SEX OFFENDERS: CRIMINALITY
The characteristic image of any sex offender is usually shaped by his specific sex offense. This event, dramatized by arrest and conviction, overshadows all his previous behavior. Not only does it eclipse whatever good he might have done, but also all his nonsexual criminal behavior. This has led to a curious oversimplification of the record. Unless his other criminality has been of a particularly aggravating sort or if it has quasi-sexual overtones—arson, for example—it is usually ignored.
In this chapter the criminality (as defined by arrest and conviction) of the various sex-offender groups will be compared with the criminal histories of the prison group. All the sex-offender groups have members who have committed nonsexual offenses. It is possible to examine the available criminal records of the sex offenders and the prison group as they relate to juvenile criminality, both sexual and nonsexual; recidivism; the ages at the occurrence of convictions of varying severity; the proportion of various types of nonsex offenses committed by each group; the per capita offense experience; and the relative proportions of sexual versus nonsexual offenses.
The criminal behavior of the prison group will serve here as a bench mark.
The prison group has a diversity of criminal experience. Out of this diversity arises a pattern which has been the subject of study of the social scientist—some ideal person who may be called the “normal” delinquent. While much of his career in crime is still terra incognita, some of the more obvious landmarks of his experience may be charted.
The criminal career of the normal delinquent starts early in his life, usually on the streets of an urban community. A certain amount of his early behavior has a play element in it, often of a malicious or destructive character. In his childhood the group of friends on the street corner become his source of rewards and punishment. Respect,, love, and status all arise from the social life of the gang. Part of the style of life of the group of boys involves criminal activity, whether fighting, vandalism, theft, or drug use. Involvement with the police and the courts and finally correctional institutions becomes part of their life experience. Conventional society—that is, the part of society which thinks of itself as noncriminal—becomes an object of derision and depredation.
A few of these males get into professional crime, either of an individual tradesman variety or of the syndicated business variety. The broad majority become thieves of a less competent kind, alternating their times of freedom with periods of imprisonment.
In crude outline this is the expected life style of the normal criminal who fills the police lockups, the court dockets, and the prison cells. Early criminal involvement, usually in a gang context, crimes of a property nature, intermittent imprisonment, and attitudes at variance with those of the middle classes are part and parcel of his career.
The members of any sex-offense group follow the pattern of the nonsexual criminal to the degree that the origins of their behavior are not special, but common to a general pattern of antisocial behavior.
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