Critics say there’s no evidence that castration prevents future sex offenses. Yet several states are weighing such measures.
  • Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    7·
    2 hours ago

    It has the same issues as any other permanent punishment in that if somebody is wrongly convicted then it can’t be reversed. Hell, we still execute people we know were wrongly convicted fairly frequently. If this passed then there would definitely be wrongly convicted people getting castrated. Being castrated also doesn’t prevent sex offenders from reoffending. The lack of sex hormones would reduce sex drive but for most offenders it’s less about the sex and more about control. Also if a reduction in sex drive is the goal then there are chemical means to acheive that (which still don’t actually stop sex offenders).

    So you would just wind up castrating a few innocent people while still making no difference in the actual offenders ability to reoffend.

    Unless we can know with absolute 100% certainty that the accused is guilty then the best thing to do with people who are convicted of henious crimes like that is to just lock them up. That way they can’t hurt anyone but if new evidence comes out that proves them innocent then they can be released and the damage can still be somewhat remedied.

    Even if we somehow could know with absolute 100% cetainty that they were guilty (I’m not sure how that would even be possible) castration still wouldn’t make sense because it still leaves them the chance to reoffend. IMO if we lived in a magical world where absolute truth could be known by all then rapists should just be killed because the risk of a rapist reoffending outweighs the worth of a rapist and nothing else will actually ensure they won’t reoffend.