Edwin Sutherland's Research on the Origins of Sexual Psychopath Laws: An Early Case Study of the Medicalization of Deviance

Abstract

However, there are obvious gaps in his documentation of these laws and in his evidence on news stories about sex crimes. We analyze major newspapers in each state that passed sexual psychopath law and find far greater diversity in the coverage of sex crimes than Sutherland claimed. Based on material in Sutherland's research files, interviews with his former students and colleagues, and review of his other published works, we argue that Sutherland's in studying sexual psychopath laws was to debunk psychiatry. His strong opposition to psychiatric interest groups may account for his lack of careful attention to evidence and for his premature dismissal of alternative, structural explanations of the origins of this legislation. Edwin Sutherland's (1950b) study of the diffusion of sexual psychopath laws in the U.S. is one of the earliest and best-known sociological investigations into the origins of specific type of criminal law. Also, this is perhaps the first case study of the medicalization of deviance - broad transformation of social control that has received considerable attention in recent years (e.g., Conrad and Schneider, 1980). Sutherland argued that sexual psychopath laws exemplified a trend toward psychiatric policies [which are premised] on the assumption that the criminal is socially sick person (1950b:147). He was especially concerned about the potential erosion of legal rights by this movement toward treatment of offenders as patients (1950b:147). This ground-breaking study influenced later analyses of the rule-making process (e.g., Becker, 1963; Schur, 1971) and continues to be cited frequently.' However, close examination of Sutherland's research reveals some curious lapses and inconsistencies in the evidence he marshalled in support of his conclusions. For instance, he indicated that 12 states and the District of Columbia passed sexual psychopath laws, yet he did not cite any of these statutes. Moreover, when we reviewed states' sessions laws for the period covered in Sutherland's analysis, we found that he overlooked state (Missouri) that passed sexual psychopath law and included another state (New Jersey) that did not enact such bill.2 In this paper, we focus on these and other indications of surprising lack of thoroughness in this eminent scholar's work on sexual psychopath laws. Drawing on historical evidence that Sutherland overlooked, we re-examine his claims about the influences of newspaper accounts and psychiatric opinion on the legislative process and reconsider alternative explanations he summarily