Issue date: 5/5/09 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Osazuwa Okundaye [Click to enlarge]

In 1996, California became the first state to pass a law mandating the use of chemical castration for convicted sex offenders. Instead of being a cure for a criminal disease, forced chemical castration is still castration. Unless America is trying to stop citizens from preventing Project Mayhem, this barbaric punishment for prisoners needs to end.

Today six states use mandatory chemical castration as medicinal treatment for these particularly heinous offenders. Medroxyprogesterone Acetate Suspension, or MPA, commercially known as Depo-Provera, is used as a women's birth control shot. When injected into men, the drug reduces the effects of testosterone produced by the testes and the adrenal gland, counteracting the libido fueled by the testosterone circulating in the bloodstream. With less testosterone in their bodies, the ability to have sex is eliminated for many inmates.

Despite the coercive language in the letter of the law, few sex offenders are forced to undergo the treatment. The law is designed for use on only a select few more dangerous offenders, but as terrible as their crimes are, they do not deserve mandated medical treatment. Certainly the nature of a sexual offense is heinous, but as despicable as an offense such as rape is, it does not compare with the act of taking another life.

When it comes to punishing murders, society takes a more liberal approach towards their control. Our correctional system allows years spent behind bars to carry enough weight for killers to rejoin society, hoping that the threat of returning to prison is enough to discourage a repeat offense. Civil rights should be the same for sex offenders, and if we honestly do not believe that a particular convict is able to integrate with society, we should not release them back into the public.

A common misconception about sex offenders is that they are unable re-enter society because of the nature of their crime, so infringing on an offenders' rights can prevent them from striking again. However the re-arrest rate for sex offenders is 52 percent, while the recidivism rate for all convicts is more than 60 percent. Surely, sex offenders can be rehabilitated at least as well as the average hardened criminal.

Forcing prisoners to follow the law by removing a natural function of any part of the body without consent is the definition of cruel and unusual punishment, and not the answer to the fundamental flaws with our criminal justice system. When the country's entire prison population struggles with repeat criminal behavior, the solution is not a medical one for a whole category of offenses.

Our judicial system needs a massive reworking to lower recidivism nationwide, increasing restrictions on sex offenders will only worsen the problem already within the system. America needs to offer MPA only as a consensual procedure for willing patients.

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