ABSTRACT
We begin the third chapter by providing additional theoretical tools that we then deploy throughout the text. We analyze the basis of the victimization of sex offenders by drawing on the extant biopolitics literature and we probe the intersection of biopolitics, dangerousness, and vulnerability in relation to sex offenders. Biopolitics, we show, is a particularly apposite conceptual framework for understanding the constitution, regulation, and punishment of sex offenders in the English-speaking West. Moreover, (bio)power shapes the lives of sex offenders and is central to understanding the enmity towards and violence committed against those that challenge sexual mores regarding sex and the regulation of sexuality more broadly within corrections settings. In this context, we show how sex offender bodies are produced and the broader biopolitical decisions tied to which life is worth living and which is not.
