How Can Criminal Law Regulate Sexual Morality?
Sexual morality refers to ethics dealing with sexuality and human sexual behaviors. It also deals with sexual relations in the society before and after marriage. Rules about sexual morality are very universal across cultures and no matter how people are strongly inclined to regulate their sexual behaviors; they still end being involved in unethical sexual behaviors. The criminal provides the society with regulations and guidelines that should be followed (Roberson and Wallace, 2008). Criminal law can be used to regulate sexual morality in the society by punishing the offenders to the fullest extent of the law. The main reason for the establishment and the maintenance of the criminal law on sexual is to punish, deter and protect the people in the society.
Criminal law is essential in every society so as to instill law and order. The criminal law punishes the people who commit sexual criminal acts in the society. Through punishment, the criminal law is able to regulate sexual morality in the community because, the latent offenders will fear committing the same offences because of the punishments administered (Schmalleger, 2010). Moreover, the offenders who have been punished will not repeat their criminal acts for the fear of the punishments they received thus creating law and order in the society.
Criminal helps regulating sexual morality by protecting the society. One of the aims of criminal law is to protect the society and this means; people in the society are fully protected by the law from harmful activities and acts perpetrated by a group of people. For instance, the law protects the people against rape and sexual harassment. When a person is found guilty of the crimes of sexual harassment or rape, they are imprisoned and kept away from the society. When they are imprisoned, sexual morality is regulated by the law because, the offenders are not allowed to go scot free for their mistakes thus are given life imprisonment.
Deterrence is another aim of the criminal law which ensures that there is avoidance to the occurrence of criminal activities (Logan, 1999). The idea here is that through deterrence, the criminal law is able to regulate sexual morality because would be offenders will learn from those who have been penalized for sex ethics that doing such an offence would lead to such a consequence. For example a person found guilty of sexual molestation can be given a life sentence imprisonment. Other people upon knowing this would not like to end up in jail and therefore, they will avoid involving themselves in sexual offences that can land them in jail and this is how criminal law by deterrence regulates sexual morality.
The criminal law assists in rehabilitating delinquents. When an individual is put in jail for a certain sexual offence, he/she would never want to repeat it again. Most of the criminals are educated and counseled so that they can realize what they did was wrong and when they are out, they teach others never to go against the law (Smith and Bailey, 2011). Most of the delinquents come out of jail with new orientations and it is through being assisted by the criminal law to deter from sexual offences. Rehabilitations changes the criminals and when they are out, they can never repeat the same offences and this is also a good way the criminal law regulates sexual morality.
In essence, it is the work of the criminal law to regulate sexual morality through deterrence from the re-occurrence of sexual offences, protecting the people from offenders by punishing them, rehabilitating them and changing their behaviors. Criminal law is essential in regulating sexual morality.
Roberson, C. and Wallace, H. (2008). Principles of Criminal Law (4th Ed.). Boston: Pearson Education Inc.
Schmalleger, F. (2010). Criminal law today: An introduction with capstone cases. (4th Ed.)
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Smith, G., P. and Bailey, G., P. (2011). Regulating Morality through the Common Law and Exclusionary Zoning. Catholic University Law Review, 60(2), 403-444,
Logan, W.A. (1999). Liberty interests in the preventive state: Procedural due process and sex offender community notification laws. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 89(4), 1167-1232.