South Korea’s parliament voted yesterday to approve chemical castration as punishment for convicted child sex offenders. This was a reaction to a 2008 case when a 58-year-old man raped and assaulted an 8-year-old girl.
Other high-profile cases recently led to the passage by a vote of 137-13. Notably, 140 legislators simply did not vote.
Once signed, judges will be able to castrate adult sex offenders who victimize minors under 16 if they are found to be sexual deviants.
Officials would use a testosterone-suppressing hormones intended to curb sexual drive combined with behavioral and psychological therapies for the inmate.
The treatment is condemned by many as barbaric and questioned in terms of its effectiveness since some felons act out of a non-sexual impulse.
In the United States, Louisiana, California, Oregon and Arizona have laws allowing chemical castration.
Source: MSNBC.
“140 legislators simply did not vote” Seems like the kind of discussion where you’d need to take sides.
When its gone its gone(ouch!!)
Forced (and coerced — “probation for castration”) castrations have no real effect, because one can get illegal testosterone injections in practically every body building studio on this earth.
A voluntary castration in the course of a honestly desired therapy can be beneficial, if the source of the delinquent behavior is in fact his sexual urge (which isn’t a given).
There is an argument that chemical castration is not effective for deterring either pedophiles or serial rapists as their pathologies are/may be rooted in domination rather than strictly sexual.
Isabel.
I think the deal would be that if they failed to turn up for their shots they would proceed straight to jail.
I would like to see any evidence that this does not work, but cannot see why it could be called “barbaric”, especially when reading most peoples thoughts on what they would like done with kiddie fiddlers.
I would have thought that the possiblility of “growing breasts” might be seen as a less severe consequence than jail time. Let me see – go to jail and have all those violent crimms trying to feed me broken glass/rape me in the showers/castrate me with a couple of house bricks etc etc….. Or grow titties and won’t it be fun in the bath tonight.
It will be interesting to see how this approach works now that it has been put into practice.
Eniobob, this isn’t surgical castration, it’s a shot of hormones that I think represses the release of testosterone. These guys grow breasts and all kinds of other stuff happens.
I thought it was established that this chemical castration doesn’t work. Even if it did work, it only works as long as they keep shooting them up with the hormones. What do they do to make sure these guys keep showing up for their depo provera (or whatever it is) when they are released? Maybe in Korea they’ll just keep them forever in confinement.
Ouch!!
Damn, too bad the Bush Cheney Family Patriarch was not placed on this……