Citation

Petrunik M, Weisman R. Int. J. Law Psychiatry 2005; 28(1): 75-96.

Affiliation

Criminology Department, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1N 6N5. lavon@magma.ca

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ijlp.2004.12.005

PMID

15710450

Abstract

Joseph Fredericks--one of Canada's most notorious sex offenders--was defined through the institutions that dealt with him from his infancy to his death to the inquest held after his death. In this paper, we locate in historical context and compare the different narratives that were constructed of his life in each of these institutional settings from unwanted child to 'mental defective' to psychiatric offender to criminal recidivist to victim to iconic sexual predator. We show that each of these narratives claimed to capture the essence of Fredericks in terms of what were his core characteristics and what remedies were necessary for the problems he posed only to be superseded by new narratives based on different assumptions. Finally, we show how one of these conceptions of Frederick's essence influenced a shift in Canadian public policy for sex offenders toward the greater emphasis on community protection characteristic of public policy in the United States.

Language: en