Ascribing monstrosity: judicial categorization of a juvenile sex offender

Abstract

Employing a conversation analytic approach to the study of discourse, this article examines the relationship between categorization work and the practical accomplishment of legal objectives. Using transcription of a sentencing hearing for a juvenile sex offender tried in adult criminal court, attention is focused on how the judgment is socially constructed, in and through courtroom discourse, as an accountable one. The analysis traces contested identities ascribed to the defendant and the moral judgments they embed. During the hearing, sex offender membership categories of sexual predator and paedophile are imported from commonsense understandings into the courtroom proceedings where they are given legal significance superseding any authority of the clinical expert who testifies. These identity-categories are reconstructed with monster status, and deployed by the judge as grounds for a sentence that will advance law’s purposes to manage ‘dangerousness’ and control the ‘monstrous’.