Castration: A Proposed Treatment Strategy for Sex Offenders.
Castration by some is considered to be cruel and unusual punishment. Others view it as a way for a convicted sex offender to obtain a reduced sentence, and yet there are some whom believe it may be the only cure. Many questions arise concerning several issues, methods, and results. Are we as Americans allowing the judicial system to toy with our bodily integrity?.
Castration first began in Europe in Denmark in 1929 and continued to spread through the 1930's into Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Holland. The United States was unchanging in their belief that the rights of the individual outweighed the interests of the community in general. Then, in 1938, Judge Lawrence Neil Turrentine, of the San Diego County Superior bench, began offering voluntary castration and long probationary periods to convicted sex offenders. If they declined this offer, then their only other alternative was a lengthy prison sentence. No actual opposition arose from this dicey substitute, but no endorsements were offered either. .
Following World War II, studies were produced that demonstrated the ineffectiveness of physical castration and attitudes towards castration began to change, partly because of studies researched by Alfred Kinsey. "There was a sort of shift away from castration, as I recall, caused by the Kinsey material because it brought into question whether castration was scientifically based. Until then, people had believed otherwise," stated one jurist recalling the period. By the late 1960's the ACLU had become interested in the castration of sex offenders and the scientific and medical communities in the United States and Europe were also noticing problems with the procedure. Denmark, the first to begin the surgery alternative, stopped the surgery in 1972 because of disinclination of doctors. .
In 1974, California changed their penal code to state, "All persons, including all persons involuntarily confined, have a fundamental right against enforced interference with their thought processes, states of mind, and patterns of mentation though the use of organic therapies.