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  • Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI by Jessica Pliley
  • Danielle Battisti
Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI. By Jessica Pliley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Pp. 304. $29.95 (cloth).

In Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI, Jessica Pliley explores the rich and complex history behind late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century narratives of “white slavery,” the passage of the Mann Act (1910) in response to such discourse, and the various ways that enforcement of the law both reflected and impacted American understandings of gender, race, sexuality, and the role of the state in policing morality.

The central goal of Pliley’s study is to explore the challenges that the Bureau of Investigation faced in implementing the Mann Act and to determine how the enforcement strategies chosen influenced the growth and function of the state in early twentieth-century America. One of the bureau’s greatest challenges was to determine who and what to police, a decision made difficult both by the Mann Act’s focus on prohibiting the transport of women across state lines for the purposes of prostitution and debauchery and by the inclusion of a clause referring to “any other immoral purpose” in the legislation. These prohibitions were too broad and malleable to have clear [End Page 196] meaning, and they were subject to ever-changing public concerns about changing social and economic norms for men and women in society. Pliley ultimately concludes that the state blended paternalistic protection of some women with punitive measures taken toward others. Women who were young, white, and judged to be “redeemable” because of their previously chaste or “good moral character” were, more often than not, judged to warrant the protection of the state. On the other hand, men and women who did not enjoy the benefits of citizenship, those who violated the social and legal obligations of the marital contract, or individuals who were considered to be threats to public health and welfare because of their sexual and/or economic behavior were targeted for surveillance and prosecution. In either case, the state increasingly assumed powers to monitor and regulate women’s bodies and behaviors, whether or not these women were involved in commercial sex or other “vice” trades. Pliley argues that the bureau’s response to the policing challenges raised by the Mann Act reflected broader, often conservative cultural understandings about the gendered and racialized construction of citizenship in American history (3–5).

Pliley convincingly casts this study as “a story of traversing, maintaining, and negotiating boundaries” (3). The book probes at the boundaries of the physical and legal borders of the nation-state, exploring how the borders between individual states and legal jurisdictions influenced law enforcement officials and their targets as they moved across the nation. Pliley argues that although the discourse of white slavery transcended national borders it was also defined by distinctly American understandings of race and gender relations. The author likewise explores legal and social influences on the gendered nature of the marriage contract. Finally, and most rewardingly, the analysis probes at the boundaries of acceptable social behavior in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

One of the most impressive aspects of this book is the author’s ability to weave together the attitudes and actions of a wide cast of characters. State actors and agencies, including the Bureau of Investigation (later the FBI), the Immigration Bureau, members of Congress, the federal courts, and state and local law enforcement agents all figure prominently in Pliley’s narrative. Nonstate actors, including private organizations concerned with “social hygiene” and public welfare, women’s rights activists, members of the media, and individual citizens who variously called upon the state for protection or prosecution of individuals under the Mann Act, also take center stage. Finally, through an extensive investigation of thousands of case files and other records, the author is able to give a voice to the men and women targeted by the law itself.

This work is invaluable for providing readers with numerous detailed case histories. The author’s thoughtful analysis of the significance of those cases illustrates...

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