The Problem With Castration

BBC News - Germany urged to end sex offender castration.

The Council of Europe, an influential human rights watchdog, is urging Germany to end chemical castration of sex offenders. The program is voluntary, insofar as the overwhelming majority of convicted offenders opt to serve a full sentence instead of undergoing castration. "No more than five" sex offenders a year opt for this "treatment".

It is interesting to note that recidivism rates seem to be exponentially lower for those who have been castrated.

I believe that rapists and child rapists and sexual offenders should be punished severely. Death should be the penalty in most cases. I have no problem with hard jail time. AndI have no problem with castration.

A young man hides out by a dark path on a college campus. He assaults a lone girl late at night. The police find him and arrest him. He is tried publicly and his balls are cut off.  Might sound barbaric, but no problem. It might almost be kinder to execute the young man, and the point of state justice is not vindictive torture, but such a castration would not be unjust.

What creeps me out is the way this is being done in Germany. In the example above the motivation for the sentence is punishment and justice. The motivation in Germany is
that castration is not a punishment but a treatment which enables, as a government statement put it, "suffering tied to an abnormal sex drive… to be cured, or at least alleviated".

The modern urge to cure instead of punish actually makes us more inhumane. The desire to "treat" instead of vindicate makes us more inhuman. We treat these men as if they are mutants ("abnormal sex drive") instead of what they are: evil humans. Twisted humans.

Give them the basic dignity of an execution instead of the indignity of a chemical castration. Hint: if justice is being administered in a white sanitized room with no windows, you're doing it wrong. It is inevitable that when the state tries to be kinder and more personal, it ends up robbing us of personality.

Comments

  1. Must I remind Germany (to quote O'Connor/Percy): tenderness ends up in the gas chambers

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  2. Here is my only issue with the death penalty. The only time Jesus comes across the death penalty (besides his death) his thoughts on the subject were "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." I understand that the crimes committed are horrific, and even my gut instinct is to kill, but is that the right mindset? I mean, even if they are convicted to life in prison, isn't that time that they have to accept Christ?

    It's a tough issue, but that's just my $0.02.

    :)

    Matt

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  3. Reminds me of an essay by C.S Lewis. He was talking about the urge to classify crimes as "diseases" and to "cure" instead of punish. Punishment belongs to the people. You did wrong and you need to pay. Everyone can see that. If you're sick, you get to evade responsibility and experts get to decide what's wrong with you and how to treat you (without your consent of course, because you are sick).

    In a similar vein; TNG: The Outcast. A member of an androgynous species identifies as female. She falls in love with Commander Riker, is found out and forcibly cured of her female-ness.

    It is creepy and dehumanizing.

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