rape offender profiles

[Jim heartfield]

In message <3.0.3.32.20000201073522.0130fbb4 at pop.flash.net>, Kelley
<oudies at flash.net> writes
>I found the on the web when Ken and I were putting together the pulp
>culture theory pages.  In any
>event, I'm sending it along to accompany the rape piece that's in the news
>because it is an analysis of the "rape offender"  that many investigators
>use when investigating sex crimes.  It's clearly founded on a
>psychoanalytic theory and presents a sharply different answer to the
>question "why rape?"  than that offered by Thornhill and Palmer.  since
>it's come up again, at pulp, i'm resending for the new subscribers.

Offender profiling seems to be a pretty dubious exercise to me. It rests
on the false notion that you can predict criminal behaviour, or that
there are certain kinds of people who commit offences. I've never liked
the slogan all men are potential rapists, but in this case it does seem
to be justified. Perhaps we ought to make the point that all people are
potential criminals. Offender profiling leads inexorably to the
authoritarian regulation of people on the basis of what they might do,
instead of the liberal position that people can only be punished for
what they have done.

As long as society is organised on the basis of the formal freedom of
the individual then the possibility of crime still exists. To my mind,
awful as it sounds to say so, that's a price worth paying.

-- 
Jim heartfield