A sexually violent predator - a rupture in U.S criminal punishment; a content analysis of the media response

Abstract: This thesis investigated a rupture in the U. S. legal tradition of punishing sexual crime, initiatedby The Community Protection Act of 1990 and the Sexually Violent Predator Statute, that defined the criminal subject as a sexually violent predator. Thus, with this definition was initiated a new legislative innovation. Effectuated as the following Sexually Violent Predator laws, it allowed for the civil commitment of sex offenders post completed sentence. A commitment scheme that has been subject to a vast criticism qua its severe deprivation of basic human rights and dismissal of Constitutional provisions. The investigation was composed as a content analysis of the framing of the journalistic production responding to these laws. A selection of 35 news articles was appropriated as source material. The method of content analysis was accompanied by a theoretical framework, scrutinising normative orders and claims of disability and able-ism. The analysis of the source material resulted in the identification of eight repetitive thematics. Their framing was presented and analysed in order to critically discuss the composition and execution of the Sexually Violent Predator laws.