Homosexuality as Pathogen: A Historically Informed Critique of the Theories of Sexual Violence in Prison as Manifested in the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003

Abstract

The paper traces early 20th century psychoanalytic theory on homosexuality and violence as it passed from Fishman (1934) to Clemmer (1940) to Sykes (1958) into the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) of 2003. Deconstruction of PREA with historiographical methods learned that its core assumptions on homosexuality and violence date back the 19th and early 20th