Chemical Castration Of Sex Offenders

“Traumatized people suffer damage to the basic structures of the self. They lose trust in themselves, in other people, in God…the identity they have formed prior to the trauma is irrevocably destroyed.” (Herman, 56). This is what victims go through when they are sexually assaulted; they are traumatized, scarred, and silenced and they feel so insecure because sex offenders continue to commit rape on more and more people everyday. More importantly, the cause of all this is due to the lack of efficiency in the treatments available for the offenders. Some of the treatments include castration, pharmaceutical prescriptions, and psychological treatments all of which contain flaws. Whether it’s ineffectively preventing the violence, issues surrounding
consent, or simply some unpromising results respectively. Therefore, years of research into treatments for sexual offenders have yielded some promising results. However, although there are effective programs in use today, much more research needs to be done in this field.
One of the many treatments for sexual offenders is castration, which is the surgical or chemical removal of the testicles. According to Nikolaus Heim, a professor at the University of Berlin, states that castration was used in the past as a punishment for crimes such as rape or adultery, and was called lex talionis, which is Latin for the law of retaliation.
In other words, it simplifies to the idea of ‘an eye for an eye’ (Heim, 281). To this day, castration or even chemical castration is still used in parts of America and some European countries around the world but the question of its effectiveness remains. One can argue, castration removes the sexual drive of the offender but it simply cannot cleanse their state of mind, “Chemical castration assumes that sexual offenders, after losing their sexual drive, will stop molesting. Anyone who has taken Psychology 101 can tell you that there are many other reasons why sexual offenders commit acts of molestation. These are not individuals looking to score on a Saturday night. These are not individuals who want to find physical pleasure with adults but are thwarted in their attempts. These are individuals who like molesting children for the sake of molesting children. They are sick, not desperate. Reducing their sexual drive does not necessarily solve the problem.” (Kanter). This indicates a huge weakness that doesn’t necessarily benefit the offender, which leads one to wonder what would happen if they resort to other sorts of
dominance over their victims. Now, there is the fear that sex offenders who go through castration will resort to other methods of violence and abuse. Furthermore, most sex offenders come from abusive families which means that the sole purpose of pedophiles may not be to just rape their victims, but provide a much harsher dominance likewise to their past experiences, “Sex offending is often not about sex at all, but about violence and domination. The drugs used will not affect those attitudes. Some men may inflict other types of deviant behaviour on victims if they are unable to perform sexually due to the drugs. The physical impact of the drugs can be very powerful, with the effect being similar to a sex change.” (Curtis). Since the offender will continue harassing their victims through other means of violence, it defeats the purpose of the treatment in the first place. As a result, castration does not stop the violence that comes along with it which proves castration as ineffective to both the offender and to society.
Among many treatments for sex offenders are pharmaceutical prescriptions, which seem promising for its effectiveness. However, there are concerns of consent issues and whether or not it truly helps the perpetrator from further recidivism. For one reason, offenders may consent not knowing the consequences or side effects of these treatments, “Whilst it is easy to assume that if treatment is offered on a voluntary and consensual basis that there are no ethical problems involved, this is too simplistic a view to take; as there are still concerns over the issue of the offender's consent. This includes whether that consent is valid and whether the offender truly understands what he is consenting to, including all of the possible side effects involved.” (Harrison). Some of these side effects may range from depression, suicidal thoughts, blood clots, osteoporosis, and much more unknown possibilities. Upon conducting further research to this, it has also been found that, “Six studies provided information on adverse events and none tested the effects of testosterone-suppressing drugs beyond six to eight months. The most severe were reported in a trial of antipsychotic medication. Reported side effects in two trials of oral MPA (medroxyprogesterone acetate) and CPA (cyproterone acetate) included considerable weight gain. Side effects of intramuscular MPA led to discontinuation in some participants. Important increases in depression and excess salivation were reported in one trial of oral MPA.” (Khan et al). Essentially, the offender’s health and mental state may be corrupted based on their consent and shortage of awareness towards the aftermath of these medications. Moreover, it becomes rather disturbing learning about the reasons of why offenders consent to medication, even if they acknowledge the consequences. For example, most offenders see medication as an easier way out in comparison to prison and jail time, “There is still the fear that an offender will consent because he thinks, or he is encouraged to think, that the parole board and/or other release/supervisory authorities will view participation in such a programme positively. So rather than being motivated to participate because he wants to rid himself of his deviant thoughts, fantasies and resulting behaviour, he is agreeing to involvement because of the effect which it may have on his eventual release from custody.” (Harrison). For this reason, sexual offenders do not have the right intentions when consenting to pharmaceutical treatments and thus will put society in danger. Nevertheless, this type of treatment is once again unsuccessful because offenders may consent for all the wrong motives and through consent whether or not they are acknowledging the potential side effects that put the offender’s health at risk.
Finally, the most effective treatment for pedophiles is psychological treatments but unfortunately, even this form of treatment defects from its inconclusive results.
In fact, some studies have shown therapeutic treatments to have no effect at all but rather it causes further recidivism. Comparing offenders who went through treatments and those who have not, a larger percentage of these individuals committed another offense, “Outcome data, as Marshall et al. (1991) reported, revealed no therapeutic benefit, with 38% of the treated and 31% of the untreated men being convicted of another sexual offense in the 6.5-year (average) follow-up period.” (Harris and Rice, 520). Within a small duration of time, many offenders have committed another sexual offense and this is only for the offenses that have been reported to police. Not only that, but the frequency that offenders commit another offense is beyond unreasonable further proving the uncertainties of psychological interventions. Studies also show that, “when the results of 18 men who had shown a statistically significant improvement in their deviant sexual age preferences were compared to the outcomes of their yoked controls, no positive effects of treatment were found. Similarly, subjects who had received social skills training and/or sex education recidivated as frequently as subjects who had neither.” (Harris and Rice, 515). The results raise the question of whether or not therapy can actually drive offenders away from the
negative influences of recidivism and how they can be motivated to become better individuals. On the other hand, a much larger scale meta-analysis is done to show a more accurate result on efficiency of psychological treatments. The analysis compares different types of therapeutic programs and finds cognitive behavioural treatment to work the best but it also comes with some uncertainties, “The largest review is the meta-analysis conducted by Lösel and Schmucker (2005), who combined 69 studies to compare the recidivism rates of 9,512 treated sexual offenders to 12,669 untreated sexual offenders. They concluded that there was a positive treatment effect on sexual and other recidivism, and that cognitive-behavioural programs were more effective than other psychosocial approaches. In contrast, Kenworthy review of nine random assignment studies concluded that the ethics of providing this still-experimental treatment to a vulnerable and potentially dangerous group of people outside of a well-designed evaluative study are debatable.” (Hanson, 1). The results of this experiment conclude that a cognitive behavioural treatment is definitely beneficial to a certain extent. Conversely, the results of randomly selected experiments leads to unreliable conclusions and hence therapeutic interventions cannot be a trustworthy treatment.
All in all, when treatments fail to benefit the offender from further recidivism it begins to take a toll on society, putting them in danger. Victims of sexual assault become traumatized and their lives are no longer what it used to be like. The treatments for sexual offenders are important for this reason, to prevent another innocent individual from going through what past victims went through, to avoid the pain, humiliation, and trauma they have been through. Castration leads offenders to resort to other methods of violence. Meanwhile pharmaceutical drugs fails to give the right intentions of getting better and further provides an alternative than prison time. Lastly, psychological treatments are by far the most effective treatment and yet this treatment contains inconclusive results that even seems like it has no effect, contradicting itself. It is with the utmost dissatisfaction to witness that treatment today, after many countless years of research that they are still ineffective and unable to keep society safe. According to World Health Organization, one in three North American women will be sexually or physically assaulted during their lifetime (Violence Against Women). There are no characteristics to sexual assault victims; they have no age, no race, and no sex. In other words, sexual assault hits so much closer to home, and it can happen to anyone, anytime.