulnerable, in danger, and in
need of protection; and where another group of subjects, paedophiles, are
regarded as ª dangerous individualsº . Foucault comments:
In the past, laws prohibited a number of acts . . . it was acts that the law concerned
itself with. Certain forms of behavior were condemned. Now what we are
defining and, therefore, what will be found by the intervention of the law, the
judge, and the doctor, are dangerous individuals. We’re going to have a society of
dangers, with, on the one side, those who are in danger, and on the other, those
who are dangerous. And sexuality will no longer be a kind of behavior hedged in
by precise prohibitions, but a kind of roaming danger, a sort of omnipotent
phantom . . . what we will have there is a new regime for the supervision of
sexuality.16
Given this brief sketch of contemporary contexts that provide some of the
conditions for current concerns with paedophiles, I would like to venture that
recent forms of vigilance exhibited within legislation and administrative direction
and by press and public campaigning, while providing different articulations of
the problem of governing the sexual desires of adults vis `a vis children, share a
form of problematization of the issues insofar as they rest on and articulate
current understandings of childhood as innocence and dependence, and of
paedophilia as a perversion combining sickness and criminality: ª Society has to
defend itself against dangerous individualsº .17 Within this shared problem-
atization, however, it is possible to discern the operation of two distinct images of
the political community. It is to these that we now turn.
We can begin to develop a way of understanding the tensions between
governmental and populist responses to paedophilia by reflecting on Foucault’s
suggestion that contemporary political rationalities are animated by a combina-
tion of two distinct images of the political community: those of the city-state and
of the Christian pastoral. In a discussion of what he calls ª the welfare state
problemº , he points out that we are simultaneously citizens with rights as part of
a juridically constituted polity, and subjects of normalization as part of society, a
collectivity organized around normality.18
In Discipline and Punish,19 Foucault documents a transformation in the character
of punishment from public spectacles demonstrative of the sovereign’s power
through irregular but spectacular displays of violence, to the modern prison, with
its capacity to contain and discipline the prisoner through timetables, and to
furnish knowledge of him/her through close observation and experimentation
(the prison operating as an observatory and as a laboratory). Foucault elaborates

on the transformation of political imagination evident in the shift from the public
display of the power of the sovereign to the prison timetable by analogy with the
exclusion of lepers from early modern cities as compared with the detailed
management of plague victims. He suggests that where the exclusion of lepers
was characterized by practices of marginalization, produced through rigorous
separation, rejection into the wilderness, and political disqualification, the
management of the plague involved a form of power that was continuous in its
operation and centered on administration, in terms of quarantine, inclusion, close
observation and positive attempts to preserve health.20 Where the former
produced a binary division between one set of people and another, the latter
produced strategies for surveillance and control. Foucault notes: ª The exile of the
leper and the arrest of the plague do not bring with them the same political
dream. The first is that of a pure community, the second that of a disciplined
societyº .21 However, although these political imaginaries are distinct, they are not
incompatible; rather, Foucault’s suggestion is that since the nineteenth century
ª binary division and branding (mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnor-
mal)º have been combined with strategies of ª coercive assignment, of differential
distribution (who he is; . . . how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him
in an individual way)º .22 That is, contemporary forms of governance combine
law, with its binary division legal (permitted)/illegal (forbidden), and normal-
ization, with its capacity to distribute and manage populations.23 Sovereign
power; that is, power as law, right, and repression (ª a legislation . . . based on
public right, whose principle of articulation is the social body and the delegative
status of each citizenº ), combines with a capacity to organize, sustain and enhance
life (organization and ª cohesion of this same social bodyº ,24 so that contemporary
forms of governance exhibit a concern with both law and order.25
How is this played out in what I am suggesting are two distinct but
complementary articulations of concern over paedophilia? Looking more closely at
the provisions of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and at the News of the World’s
campaign of summer 2000 will help to specify how these responses work to inscribe
notions of risk and its governance, and danger and its elimination, respectively.
2. Sex Offender Orders: Extending the Governance of Risk

The provisions concerning sex offender orders in the Crime and Disorder Act
1998 follow concerns more actively to manage the risks posed by sex offenders
in the community. Prior to this Act and to the Sex Offenders Act 1997 there had
been growth of concern that police should know more of the whereabouts and
activities of paedophiles and other sex offenders within communities, alongside
concern about limiting access to jobs for those with convictions for sex offenses
(especially in the wake of several cases of individuals employed in the health
services, children’s homes, and in the voluntary sector, abusing the trust placed
in them).26 There was also worry about the efficacy of the enforcement of
community service orders, about the limits of supervision available through
probation officers, and about reconviction rates for violent offenders. In
September 1995 the Police Superintendent’s Association called for a national
register of convicted sex offenders; this was brought into being in 1997 with the
Sex Offenders Act requiring that all those newly convicted, supervised in the
202 S. Ashenden
community, those cautioned, and offenders released from prison on or after 1

September 1997 register with the police and keep police informed of their
current address. Sections 2± 4 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 extend and
strengthen this, enabling the police to apply for sex offender orders against
those with convictions or cautions preceding 1997, where their current behavior
causes concern, and enabling police through magistrates’ courts to proscribe
specific behaviors.
Under the conditions of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 the police may apply
for a sex offender order against an individual provided:
(a) that the person is a sex offender; and

(b) that the person has acted, since the relevant date, in such a way as to give
reasonable cause to believe that an order under this section is necessary to
protect the public from serious harm from him.27
The designation ª sex offenderº includes those convicted of sexual offenses to

which Part 1 of the Sex Offenders Act 1997 applies, those found not guilty of
such an offense due to insanity or disability where the court decides that he/
she committed the act for which tried, persons cautioned by a police officer in
relation to such an offense where the offense was admitted at the time, and
where an individual has been convicted and punished outside the UK for an act
that would have constituted a sexual offense under UK law.28 Currently, those
considered cautioned include individuals reprimanded or warned as young
persons.29 The reference to the ª relevant dateº refers to the commencement of
the Act, but previous offenses may pre-date this and may pre-date the Sex
Offenders Act 1997, so that the police may rely on spent convictions in applying
for sex offender orders and the person concerned does not have to be someone
required to register under the Sex Offenders Act 1997.30 Complaint is to the
magistrates’ court,31 and where the conditions are met the court may make a
sex offender order ª which prohibits the defendant from doing anything
described in the orderº .32 The prohibitions may include anything deemed
necessary ª for the purpose of protecting the public from serious harm from the
defendantº .33 The period of the order is a minimum of five years,34 and where
a person to whom an order has been applied infringes the prohibitions laid
down ª without reasonable excuseº , that person is liable on summary conviction
to imprisonment for a maximum of six months, and/or to a fine, or to
conviction on indictment with a maximum period of imprisonment of five years
and/or to a fine; under neither of these circumstances is there a possibility of
conditional discharge.35
Examining sex offender orders as a governmental response to a felt need for
vigilance in relation to the risks presented by pedophiles, two important features
immediately stand out. First, these are juridically constituted orders; they require
application to and the presentation of evidence before a magistrate’s court, and
they are premised on a binary division between those who have previous
convictions or cautions for sexual offenses and those who do not (though the fact
that a previous caution is sufficient to place an individual on the wrong side of
this binary divide suggests a departure from the need for a prior designation of
dangerousness to have been properly tested in court). Second, however, sex
offender orders depart from a purely juridical conception of the individual insofar
as they are risk-oriented: the perceived present dangerousness of the individuals

to whom they are applied (dangerousness to the security of the innocence of
childhood and therefore by extension to the whole social order) is seen to require
some extension to the mechanisms of governance in order to deal with a
particular group of dangerous individuals.
The notes of guidance issued by the Home Office to accompany the sections of
the 1998 legislation dealing with sex offender orders state that care is required to
ensure that an order is justified on the basis of an ª assessment of riskº . They assert
that ª While there is a difficult balance to be struck between the rights of the
defendant and the need to protect the community, the need for such orders is
dictated by the importance of protecting the public, in particular children and
vulnerable adults.º 36 This, in turn, requires particular forms of knowledge of the

danger posed, and strategies for managing risk. As we will see, sex offender
orders have as their aim public safety, where this is to be achieved through a
differential distribution of sex offenders in relation to their perceived dangerous-
ness, and through the professional management of risk. The underside of this is
the ª dangerº of unmanaged publicity, with the possibility of vigilance turning
into vigilante action.
The aim of sex offender orders is to protect the public from risk. In the preface
to the Home Office notes of guidance to the application of these orders, Jack Straw
MP, then Home Secretary, elaborates this as follows:
The protection of the vulnerable in our society is a top priority for this
Government. Sex offenders prey on other people, particularly those unable to
defend themselves, and their actions can leave their victims scarred for life. This
cannot be tolerated. This is why we introduced the sex offender orders in the
Crime and Disorder Act 1998 . . . The orders . . . complement protections already
in place. An order can help prevent further offenses before they are committed,
and provide an important tool for the police and other agencies in the very
difficult job they face of managing sex offenders in the community . . . Local
communities may feel very real fear if they learn that a sex offender is living
close by. But this can lead to counter-productive action which may drive the
offender underground where the police lose trace of him and he cannot be
managed and controlled. The new orders should provide re-assurance to the
public that there is something we can do to stop sex offenders in their tracks
and should demonstrate that such offenders will be managed to keep the
community safe.37
The premise of sex offender orders is that of managing risk in order to achieve
a safe society by ensuring that individuals considered to pose a threat are
prevented from so doing; as such, these orders are fundamentally future-
oriented. While they refer to past events and infringements of the law in
making a division between those who can be classed as sex offenders and those
not, their main import is that of protection from harm through prevention.
Present risk is therefore central; ª The key factor to be considered [in the
application for and granting of orders] . . . is that of the risk presented by the
defendant . . . to one or more members of the public.º 38 Sex offender orders can
be applied for where a sex offender’s ª behaviour in the community gives the
police reasonable cause for concern that an order is necessary to protect the
public from serious harm from him. There is no test of serious in respect of the
204 S. Ashenden
actual behaviour, which has to be considered only in terms of its relevance to

the risk of future offending.º 39
The future-oriented character of sex offender orders requires that the police, on
the basis of their knowledge of past offenses committed by an individual, and in
liaison with other agencies, predict likely future behavior and therefore make ª an
assessment in respect of the present risk he [sic] presentsº .40 Bringing an order
does not require the police to prove ª beyond reasonable doubtº that a sex
offender is intending to cause serious harm: ª What they need to establish is that
it is more probable than not that the defendant has acted since the relevant date in
such a way as to give reasonable cause to believe that an order is necessary to
protect the public from serious harm from him.º 41
Strategies for ª risk assessmentº are thus central to the effective operation of sex
offender orders. The Home Office recommend that, whilst the responsibility for
managing sex offender orders lies with the police,42 the police should liaise with
other agencies such as child protection providers, probation services and social
services, and that they should carry out risk assessments quickly.43
The guidance notes are quite clear about what assessment of present risk
should take into account; in specifying this the notes begin to give shape to the
idea of the dangerous individual sex offenders orders aim to govern. Risk
assessments should consider:
the risk that a further offence will be committed; the potential harm resulting
from such an offence; the date, nature, and circumstances of the previous
conviction or convictions and any pattern which emerges; the current circum-
stances of an offender . . .; the disclosure implications if an order is applied for;
and how the court process might affect the ability to manage the offender in
the community; . . . an assessment of the accuracy and currency of the
information about the individual (including an assessment of the status of those
expressing concern and their reasons for doing so); the nature and pattern of
the behaviour giving rise to concern; and any predatory behaviour which may
indicate a likelihood of re-offending; compliance, or otherwise, with previous
sentences, Court Orders or supervision arrangements; compliance or otherwise
with therapeutic help and its outcome.44
In this packed list of features we begin to see the emergence of the figure of the
sex offender as the antithesis of the ª normal individualº , as a ª dangerous
individualº , but one who can be known and therefore managed through
appropriate use of knowledge of previous convictions and/or cautions and
through careful assessment of the ª patternsº of previous and present behavior.
The sex offender starts to take on an identity that marks him or her out from
others, knowledge of which can be used to grade the ª dangerousnessº of likely
deviations from ª normalityº .
This inscription of the abnormality of the sex offender is further entrenched in
the Government’s clarification of the point that the specific prohibitions
accompanying an order must be those necessary for protecting public from
serious harm form the individual, and that ª What is being prohibited may well be
actions or behaviour that for another individual would be unexceptionableº ;45
implicitly, actions and behavior that would be unexceptional for a ª normal
individualº , one without the deviant tendencies mapped by the ª patternsº of
behavior of the paedophile. The notes of guidance elaborate that behavior giving
rise to concern may include ª behaviour such as standing outside a school

playground, which would be acceptable and normal for an individual who was
not considered to present this riskº .46
Moreover, sex offender orders do not require that the police demonstrate that
there is danger from the individual to whom they wish to apply an order to any
specific person: ª The order must be necessary to protect the public, which
includes any individual without requiring the police to prove its case in respect
of any particular individual or to call for evidence from any potential victim.º 47
Rather, sex offender orders presuppose that vulnerable people as such are under
threat from those with previous convictions or cautions for sexual offenses; and in
the case of those with previous convictions or cautions for sexual offenses against
children, that childhood as such is under threat from paedophiles.

Interestingly, the Home Office chooses a rather well-worn image of the
pedophile to exemplify how the orders might be used. The notes of guidance give
an example of ª how this could workº that comprises a vignette of a man, with a
previous caution for indecent conduct toward a young child, ª hanging aroundº
outside a school. This is worth quoting in full:
A person (Mr X) is cautioned for the offence of indecent conduct towards a young
child in 1990. He thus qualifies as a ª sex offenderº for the purposes of sex
offender orders. In January 1999 he begins hanging around outside primary
school gates at the end of the school day, approaching departing children (not his
own) aged around 5 years old, offering them sweets and talking to them. This
happens several times and staff and parents at the school are concerned and
report the matter to the police. The police observe Mr X, check his previous
records and consult with other agencies involved in his case in 1990 or with
subsequent involvement with Mr X. They decide there is no innocent explanation
for his behaviour, and that there is reasonable cause to believe his present
behaviour, if it continues, could lead to serious harm whether psychological or
possibly physical to members of the public (in this case the young children he
appears to be targeting). They apply for an order which is granted. In the order
he is prohibited from going within 200 metres of any school in a specified area
catering for children under eleven between specified hours when children are
likely to be entering or leaving (8 a.m.± 10 a.m., 12 noon± 2 p.m., and 3 p.m.± 5
p.m.). The names and addresses of the schools could be listed in the order.48
Whilst the guidance notes specify that this example is ª merely illustrativeº and
stress that ª many other circumstances might occurº ,49 the choice of presenting an
image of a man loitering outside school gates and giving sweets to children
presents the reader with an archetype of the paedophile. This at once makes the
topic less uncomfortable as it feeds into the stereotype of the paedophile in the
public imagination and enables the individual to distance him/herself from the
individual so described, and at the same time it maintains the horror of the
unknown predator, facilitating the assumption that the sexual dangers posed to
children come primarily from strangers, and reiterating the presumption that sex
offenders are male (something presumed throughout the guidance notes).
At this point it is important to note that sex offender orders override the principle
enshrined in liberal legal orders that those convicted of crimes should serve their
sentence and then have their civil liberties restored; they do this in two ways: first,
by enabling police to rely on spent convictions, and second, by enabling the police
to rely on cautions in bringing orders. Civil liberties can be overridden in relation to
206 S. Ashenden
sex offenders on the grounds that the safety of the public is of greater importance
than the liberty of the individual. These orders can be brought on the basis of
ª reasonable suspicionº ; the individual does not have to have done anything to
infringe the law in the present (or even to have a previous conviction for a sexual
offense); rather, he/she is regarded as presenting a potential risk simply by doing
many of the things that others may do with impunity, on the basis of the idea that
the sex offender, and particularly the paedophile, is a particular type of individual.
The individual him/herself is the locus of dangerousness in a strategy of
governance focused on potential future risks of serious harm.
Under the terms of the provisions for sex offender orders the sex offender as a
ª dangerous individualº is to be marked and separated, but is also to be
ª encouragedº into normality, both through the recognition of the role of

counseling in preventing reoffending and through active monitoring by the
police.50 In the former case, the individual is seen as taking steps to become
responsible for him/herself; in the latter, the aim of public safety is to be achieved
through external monitoring. Thus, whilst sex offender orders may only be used
to proscribe behavior, in that they provide no power to compel action,51
nonetheless the notes concerning how therapy is to be construed act as a positive
injunction to engage in ª cooperativeº behavior. The guidance notes point out that
no assessment, support or counseling can be compelled, but state that ª if a sex
offender is prepared to receive some kind of support to help him avoid re-
offending . . . this may be considered as an alternative to an application for a sex
offender order, or may run alongside such an orderº .52 In this way, sex offender
orders are innovative in attempting more actively to govern sex offenders in the
community. While they are, strictly speaking, proscriptive rather than pre-
scriptive, nonetheless they augment a structure of governance within which
ª dangerous individualsº can be encouraged to take responsibility for their own
behavior, effectively extending the coercive normalization found bound up with
custodial sentences where individuals may gain remand or early release for
ª good behaviorº to those who have not been convicted of a specific offense for
which they can be tried. Sex offender orders therefore extend the capacities of
normalizing strategies of governance, aiming to turn dangers into manageable
risks, thus achieving a safe society.
Turning from consideration of the way in which sex offender orders attempt to
transcribe dangerousness into risk through managing the activities of sex
offenders, to the issue of the use and availability of the information generated by
the establishment of the sex offenders register and operation of sex offender
orders, a distinction between the professional management of risk and open or
public knowledge with its potential to produce new dangers opens up. The Home
Office make a distinction between the professional policing of risk as central to
achieving safety in the ª public interestº and the dangers of unmanaged publicity;
that is, the management and policing of risks is regarded as the opposite of
unregulated publicity, the latter itself being regarded as dangerous. This can be
seen in comments on applications to court for orders to be taken out: ª There is a
particular danger since disclosure may be difficult to control when an application
is made to a court since this is an open process, and care will be needed over
managing and handling this aspect of a case.º 53
Referring to the role of other professionals, such as health and social services,
in disclosing information to the police, the guidance notes recommend ª carefully
worked out information sharing protocolsº 54 to ensure correct handling of

disclosures. The role of other professionals is to provide information to the police
if they consider this to be in the ª public interestº : ª The public rightly expects that
personal information known to public bodies will be properly protected.
However, the public also expects the proper sharing of information, as this can be
an important weapon against crime. Agencies should, therefore, seek to share
information where this would be in the public interest.º 55
Moreover, in relation to the need to notify others that an order has been taken
out against an individual, the Home Office
recommend that the police consider passing a copy of the order to those
concerned in the protection of the public from the sex offender. The judgement on
which other agencies need to be informed, for example, the head teacher of a
school or any relevant local authority interest, needs to be based on the
assessment of risk made by the police. Any disclosure to the wider community
should be treated with great sensitivity, on a case by case basis.56
The question whether the sex offenders register should be made public was
debated in 1997 when it was first introduced. Police, probation services and
others involved, including Michael Howard, then Home Secretary, agreed that
disclosure should be strictly limited to those who needed to know, including head
teachers, youth group organizers, and others with professional responsibilities for
children. The reason for this restriction was the threat of vigilante action, which
had followed previous revelations of pedophiles’ whereabouts, producing
mistaken attacks, and the going to ground of several offenders making it more
difficult for police to track their whereabouts.57
Clearly, the concerns registered in the notes of guidance of the potential effects
of public disclosure reflect previous experience; however, what is interesting
about this is the way it carries a distinction between public safety to be achieved
through professional management of risk and the danger of unmanaged publicity.
The construction and management of risk through sex offender orders is thus
figured as appropriate vigilance in the face of potential serious harm and is
counterpoised to the danger of vigilante action.
As we will see, the issue of publicity has been debated ever since. At the time
of writing, the government has just published a green paper proposing tighter
controls on sex offenders released from prison, including new requirements for
pedophiles to report regularly at police stations.58 It has also announced plans to
extend the scope of the register to include crimes such as murder, grievous bodily
harm, and malicious wounding, where there is a sexual element involved in the
crime. At present the register only covers those with convictions or cautions for
specifically sexual offenses. There are currently around 15,000 individuals on the
register.59 The government has continued to resist demands that the register be
made available to the families of victims or to the public. It is to such demands
that we now turn.
3. The News of the World Campaign: Naming and Shaming the Dangerous in
the Name of Responsible Community
The immediate context of the News of the World’s ª name and shameº campaign
was the abduction and murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne in Sussex in July
208 S. Ashenden
2000. The campaign centered on the ª outingº of paedophiles by printing their

photographs, names, and the towns and districts in which they were living, along
with brief details of their offenses and convictions, with the newspaper promising
to continue publishing such details until they had ª named and shamedº all of the
child sex offenders in Britain. Accompanying this was a demand that the
government implement ª Sarah’s Lawº , giving parents access to information
concerning the identities and whereabouts of child sex offenders, and for
unlimited sentences for the worst sex offenders; the former demand was couched
as a demand that parents should have the right to know if a child sex offender is
living near them, the latter was premised on the idea that child sex offenders
cannot be cured and that they will therefore reoffend.
The News of the World published photographs of sex offenders on the 23 and 30
July 2000, before drawing a halt to this aspect of its campaign while continuing to
campaign for ª Sarah’s Lawº . The paper claimed to have suspended the naming
of sex offenders at the point that the Government agreed to consider the proposals
it had put forward.60 The ª name and shameº campaign thus ended just as the
disturbances on the Paulsgrove Estate broke out, following a march of angry
residents on the home of Victor Burnett, one of those named on 30 July by the
News of the World.61 On Paulsgrove, a list of around 20 rumoured paedophiles was
circulated among a group who named themselves ª Residents Against Ped-
ophilesº , and a week of angry protest followed. During this time protestors
demonstrated outside of the homes of suspected pedophiles, daubed slogans on
their walls, issued threats, overturned and burned cars. Children joined the
protest, with banners such as ª Don’t house them hang themº ,62 several families
fled, one convicted paedophile went to ground,63 and two alleged paedophiles
committed suicide.64
Commencing its ª name and shameº campaign, the News of the World asserts
that the death of Sarah Payne demonstrates the inadequacies of existing police
monitoring of paedophiles:
NAMED AND SHAMED There are 110,000 child sex offenders in Britain . . . one
for every square mile. The murder of Sarah Payne has proved police monitoring
of these perverts is not enough. So we are revealing WHO they are and WHERE
they are . . . starting today.65
Beside this heading is a photograph of Sarah Payne, and above it, beside the News
of the World logo is the statement ª IF YOU ARE A PARENT READ THIS’.
This heading indicates several important features of the News of the World’s
strategy. The paper takes one incident, the death of an eight-year-old girl, and
uses this to mobilize feeling and to ground the claim that police monitoring of sex
offenders is insufficient to achieve safety; it thereby implicitly suggests that no
risk to children is acceptable. It then takes the task of eliminating the danger
posed by child sex offenders living in the community upon itself, on behalf of
ª parentsº and by claiming to be engaged in a ª battleº 66 for the ª safety for our
childrenº .67 Stating that ª this is in memory of Sarah Payneº , the paper pledges
ª Week in, week out, we will add to our record so that every parent in the land can
have the RIGHT to know where these people are living.º 68
The News of the World proceeds with its campaign by asserting a distinction
between vigilance and vigilante action, by making a binary division between child
sex offenders and others, by appealing directly to parents and concerned members
of the community, building momentum for its campaign through claims to public
support and by detailing individual stories and statistics on sex offenses. This
produces an account that effectively disqualifies child sex offenders from any kind
of citizenship, suggesting that safety can only be achieved through the exorcism of
these individuals from the community. We will look at these themes in turn.
The News of the World professes a concern with vigilance and attests to a
distinction between this and vigilante action, which it condemns. At the outset,
the paper asserts that its campaign ª is ABSOLUTELY NOT a charter for
vigilantes. The just rule of law is crucial and outbursts of uncontrolled anger will
solve nothing.º 69 This message is repeated later in the same edition with the
following statement:
We do NOT want any vigilante attacks or violence against these people. We do

NOT want our readers to take any action. We do NOT want them to break the
law. Knowledge is the only weapon the community needs.70
What one is supposed to do with this knowledge is never fully explained. And the
following week with the following statement: ª YOU UNDERSTAND our call for
vigilance and our utter condemnation of vigilantes.º 71
However, at the same time as asserting this distinction the paper repeatedly
invokes the terms ª fiendsº , ª monstersº , and ª evil perverts’ 72 to describe both
specific individuals and the unknown but omnipresent danger represented by the
paedophile. It does this in the course of making a binary division between, on the
one hand ª parentsº , ª the nationº , ª the communityº , ª expertsº and celebrities in
support of the campaign (including police chiefs, spokespersons from the
NSPCC, judges, churchmen, Esther Rantzen, ª Spice Girlsº , Sarah Payne’s parents,
all of whom are interviewed for their feelings about the abduction and murder of
Sarah Payne and about the threat posed by paedophiles), and what it considers
ª normalº criminals, and on the other hand ª the evil perverts who prey on our
childrenº 73 and anyone who condemns the campaign or is prepared to suggest
that child sex offenders have rights.
In particular, the News of the World frequently addresses its readers directly as
parents, and invokes expert opinion, individual cases, and statistical evidence to
back up its demands. Under the heading ª Our aim is safety for our childrenº the
paper states:
THERE must be no hiding place for the evil perverts who prey on our children.
For too long the nation has endured the pain of seeing innocents such as Sarah
Payne snatched from streets to become victims of paedophiles. Today the News
of the World begins to change that. We are taking action For Sarah, and all the
other little victims.74
One of the central techniques through which the paper maintains its readers’
concern and interest is by directly addressing them with headlines such as ª IF
YOU ARE A PARENT READ THISº ,75 ª DOES A MONSTER LIVE NEAR
YOU?º ,76 ª 10 facts to shock every parentº ,77 ª WHAT TO DO IF THERE IS A
PERVERT ON YOUR DOORSTEPº ,78 and with the heading ª PARENT POWERº ,
beneath which is the statement that:
The petition on Page 1 of today’s News of the World is the most important that
any responsible parent will ever sign. It is the key to giving every mother and
210 S. Ashenden
father in Britain a right we do not have: the right to protect our own children
from paedophiles.79
Giving urgency to this, the paper plays on fear and the sense that this could
happen to anyone. It documents the feelings of Sarah Payne’s parents, and carries
interviews with celebrities who air their fears that this could happen to them and
their children. In addition, captions such as this: ª More names and photographs
of child sex offenders living near youº ,80 appearing at the bottom of page 1 on the
second week of the campaign, invoke a sense of the unpredictability of sexual
offenses against children.
Bolstering this sense of national emergency, the paper writes of a ª paedophile
plagueº 81 and prints stories of particular sexual offenders with captions such as
ª WE SAVE KIDS FROM GRANNY’S VICE DENº ,82 and ª OUR PHOTO NAILS A
MONSTER’.83 Alongside these individualized horror stories, and further elabo-
rating the unpredictability of the dangers posed by child sex offenders, the News
of the World carries statistics on sexual offenses against children, with headings
such as ª Fiends will commit 10 crimes todayº ,84 and with statements such as
ª Since Sarah Payne was murdered more than 460 sex offences have been
committed against children. Today there will be another 10º ,85 a statement that
neglects to mention what proportion of these offenses will have been committed
by strangers as opposed to close friends and relatives, producing a sense of the
imminent danger to children posed by child sex offenders unknown to the
child.
The paper provides advice on ª How to protect your childrenº , stating that
ª EVERY parent in Britain needs to know how to spot a paedophileÐ and this cut-
out-and-keep guide will help them’.86 It provides a number of ways in which its
readers can become directly involved in the campaign, asking its readers to sign
the petition demanding the introduction of ª Sarah’s Lawº , offering ª For Sarahº
badges to those who do, publishing readers’ letters, and claiming to be building
a comprehensive database of offenders, which it will make available to all parents
on its website: ª With your help, the News of the World will build the most
comprehensive internet database of sex offenders in the country. And we won’t
stop until EVERY convicted paedophile is on there.º 87 Through all of this, the
claim made by the News of the World is that ª knowledge is the only weapon the
community needsº 88 in the fight against paedophiles, whom it describes as
ª perverts who, until now, have hidden in our midstº .89
Stating ª Enough is enoughº ,90 the paper claims overwhelming support both
from its readers and from the nation for its campaign. It updates its readers
regularly on the progress of the petition for ª Sarah’s Lawº , claiming ª massive
backing for our demandsº ,91 and informs them of the ª gulf between us and our
lawmakersº ,92 premising this claim on the results of MORI polls of 614 and
1004 people commissioned by the paper. The first of these polls is reported on
23 July, with the heading ª 88% SAY NAME AND SHAMEº ,93 the second is
reported on 20 August with the banner ª 82% of Britain wants Sarah’s Law’.94
The latter report includes the comment that ª Less than half the country agrees
with those who bleat that a criminal’s human rights must be protected no
matter how serious the offence.º 95
At this point it is useful to comment on the ways in which the News of the World
both deploys individual stories and makes selective use of statistics to sustain the
momentum of its campaign. In documenting horror and tragedy, the paper uses
the stories of individual victims, the most potent of these being the story of Sarah
Payne and her family. Over successive weeks, the paper presents accounts of the
family’s grief, and repeatedly uses both full-page and inset pictures of Sarah
Payne to signify innocence betrayed by monstrosity. Alongside this, and
extending the reader’s attention from individual tragedies to omnipresent danger,
are statistics concerning overall rates of sexual offense against children; these are
not disaggregated to show what proportion of such offenses are committed by
strangers. At the same time, the paper both documents the identities and
whereabouts of individual sex offenders, and gives profiles of typical paedophile
behavior drawn from expert knowledge systems. This individualizing and
totalizing of sex offenders is used both to carve a binary division between sex
offenders and others, and to suggest the monstrosity of the sex offender as
compared with other criminals. This is most clearly borne out by the News of the
World’s headline on the release of Reggie Kray from prison: ª KRAY-ZY They keep
Reggie Kray in jail until he’s just days from death . . . but release child sex
offenders to strike again and againº . The paper goes on to state that Kray has seen
ª some of Britain’s most evil monsters freed long before him’.96 Here, the ª dying
gangsterº 97 appears as the (lovable?) normal criminal, distinguished from the sick
and depraved, that is the sex offender. In relation to the latter, the paper uses the
language of pathology and criminality in order to assert monstrosity: paedophiles
are both ª badº and ª sickº , and this ª sicknessº does not admit of a ª cureº ,
something summed up by the adjectives ª evilº and ª monsterº that work to
suggest that individuals who commit sexual offenses against children should be
cast out of the political community.
If one compares this with Home Office and other officially generated indicators
of risk, one sees that the News of the World is not centrally concerned with
presenting accounts of a calculable risk presented by sex offenders living within
communities; rather it demonizes child sex offenders, reversing the order of risk
and collapsing the threat posed by sex offenders to children into a danger posed
by paedophiles known to the authorities but not to communities. While this is
underpinned by the idea of safety through knowledge, with the paper presenting
knowledge drawn from ª expertº discourses, this is a knowledge geared not to the
administration of risk; rather it takes the form of a moral/practical knowledge
oriented toward the condemnation and elimination of danger. This is the import
of the paper’s direct appeal to its readers: professional knowledge systems cannot
be relied upon adequately to govern child sex offenders since in managing risk
they accept some level of error as a necessary trade-of in achieving a balance
between child protection and civil rights; on the account presented by the News of
the World such offenders appear to lack such rights by virtue of their
monstrosity.
That the News of the World’s rhetorical strategy suggests the exorcism or the
elimination of child sex offenders from the community, the achievement of a pure
community, can be considered more closely by examining the way in which it
counterpoises the opinions of experts who support its campaign with those who
oppose its campaign and anyone who suggests that sex offenders have civil or
human rights. The News of the World selectively cites the opinions and support of
a number of experts and figures of authority to claim that its demands for the
naming of child sex offenders and the ª DETENTION WITHOUT LIMIT of
212 S. Ashenden
dangerous pervertsº are necessary;98 it states that these demands ª spring from
the collective experience of experts in the field of child protectionº .99 The paper
carries interviews with senior police officers, spokespersons for the NSPCC, and
judges who claim that child sex offenders will reoffend, to back up its claim that
ª never in history has a paedophile been curedº .100 Perhaps the most rhetorically
effective of such statements is the heading ª Their evil is incurable says crime
expertº ,101 flagging an interview with Ray Wyre in which he predicts that Sarah
Payne’s killer will ª do it againº . This acts as a foil to the paper’s dismissal of those
who disagree with it.
This attempted political disqualification of its opponents is most strikingly
demonstrated by the News of the World’s depiction of Cherie Blair’s decision to
represent a convicted child sex offender at the European Court of Human Rights
with the heading ª Cherie `on side of the paedophile’º . Cherie Blair is described in
inverted commas as a ª `human rights specialist’º in an article in which the paper
quotes the (unnamed) head of a charity stating that ª `Cherie is on the side of the
perverts, not children.’º 102 Jack Straw, then Home Secretary, also receives scorn;
commenting on his refusal to agree to the public naming of sex offenders, the
News of the World states: ª the Home Secretary leaves the impression he would
rather protect perverts than protect childrenº .103 This is followed with a direct
question to the reader: ª Is he the right man to judge?º 104 The paper suggests
writing to one’s MP, and also introduces a ª straw pollº giving its readers the
chance to say what they think by post, telephone, or e-mail.105
Furthermore, in a move that echoes its earlier tactics in outing paedophiles, the
News of the World takes the opportunity to ª name and shameº its political
opponents. With the heading ª NAMED AND SHAMED The MPs who won’t back
Sarah’s Lawº , it prints ª photo-fitº pictures, similar to those of the sex offenders
previously named, of MPs who have publicly condemned the campaign; it states
that ª a number of the country’s elected representatives seem determined to
ignore the will of the peopleº and describes this as a demonstration of
ª contemptº 106 by an ª arrogant, self-satisfied eliteº 107 who ª know nothing of the
real worldº .108 Here it is important that the News of the World does not present
arguments against its opponents, treating them as adversaries in a battle of ideas
and policies, rather it brands them the friends of ª pervertsº who are mounting a
ª despicable attackº 109 against a ª flood of public opinion’º ;110 the effect of this is
to disqualify any opposition to its position.
Against those who voice concern about the dangers of public access to
information on child sex offenders’ whereabouts and who assert that such
offenders have rights, the paper evokes the innocence of childhood, playing on
the feelings of its readers:
There will be the usual squawks of protest about civil liberties and civil rights from
those who make a living taking the side of criminals. Well, what about the liberty of
an eight-year-old child to walk through a field of wheat in high summer?111
The paper also responds to arguments of principle made by its opponents with
alternative principles, lending its position an emotional power not so readily
available to those who argue for the rights of convicted criminals by using direct
and personalized messages such as this one, a quote from Sarah Payne’s mother
on the discovery that the family is to be rehoused in the vicinity of five people
with previous convictions for sex offenses against children: ª Anyone with an
ounce of compassion would tell me who these monsters are.º 112
We can now return to the News of the World’s claim that it is concerned to
promote vigilance and its condemnation of vigilante action. As we have seen, the
paper repeatedly asserts this distinction, while presenting stories of evil, of the
breakdown of expert systems of governance, and of the need for parents to know
if child sex offenders, variously described as ª fiendsº , ª pervertsº , and ª mon-
stersº , are living near them. On 30 July, responding to critics who suggest that the
ª name and shameº campaign may encourage vigilante action, the News of the
World stated that ª Our nation is responsible and educated enough not to resort to
vigilante attacks.º 113 Two weeks later, in the wake of the violence on the
Paulsgrove Estate, Rebekah Wade, the editor of the News of the World, published
a column containing a personal message to readers, thanking them for their
support and asserting the centrality of the campaign to achieving effective child
protection. Toward the beginning of this piece, Wade states ª Throughout the
campaign we have counseled strongly against vigilante action, and the mindless
minority who ruined the peaceful protests by parents of Paulsgrove deserve only
contempt.º She then goes on to suggest that ª it is an unfortunate fact that, pushed
to the extreme, otherwise reasonable citizens are forced into vigilante action.
Families living on rundown estates react angrily against the flood of perverts
rehoused into their communities.º 114 This piece thus moves from the idea that the
vigilantism witnessed on Paulsgrove was ª mindlessº violence, to the idea that the
action taken by residents was justified, through the use of comments concerning
ª flood[s] of pervertsº . Wade suggests that honest people think that the system is
failing, and therefore that the only way forward is through ª direct actionº , while
stressing once again that ª all the time the catalogue of horrors continue.º 115 One
week later, reporting on its latest MORI poll, the paper comments further on the
violence of Paulsgrove: ª 84% disagree with people taking the law into their own
hands, though most SYMPATHISED with the protestorsº .116
The paper thus slides between condemning and condoning vigilante action,
while maintaining that its readers, and specifically those residents of Paulsgrove
who were ª forced into vigilante actionº , are ª reasonable citizensº . This compares
interestingly with the positions taken by a number of other newspapers.
Commenting on the violence in Paulsgrove, the Independent on Sunday writes of
ª breast-beating savagery reminiscent of medieval timesº ,117 in a piece that
presents a quasi-group psychology of a community turned against itself. The
Guardian also suggests the premodern (or at least early modern) character of the
events; it comments ª One of the lessons learned fast by the plotters in
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is that a mob, once aroused, will not easily be stood
downº .118 Reporting a conversation with a protestor, the paper quotes: ª What
might be the evidence against someone convicted of no crime? `Word of mouth’,
she said. What might count elsewhere as the basic principles of a civilized society
are a foreign language in Paulsgrove.º 119 The idea that the violence that erupted
in Paulsgrove was something premodern, an atavistic response from those
insufficiently ª civilizedº to be restrained by the rule of law, is given a curious
twist when The Guardian likens the News of the World’s campaign to the
consequences of giving a box of matches to a child. Commenting that vigilante
action was bound to follow from the ª name and shameº campaign, the paper asks
ª If children are given a box of matches and told not to light a fire, do we blame
214 S. Ashenden
the child for burning the house down or the person who supplied the kid with
matches?’ 120 This at once condemns the vigilante action and, through analogy
with the dependence and immaturity associated with childhood, suggests that the
residents of Paulsgrove and the population in general are not capable of
responsible citizenship. On the same page, The Guardian gives an alternative
interpretation of the events, by making a comparison between the emergence of
vigilante killings in Kosovo, amidst a sense that courts and the international
community are not effective in achieving ª good governanceº , and the naming
and shaming of paedophiles in the UK.121 On the one hand, therefore, the
vigilante action witnessed on Paulsgrove is ascribed to the incapacity of the
population properly to exercise the responsibilities of citizenship and respect for
the rule of law in the face of child sex offenders, whilst on the other hand the
paper points to broader problems of achieving effective governance as the cause
of the trouble.
More generally, while the broadsheet newspapers attempt to negotiate the
problems of governing sex offenders in the community so as to balance concerns for
child protection against individual rights, occasionally infantilizing and patroniz-
ing the population while they do so, the News of the World assumes that its readers
are responsible, autonomous adults to such an extent that they are able to
withstand the force of its rhetorical strategies, maintaining intellectual and
emotional distance on its simultaneous assertion of a distinction between vigilance
and vigilante action, and its depiction of child sex offenders in terms that invoke
fear, hatred, and disgust. At least, given the assertion of a distinction between
vigilance and vigilante action, this is ostensibly its position. However, when one
combines the claims that police monitoring of sex offenders is insufficient, that the
safety of children is more important than individual rights, that this safety can only
be achieved by the public naming of sex offenders, and that such offenders are evil
monsters, the political and legal disqualification of child sex offenders that follows
carries with it the suggestion that the only way to achieve safety is by removing
such individuals, purifying the ª communityº .
* * *
I began this paper by suggesting that contemporary concerns with paedophilia
figure two models of political community: the city-citizen model, in which
individuals have rights as part of a juridically constituted polity; and the pastoral
model of the shepherd and his flock, in which individuals are understood as part
of a society rendered calculable and organized around normalizing models of
risk. Where the former invokes a binary division between those who qualify for
citizenship and those who do not, the latter attempts to manage populations
according to gradations of normality and risk.
In conclusion, we can note that both sex offender orders and public ª outingsº of
paedophiles deploy both of these models of political community, but give them
different inflections. Both assert a binary division: in the former, this is produced
through the requirement that, in order for an order to be invoked, the individual
concerned must have committed some infraction (though this may be merely a
caution and therefore not an infraction tested in a court of law) that divides him or
her from those not recognized as offenders; in the latter case, the binary division
takes the form of a division between the nation, the community, normal families,
and morality, and the evil monstrosity represented by the paedophile. However,
turning from the binary division between paedophiles and others to the question of
the deployment of normalizing discourses, these two responses to paedophilia part
company. While the former response understands paedophilia as potential
criminality and abnormality, where this abnormality is an aspect of the risks facing
children, and where policing requires knowledge of risk indicators and risk
assessment of dangerous individuals as calculable subjects, the latter discourse on
paedophilia as a monstrosity against natural and social order, while it is informed
by popularized expert knowledge of the normal and the abnormal, does not grade
and distribute dangerousness; rather, this form of ª policingº takes the form of the
naming and shaming and hounding out of paedophiles with the aim of eliminating
danger.122 In other words, while the response to paedophilia exhibited in the
provisions governing the application of sex offender orders plays both the city-
citizen game and the shepherd-flock game, the populist response of the News of the
World is focused primarily on the former.
This can be specified in the following manner. Sex offender orders are attempts
to manage risk through knowledge and containment of individuals considered to
be a threat; as such they aim to govern risk through predictive knowledge of
individual behavior. This first form of response is therefore a technical and
administrative response to a problem of social order; it operates under the image
of a disciplined society and its imagined ideal is that of a secure society to be
achieved through the prevention of harm, where this is premised on the
regulation and management of risk by professionals. Within this strategy,
therefore, there is an attempt to turn the danger posed by paedophiles into
governable risk. By contrast, the naming and shaming of paedophiles within the
popular press and among specific communities aims to eliminate danger by
exposing and/or hounding out evil from within the community. This form of
response is immediately moral and political; its imagined ideal is that of safety
through exorcism of the dangers posed by pedophiles and the achievement of a
pure community.
Both of these responses are constituted against the backdrop of an under-
standing of childhood as innocence and vulnerability, and against the figure of the
paedophile as a dangerous individual. That is, though they provide different
articulations of the problem of governing child sex offenders, these two responses
share a problematization of this issue as one of the need to guard the innocence
and vulnerability of childhood against the threat posed by paedophiles. This has
a number of consequences.
Both responses assert that protecting the vulnerable is of greater importance than
individual liberties, and in response to paedophilia override the premises of a
liberal legal order in significant ways. Sex offender orders do so through their
reliance on spent convictions, cautions, and future oriented risk analyses of
individual patterns of behavior. To be more precise, the recent development of sex
offender orders is an attempt to effect a new strategy in the governance of risk.
These orders are simultaneously an extension and a departure from of the image of
liberal legal order: where the latter suggests that individuals should have their civil
liberties restored after serving a sentence, this is overridden where dangerous-
nessÐ to the security of the innocence of childhood and therefore by extension to
the whole social orderÐ is seen to require some extension to the mechanisms of
governance in order to deal with a particular group of ª dangerousº individuals. By
contrast, the News of the World overrides the premises of liberal legal order through
216 S. Ashenden
its suggestion that certain individuals, by virtue of their personal desires, should be
disqualified from the political community.
In this context, the campaign of ª vigilanceº on the part of the News of the World,
and vigilante action within specific communities, can be seen as an overtly moral
and political response to the limits of the attempt to govern risks posed by
pedophiles through sex offender orders. Here, the idea that administrative
governance can be effective, that it can succeed in turning danger into risk,
producing adequate constraints on pedophiles such that security is achieved, is
rejected. This moral and political response might be thought to be in contradiction
with the apparent cool disinterestedness of attempts technically to manage risk.
Where risk analysis assumes that some level of risk is inevitable, policing the
boundaries of evil is an innately moral affair unsatisfied by an administrative

response; thus the language of risk and its governance does not respond to many
of the moral and political questions associated with paedophilia. However, rather
than being in contradiction, these two responses are mutually enhancing: the
articulation of disgust and demand that something be done to secure commu-
nities from the threat posed by paedophiles, as evidenced by the News of the
World, uses expertise and invokes and gives momentum to attempts profession-
ally to govern risk. Furthermore, in demonizing child sex offenders, the News of
the World offers fertile ground for the constitution of ª communityº itself.123
Both the provisions for sex offender orders and the News of the World campaign
evince a concern with the distinction between vigilance and vigilante action.
Provisions for sex offender orders maintain this distinction by insisting on the
third-party intervention of the magistrate, such that those requesting an order are
not empowered themselves to grant it, and through insistence on the professional
governance of risk, where knowledge of risky individuals is limited in its
availability to those deemed capable of technical judgments; that is, professionals.
Both measures are aimed to inject neutrality and a capacity for disinterested
judgment into the process of governing dangerous individuals. By contrast, the
News of the World takes upon itself the task of protecting the public from pedophiles,
and, though it exhorts its readers against vigilante action, its demonization of child
sex offenders as ª evil monstersº strongly implies disqualification of them from the
usual rights of citizenship, suggesting that they be cast out of the community into
the wilderness. This, coupled with its decision to publish the photographs, names
and whereabouts of sex offenders, and its assertion that the professional
governance of the dangers presented by them is insufficient, brings into question
the News of the World’s periodic statements that parents should not take the
protection of their children into their own hands through vigilante action.
Notes
1. R.V. Barnhart (ed.) Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, Harrap NY: Chambers, 1998.
2. Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Sections 2± 4, www.homeoffice.gov.uk. Hereafter
referred to as CDA 1998.
3. CDA 1998, Introductory Guide, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and Sex Offender
Orders, 2. These are civil orders obtained by police making representation to a
Magistrate’s Court.
4. www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds.sexoffend1.htm
5. Crime and Disorder Act Sex Offender Orders Ð Guidance, www.homeofice.gov.uk/
cdact/soo.htm, November 1998, 2.1; These orders came into effect in December 1998.
6. I. Hacking The Social Construction of What? Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press,
1999. Hacking cites the American Heritage Dictionary’s definition of paedophile as ª an
adult who is sexually attracted to a child or childrenº (156).
7. Writing this piece, in the summer of 2001, the latest flare in the anxieties surrounding
paedophilia has just been ignited, this time in the form of public furore over Brass Eye, a
satirical show on Channel 4 that has recently televized a ª specialº on the media
treatment of pedophilia (shown 26 and 28 July 2001). The program aimed to send up the
hysteria with which the issue is dealt with by the media, which, from the media reaction
to the program, it appears to have done amply. The immediate reaction of key public
officials is telling in this regard: Home Secretary David Blunkett, Culture Secretary
Tessa Jowell, and Home Office Minister Beverley Hughes publicly condemned the
program (the latter two without seeing it). The Government then issued a statement
indicating that it would not censor programs nor interfere with scheduling. The
Independent, 31 July 2001, 5.
8. The term ª safeº is the first term underneath the heading ª Home Officeº in the
Department’s logo: ª Home Office: building a safe, just and tolerant societyº .
9. Jackson and Scott point out that media coverage of the risks posed by adults to children
ª reverse[s] the order of dangerº , in that ª stranger dangerº is given more media
coverage than cases of assault upon children by intimates, despite the fact that three-
quarters of recorded crimes of violence against children are committed by parents and
other relatives. See S. Jackson and S. Scott, ª Risk Anxiety and the Social Construction of
Childhoodº , Chapter 4 of Risk and Sociocultural Theory: New Directions and Perspectives,
D. Lupton (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 92± 3.
10. C. Levi-Strauss The Elementary Structures of Kinship, ed. R. Needham, Boston: Beacon
Press, 1969.
11. This is not to suggest that current conceptions of childhood are without tensions. In
contemporary debates, childhood figures as a state of innocence and dependence, but
also as a potentially corrupted condition that forms a threat to social order. This latter
conception is most clearly displayed in the response to the murder of two-year-old
James Bulger by Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, then aged 10, in England in 1993.
The two were found guilty in an adult court. To some extent, the public reaction to this
killing exhibited long-standing ideas that childhood is a condition of original sin as well
as of potential. However, in the ferocity of the public response to Bulger’s killers, there
was exhibited an outrage that rarely attends even the condemnation of adults who kill
children; that is, childhood is supposed to be innocent and therefore children invoke fury
when they prove not to be. For more detailed discussion of these tensions in
contemporary designations of childhood, with particular reference to the Bulger case,
see M. King A Better World for Children? Explorations in Morality and Authority, London:
Routledge, 1997, Chapter 5; A. Diduck, ª Justice and Childhood: Reflections on
Refashioned Boundariesº , Chapter 8 of Moral Agendas for Children’s Welfare, M. King
(ed.), London: Routledge, 1999. For more general discussion of the conflicts presented
by the current conditions of childhood, see P. Scraton, (ed.) ª Childhoodº in ª Crisisº ?,
London: UCL Press, 1997. Tensions in the designation ª childº have been given another
twist by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which, at the same time as introducing sex
offender orders in the wake of concern about predatory paedophiles preying on
vulnerable children, abolished the (rebuttable) assumption that a child is doli incapax,
incapable of telling the difference between serious wrong and naughtiness (CDA 1998,
Section 34). This means that for the purposes of criminal law children over the age of
criminal responsibility (10± 13 year-olds) are now treated in the same way as 14± 17
year-olds in decisions concerning whether prosecution is appropriate.
12. I. Hacking ª The making and molding of child abuseº , Critical Inquiry 17, Winter, 1991,
253 ± 288; I. Hacking The Social Construction of What? Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press, 1999, chapter 5; C. Jenks (ed.) The Sociology of Childhood: Essential
218 S. Ashenden
Readings, London: Batsford, 1982; A. James, C. Jenks and A. Prout Theorizing Childhood,
Cambridge Polity Press, 1998; N. Rose Governing the Soul: the shaping of the private self,
2nd ed. London: Free Association Books, 1999.
13. M. Foucault ª About the Concept of the Dangerous Individual’ in 19th Century Legal
Psychiatryº , trans. A. Baudot and J. Couchman, International Journal of Law and
Psychiatry, Vol. 1, 1978, 1± 18; M. Foucault The History of Sexuality Volume 1: an
introduction, trans. R. Hurley, London: Penguin, 1979; M. MacIntosh ª The Homosexual
Roleº , Social Problems, Vol. 16, 2, 1968.
14. Hocquenghem, in ª The Danger of Child Sexualityº , a dialogue between M. Foucault,
G. Hocquenghem and J. Danet, produced by R. Pillaudin and broadcast by France
Culture 4 April 1978, in Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961 ± 1984), S. Lotringer (ed.), trans. L.
Hochroth and J. Johnston, New York: Semiotext, 1989, 269. Hocquenghem describes the
a priori character of the criminality of the pervert as ª what used to be called a crime of
opinionº (268).
15. Hocqenghem in ª The Danger of Child Sexualityº , 1989, 272.
16. Foucault in ª The Danger of Child Sexualityº , 1989, 270.
17. Hahn in ª The Danger of Child Sexualityº , 1989, 271.
18. Foucault ª Politics and Reasonº , in Michel Foucault: Politics, Philosophy, Culture.
Interviews and other writings 1977± 1984, ed. L.D. Kritzman, London: Routledge, 1988,
67.
19. M Foucault Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. A.M. Sheridan-Smith,
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
20. M. Foucault Les Anormaux: Cours au CollÁe ge de France 1974 ± 1975, eds F. Ewald and A.
Fontana, Seuil/Gallimard: Paris, 1999.
21. Foucault Discipline and Punish, 1977, 198.
24. M. Foucault ª Two Lecturesº , in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings
1972± 1977, ed. C. Gordon, trans. C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mapham, and K. Soper,
Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1980, 106.
25. On the articulation of the relationship between law and order in contemporary
policing, see S. Watson, ª Symbolic Antagonism, Police Paranoia and the Possibility of
Social Diversityº , in J. Weeks (ed.), The Lesser Evil and the Greater Good: the Theory and
Politics of Social Diversity, London: Rivers Oram Press, 1994.
26. This concern led to the establishment by the Home Office of the Criminal Records
Bureau, which in summer 2000 began building an information systems infra-
structure to improve access to criminal records checks by potential employers with
the aim of providing a knowledge base for safer recruitment to jobs in order to
protect the vulnerable. Jack Straw, then Home Secretary, is quoted thus: ª Dangerous
people need to be stopped from working with children and young people. The
creation of the Criminal Records Bureau is an important step to achieving that.º See
www.crb.gov.uk. This is accompanied by a crime reduction strategy, published by
the government in November 1999. The government website details that this is ª an
ambitious programme of workº that will help to reduce crime (rising by 5 per cent
per annum since 1918), but that ª Government action alone cannot solve the
problem and the potential benefits of the measures in our strategy will be greatly
enhanced if the public get involved in the process and communities also come
together to take control of their neighbourhoods for the benefit of all.º See
www.crimereduction.gov.uk/crssummary.htm.
27. CDA 1998, section 2, paragraph 1.
28. CDA 1998 section 3, paragraph 1a, b, c, d.
29. CDA 1998 section 3, paragraph 4. At the time of writing the government is
considering a proposal that those under the age of 20 who are conditionally
discharged or cautioned for sex offenses involving people under the age of 18 no
longer be included, The Independent, 31 July 2001, 5.
30. CDA 1998 section 3, paragraph 2a, b; Guidance, section 3, 3.4 and 3.5.
31. CDA 1998 section 2, paragraph 2.
35. CDA 1998 section 2, paragraphs 8 and 9. Appeal may be made to the Crown Court,
CDA 1998 section 4. In addition, sections 58± 60 of the 1998 Act make available
provisions for the extended post-release supervision of sexual and violent offenders.
The aim is to ª prevent further offending and secure the rehabilitation of the offenderº .
In such cases, the court may pass an ª extended sentenceº whereby the normal period
of imprisonment may be followed by an ª extension periodº during which the

offender will continue to be ª on licenceº . For sex offenders, the maximum period of
such a licence is ten years. (Crime and Disorder Act Introductory Guide, www.ho-
meoffice.gov.uk/cdact/cdaint18.htm.)
36. Guidance, section 2, paragraph 2.4.3.
37. Guidance, emphasis in text.
38. Guidance, section 2 paragraph 2.4.2.
39. Guidance, section 2, paragraph 2.1.
41. Guidance, section 3, paragraph 3.10, emphasis in text. The notes clarify the term
ª serious harmº as follows: ª It is defined at section 31 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991
as the need to protect the public from death or serious physical or psychological
injury occasioned by further offences committed by the defendant. The term `public’
can include an individual member of the public. The offence of conspiracy or
incitement to commit a sexual offence is included in the definition.º Guidance, section
3, paragraph 3.8, also see Appendix B, paragraph 2.
43. Guidance, section 4, paragraphs 4.1 and 4.2.
45. Guidance, section 2, paragraph 2.4.3.
47. Guidance, Annex B, paragraph 5.
50. Guidance, section 6, paragraph 6.12 states that ª police should monitor each order
actively to ensure that it meets the need for protection of the community and is still
necessary for this purposeº .
55. Guidance, Appendix to Annex C.
57. Attacks, and attempted attacks, have continued both prior to and following the News
of the World’s ª name and shameº campaign; most notably, in April 1998 a Bristol
police station was surrounded by protestors who believed that Sidney Cooke was
being held there. On that occasion, petrol bombs and bricks were thrown and 46
police officers were injured.
58. The Guardian, 30 July 2001.
59. The Independent, 31 July 2001, 5.
60. News of the World, 6 August 2000, 6.
220 S. Ashenden
61. News of the World reports Paulsgrove disturbances in passing on 13 August, in a side
column on page 4, alongside an account of the local MP, Syd Rapson, backing the
campaign for ª Sarah’s Lawº . On the following page the paper has a column headed
ª Mum thanks us for rescuing her sonsº , with a story that details how Victor Burnett
had ª befriendedº her four sonsÐ she thanks the paper for saving them.
62. Photograph in The Independent on Sunday, 13 August 2000.
63. The Guardian, 6 February 2001.
64. The Guardian, 11 August 2000, 8.
65. News of the World, 23 July 2000, 1.
67. News of the World, 23 July 2000, 6, column heading.
68. News of the World, 23 July 2000, 1. An important theme, but one that is outside the
scope of this paper, is the way in which this campaign elides any distinction between
parents’ rights and child protection, so that the two become synonymous. The News
of the World describes its campaign as a campaign for parents’ rights to information in
order that they are empowered to secure ª effective protection for childrenº . (News of
the World, 20 July 2000, 6).
72. Just above the passage cited in the last paragraph, asserting the distinction between
vigilance and vigilante action, the paper uses the adjectives ª evil pervertsº and
ª monstersº to describe child sex offenders, News of the World, 23 July 2000, 6.
75. News of the World, 23 July 2000, 1, heading.
76. News of the World, 23 July 2000, 2, heading.
77. News of the World, 23 July 2000, 2, inset heading.
78. News of the World, 23 July 2000, 2, inset heading.
81. News of the World, 17 September 2000, 15.
82. News of the World, 6 August 2000, 2 and 4± 5, story of a woman who sold children of
13 and 14 for sex.
83. News of the World, 6 August 2000, 4± 5, the story of a paedophile who had gone to
ground after being convicted, with the paper claiming that he was caught due to their
publication of a photograph of him.
86. News of the World, 6 August 2000, 4, this is followed with bullet points drawn from an
NSPCC advice paper giving an account of how paedophiles operate, how to spot one,
how to tell if your child is being abused, and how to keep them safe.
87. News of the World, 23 July 2000, 6, this is to include an interactive map so that people
can see whether there is someone with a conviction for a sexual offense against a child
living in their area. At the bottom of the page is the injunction ª JOIN OUR
CAMPAIGN: If you know of a convicted child abuser living near youº , giving the
address, telephone number, and e-mail address of the paper.
94. News of the World, 20 August 2000, 4± 5.

102. News of the World, 3 September 2000, 2. The case concerned whether the sex offender
order imposed on the claimant was a violation of his rights. Elsewhere, commenting
on the incorporation of the Human Rights Act into UK law, the paper comments on
ª barmy human rights lawsº that encroach on the Home Secretary’s sovereignty over
the question whether ª life means lifeº (News of the World, 15 October 2000, 31).
105. This is followed up the next week with the report that ª 8,000 SLAM JACK IN OUR
STRAW POLLº , the comment that 97 per cent of News of the World readers think that
Jack Straw is wrong, and a reiteration of the original question and contact details.
News of the World, 24 September 2000, 20.
112. News of the World, 1 October 2000, 4± 5.
120. The Guardian, 31 July 2000, 4± 5.
121. The Guardian, 31 July 2000, 4± 5.
122. This is reflected in the way that, where sex offender orders suggest the mapping of
individual cases against statistical profiles in order to generate predictions of
dangerousness, the News of the World’s response pitches individual stories of tragedy
alongside statistical accounts of prevalence.
123. See M. Douglas, Purity and Danger, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966, for an
account of the functional role of marginals to the maintenance of ª communityº .
References
Barnhart, R. K. (ed.) (1998) Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, Harrap, NY: Chambers.
Crime and Disorder Act (1998) Section 2± 4, www.homeoffice.gov.uk.
Crime and Disorder Act 1998, Introductory Guide, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders and Sex
Offender Orders, www.homeoffice.gov.uk, p2.
Diduck, A. (1999) ª Justice and Childhoodº in M. King (ed.) Moral Agendas for Children’s
Welfare, London: Routledge.
Douglas, M. (1966) Purity and Danger, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Foucault, M. (1999) Les Anormaux: Cours au CollÁege de France 1974 ± 1975, eds F. Ewald and
A. Fontana, Paris: Seuil/Gallimard.
222 S. Ashenden
Foucault, M.(1977) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. A. M. Sheridan-Smith,
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Foucault, M. (1978) ª About the Concept of the `Dangerous Individual’ in 19th Century
Legal Psychiatryº , trans. A Baudot and J. Couchman, International Journal of Law and
Psychiatry, 1, 1± 18.
Foucault, M. (1979) The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. R. Hurley,
London: Penguin.
Foucault, M. (1980) ª Two Lecturesº in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other
Writings 1972 ± 1977, C. Gordon (ed.), trans. C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham, and K.
Soper, Herts: Harvester Wheatsheaf .
Foucault, M. (1988) ª Politics and Reasonº in L. D. Kritzman (ed.) Michel Foucault: Politics,
Philosophy, Culture; Interviews and Other Writings 1977 ± 1984, London: Routledge.
Foucault (1989) ª The Danger of Child Sexualityº , a dialogue between Michel Foucault,
Guy Hocquenghem and Jean Danet, produced by R. Pillaudin and broadcast by France
Hochroth and J. Johnston, New York: Semiotext.
Hacking, I. (1991) ª The Making and Molding of Child Abuseº , Critical Inquiry, 17, Winter,
253± 88.
Hacking, I (1999) The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Hahn, P. (1989) in ª The Danger of Child Sexualityº , a dialogue between Michel Foucault,
Guy Hocquenghem and Jean Danet, produced by R. Pillaudin and broadcast by France
Hochroth and J. Johnston, New York: Semiotext.
Hocqenghem, G. (1989) in ª The Danger of Child Sexualityº , a dialogue between Michel
Foucault, Guy Hocquenghem and Jean Danet, produced by R. Pillaudin and broadcast
by France Culture 4 April 1978, in Foucault Live (Interviews, 1961 ± 1984), S. Lotringer (ed.),
trans. L. Hochroth and J. Johnston, New York: Semiotext.
Jackson, S. and Scott, S. (1999) ª Risk anxiety and the social construction of childhoodº , in
D. Lupton (ed.) Risk and sociocultural theory: new directions and perspectives, Cambridge:
CUP.
James, A., Jenks, C. and Prout, A. (1998) Theorizing Childhood, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Jenks, C. (ed.) (1982) The Sociology of Childhood: Essential Readings, London: Batsford.
King, M. A Better World for Children? Explorations in Morality and Authority, London:
Routledge.
Levi-Strauss, C. (1969) ed. R. Needham, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Boston: Beacon
Press.
MacIntosh, M. (1968) ª The Homosexual Roleº , Social Problems, Vol. 16.2.
Scraton, P. (ed.) (1997) `Childhood’ in `Crisis’?, London: UCL.
Rose, N. (1999) Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, second edition, London:
Free Association Books.
Watson, S. (1994) ª Symbolic Antagonism, Police Paranoia and the Possibility of Social
Diversityº , in J. Weeks (ed.) The Lesser Evil and the Greater Good: The Theory and Politics of
Social Diversity, London: Rivers Oram Press.
Samantha Ashenden is Lecturer in Sociology at Birkbeck College, University of

London. She has particular interests in feminist political theory, sociology of
gender, governance and theories of the state, legal theory and the sociology of
law. She is coeditor of Foucault contra Habermas (Sage 1999), and is currently
working on a book on the governance of child sexual abuse, to be published by
Routledge. She is a reviews editor for the journal Critical Review of International
Social and Political Philosophy.

Ashenden 2002

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ashenden 2002

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

This article was downloaded by: [University of Chicago Library]

On: 18 November 2014, At: 02:20

Policing Perversion: The Contemporary

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1362517022019829

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Policing Perversion: The Contemporary

and whereabouts of individuals with previous convictions for sex offenses

articulations of the felt need for vigilance concerning paedophiles provoke

1. Contexts of Concern: Childhood, Paedophilia and Conceptions of Political

emerged in the context of nineteenth-century psychiatry, as part of the

In the present context, therefore, we have a situation in which specific sorts of

(the prison operating as an observatory and as a laboratory). Foucault elaborates

2. Sex Offender Orders: Extending the Governance of Risk

community, those cautioned, and offenders released from prison on or after 1

(a) that the person is a sex offender; and

The designation ª sex offenderº includes those convicted of sexual offenses to

as they are risk-oriented: the perceived present dangerousness of the individuals

vulnerable adults.º 36 This, in turn, requires particular forms of knowledge of the

actual behaviour, which has to be considered only in terms of its relevance to

rise to concern may include ª behaviour such as standing outside a school

children, that childhood as such is under threat from paedophiles.

ª encouragedº into normality, both through the recognition of the role of

worked out information sharing protocolsº 54 to ensure correct handling of

2000. The campaign centered on the ª outingº of paedophiles by printing their

We do NOT want any vigilante attacks or violence against these people. We do

boundaries of evil is an innately moral affair unsatisfied by an administrative

of imprisonment may be followed by an ª extension periodº during which the

94. News of the World, 20 August 2000, 4± 5.

Samantha Ashenden is Lecturer in Sociology at Birkbeck College, University of

You might also like