Sexual Crimes

This book Sexual Crimes evaluates all forms of sexual sins and crimes, especially in the our contemporary world - rape, incest and other kinds of sexual violence being committed are given detail attention in this book. The author goes further to enumerated both the causes and effects, on victims, crime perpetrators, families and society at large. On the surface, to ask “what is a crime?” seems to warrant a straightforward answer in that one can simply suggest that “crime is something that is against the law.” For those who adopt such a strict definition or a legal-consensus approach to crime (for example, Tappan 1947), studying the law as it is written is sufficient for understanding what society considers harmful behavior. However, if we take a step back from this literal interpretation to consider the broader social processes that help give meaning to crime and its control, it quickly becomes apparent that there is much more to the question than simply referring to what is written in the law. As Comack and Brickey (1991, 15) remind us, “[l]aw can be said to have a distinctly social basis; it both shapes – and is shaped by – the society in which it operates” (emphasis in the original). Indeed, before a criminal statute is even contemplated, there are a whole host of social forces and events that both shape how we conceive of a particular behavior and influence our decisions on how to respond. In addition, many of these social forces continue to shape our response strategies well after the social wrong becomes part of our legal lexicon. How society thinks about sexual crimes and the individuals deemed to be responsible for criminal behavior influences law enforcement practices and the penalties administered.
In the end, the author, Dr. Johnson comes out with solutions to this tragic social evil. This is one book all of us must read - irrespective of sex, status, class or position.