Eideard

Raped and murdered
Daylife/AP Photo

Whether castration can help rehabilitate violent sex offenders has come under new scrutiny after the Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee last month called surgical castration “invasive, irreversible and mutilating” and demanded the Czech Republic stop offering the procedure to violent sex offenders. Other critics said that castration threatened to lead society down a dangerous road toward eugenics.

The Czech Republic has allowed at least 94 prisoners to be surgically castrated over the past decade. It is the only country in Europe that uses the procedure for sex offenders. Czech psychiatrists supervising the treatment – a one-hour operation that involves removal of the tissue that produces testosterone – insist that it is the most foolproof way to tame sexual urges in dangerous predators…

Now, more countries in Europe are considering mandating or allowing chemical castration for violent sex offenders. There is intense debate over whose rights take precedence: those of violent sex offenders, who could be subjected to a punishment that many consider cruel, or those of society, which expects protection from sexual predators.

Poland is expected to become the first nation of the European Union to give judges the right to impose chemical castration on at least some convicted pedophiles, using hormonal drugs to curb sexual appetite; the impetus for the change was the arrest of a 45-year-old man in September who had fathered two children by his young daughter.

RTFA. There really are pros and cons. There also is bureaucratic rigging going on.