Uk chemical castration
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tjstill (imported)
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Uk chemical castration
There has been a lot in the media today about a new government initiative to deal with peodophiles. They are to be offered drugs to reduce sex drive. this is not cómpulsory but I suppose there will be insentives. Of course the U.K gutter press, sensationalized this with headlines on the front page like Chemical castration for Peodophiles. I expect there will be a lot of discussion about this over the next few weeks. It does cause the link castration = punishment or `cure for bad people` to be made stronger and I guess the general public will stuggle even more to comprehend elective castration. I expected to see a thread in the archive on this topic today, maybe there is one in one of the other sections. What do others think of the proposals, both in terms of effective treatment and the effect on the image of people who want this treatment for other reasons?
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JesusA (imported)
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Re: Uk chemical castration
Today in The Guardian, one of the more rational British newspapers, there was a rather bland article on the subject of treatment of sex offenders in which only a single line mentioned the possible use of chemical castration. There were TWO essays placed on their blog site, however, with nearly 200 responses thus far. Both of the essays are against the use of chemical castration, though for very different reasons. The heated responses are all over the map and make for fascinating reading.
Im posting only the two original essays here. Those who are interested can go to the Guardians web site to read all of the many pages of comments (over 80 pages of 12 point type in my print-out!).
First up is Julie Bindel. She is a freelance journalist who writes for the Guardian newspaper and various other British and European newspapers and magazines. She is the co-editor of The Map of My Life: The Story of Emma Humphreys (Astraia Press, 2003) and several book chapters and research papers on sexual violence and the criminal justice system. A founder member of the feminist law reform campaign Justice for Women, Julie believes that doing paid work, however ethically and responsibly, is not enough, and remains a committed political activist. Julie has written investigative features on international prostitution, sex tourism in Jamaica, stalking and harassment, transsexualism, being a lesbian schoolgirl, the beauty industry and serial killers.
Testosterone-fuelled theories
Offering sex offenders the option of medical treatment to lower their libidos falsely suggests they are ill as opposed to bad.
Julie Bindel
The Guardian (U.K.)
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
I am all for rehabilitation of offenders. I have worked with murderers, rapists and child abusers. If they can see why they did what they did, take responsibility, and take steps to ensure they do not offend again, then they deserve a second chance. However, for those who pose a real danger to vulnerable people, they should be given that second chance only when we can be protected from them.
Take sex offenders. Anyone in their right mind knows that child abusers and rapists do not do what they do because they are "ill", or because of hormones (yes, I am against the mad American defence bandied around in the US in the 1970s which sought to explain some murderous women's actions by claiming they had premenstrual tension at the time). But now we have yet another suggested solution to men who abuse. Rather than admitting that they do so because we live in a world that sexualises women and children to within an inch of their lives, and one where men can get away with pretty much any sexual offence, we are hoping that lowering their libido is the answer to the epidemic of sexual offences sweeping the UK and elsewhere.
Persistent and dangerous sex offenders, in particular those who target children, are to be offered a drug treatment known as chemical castration, the government has announced today. Under the plans, persistent child sex offenders who agree to the treatment would be given injections of Leuproreline, which apparently cuts testosterone levels in men.
Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the United States already use the method in an attempt to reduce reoffending, and yet there is not one scrap of credible evidence to suggest it is an effective method to stop men sexually abusing. There are many readers of this site who would assume I am all for castration, being a sadistic man-hater, etc. But I am dead against it. Why?
Although the home secretary, John Reid, insists the treatment will be "voluntary" and will not be linked to early release from prison, I do not believe him - at least I do not accept that the willingness to take a drug which is supposed to curb a sex drive will not be looked at favourably by the courts and parole boards. Suggesting that child rapists and sex abusers can be "cured" with medical "treatment" suggests they are ill as opposed to bad.
Those who abuse children make a choice to do so. They are not driven by an illness, or testosterone (if they are, how do we explain female offenders?) They need to be stopped - end of story. If the only way we can do that is to keep them locked up, so be it. But let us stop pretending there is a medical "cure" for men choosing to rape and abuse. The only cure is to change the attitude of men towards women and children, and for them to choose to treat us as human beings.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jul ... ories.html
Im posting only the two original essays here. Those who are interested can go to the Guardians web site to read all of the many pages of comments (over 80 pages of 12 point type in my print-out!).
First up is Julie Bindel. She is a freelance journalist who writes for the Guardian newspaper and various other British and European newspapers and magazines. She is the co-editor of The Map of My Life: The Story of Emma Humphreys (Astraia Press, 2003) and several book chapters and research papers on sexual violence and the criminal justice system. A founder member of the feminist law reform campaign Justice for Women, Julie believes that doing paid work, however ethically and responsibly, is not enough, and remains a committed political activist. Julie has written investigative features on international prostitution, sex tourism in Jamaica, stalking and harassment, transsexualism, being a lesbian schoolgirl, the beauty industry and serial killers.
Testosterone-fuelled theories
Offering sex offenders the option of medical treatment to lower their libidos falsely suggests they are ill as opposed to bad.
Julie Bindel
The Guardian (U.K.)
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
I am all for rehabilitation of offenders. I have worked with murderers, rapists and child abusers. If they can see why they did what they did, take responsibility, and take steps to ensure they do not offend again, then they deserve a second chance. However, for those who pose a real danger to vulnerable people, they should be given that second chance only when we can be protected from them.
Take sex offenders. Anyone in their right mind knows that child abusers and rapists do not do what they do because they are "ill", or because of hormones (yes, I am against the mad American defence bandied around in the US in the 1970s which sought to explain some murderous women's actions by claiming they had premenstrual tension at the time). But now we have yet another suggested solution to men who abuse. Rather than admitting that they do so because we live in a world that sexualises women and children to within an inch of their lives, and one where men can get away with pretty much any sexual offence, we are hoping that lowering their libido is the answer to the epidemic of sexual offences sweeping the UK and elsewhere.
Persistent and dangerous sex offenders, in particular those who target children, are to be offered a drug treatment known as chemical castration, the government has announced today. Under the plans, persistent child sex offenders who agree to the treatment would be given injections of Leuproreline, which apparently cuts testosterone levels in men.
Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the United States already use the method in an attempt to reduce reoffending, and yet there is not one scrap of credible evidence to suggest it is an effective method to stop men sexually abusing. There are many readers of this site who would assume I am all for castration, being a sadistic man-hater, etc. But I am dead against it. Why?
Although the home secretary, John Reid, insists the treatment will be "voluntary" and will not be linked to early release from prison, I do not believe him - at least I do not accept that the willingness to take a drug which is supposed to curb a sex drive will not be looked at favourably by the courts and parole boards. Suggesting that child rapists and sex abusers can be "cured" with medical "treatment" suggests they are ill as opposed to bad.
Those who abuse children make a choice to do so. They are not driven by an illness, or testosterone (if they are, how do we explain female offenders?) They need to be stopped - end of story. If the only way we can do that is to keep them locked up, so be it. But let us stop pretending there is a medical "cure" for men choosing to rape and abuse. The only cure is to change the attitude of men towards women and children, and for them to choose to treat us as human beings.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jul ... ories.html
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JesusA (imported)
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Re: Uk chemical castration
Next up is David Wilson, a professor of criminology at the University of Central England in Birmingham. I am working on a private email to him to enlighten him about both the frequency of castration among prostate cancer patients and the existence of a sizeable voluntary eunuch population that has nothing to do with sexual predators. Hes in a position to have an impact on the situation. Hes also the more rational of the two.
Members of the Archive are invited to contribute to either or both of the blogs through the web addresses at the bottom of each of these two posts.
What medication can't achieve
Paedophilia is a continuum that covers a range of behaviours - and chemical castration isn't the solution.
David Wilson
The Guardian
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
I spend a great deal of my time as an academic criminologist working with convicted paedophiles both in prison and the community, and I know from my research - and previously from my work as a prison governor - three things.
First, that "traditional" punishments - whatever form they take - do not necessarily stop paedophiles from committing further crimes. I have worked with those paedophiles, for example, who have been "named and shamed", which has merely driven them further underground. This made it more difficult to keep track of their movements and also, therefore, made it harder to control their access, or potential access, to children. So too have I worked with those who have been chemically castrated - metaphorically had "their balls cut off" - but who still harbour desires to do awful things to children, because ultimately what motivates them has much more to do with psychology than physiology, and therefore what they can't achieve physically they can none the less achieve with fingers, bottles and in one particularly harrowing case, sticks.
Second, and as the previous paragraph was deliberately constructed to show, when we use the word "paedophile" or "paedophilia" we usually mean it to describe predatory paedophiles - strangers from outside of the family who abduct children and are then interested in penetrative sex with babies, infants or young children. Yet, the majority of those paedophiles that I have worked with, or am working with, display a range of behaviours - from those who have downloaded a few (and yes I do mean a few) images of child pornography, to a 21-year-old man who had a three-month relationship with a 15-year-old girl whom he believed to be 19. In short, paedophilia is a continuum that covers a range of behaviours - some of which demand greater attention from us than others.
Above all, those that I work with have abused a position of trust or authority that they held over a child - either as a family member, a sports coach, a teacher, youth worker or priest. In short, I rarely see "stranger-danger", as most children are abused by someone that they knew, trusted and, in many cases, liked.
Finally, I know that the most successful ways to stop paedophiles - both the thankfully fewer "predatory" types and these others that I have just described, stem from two sources that rarely get mentioned when politicians or media commentators want to be seen to be doing something about the sexual abuse of young people. Both sources are inspiring and remind me that we can do something positive to stop paedophiles from offending, or reoffending.
The first is a scheme developed in Canada and now gaining a foothold in this country through the Quakers and the Thames Valley Partnership and is called Circles of Support and Accountability. I have described this scheme in Comment is free before and since that last blog further research by Dr Robin Wilson in Toronto has again demonstrated the long-term success of this scheme that seeks community reintegration of warrant-expired paedophiles, and remains the one real source of optimism when dealing with post-conviction paedophiles.
The second source has been children themselves. Despite being condemned culturally and within our policy approach to be "seen and not heard", I have none the less been amazed time after time when I have interviewed children about how they have overcome abuse, or the threat of abuse, by their resourcefulness and creativity. Some children described to me how, in effect, they would communicate with each other about which family member, teacher, or coach to avoid, and others would talk about strategies that they adopted such as not washing to make themselves unattractive, sleeping with the family dog on the bed to alert them to when someone was coming into the room, or in one particularly sad case forming a relationship with the school bully so that he would keep the stepfather at bay.
What does this latter source reveal? It suggests that children who are being abused or threatened with abuse do not look to the adult world for solutions, but rather to themselves. Not for them demands for "naming and shaming", or a "Sarah's Law", or chemical castration, but rather the simple reality that they have to find ways out of the situation that they find themselves in because mum has a new boyfriend, dad gets drunk, or the coach on the swimming team is getting too personal. It suggests that we should be listening far more clearly to what children are saying about their lives, and the threats that exist within their lives, and that we should act upon what they say rather than dismissing it as nonsense. And you know what, you don't need new laws to do that - just a change in attitude about children and childhood.
Members of the Archive are invited to contribute to either or both of the blogs through the web addresses at the bottom of each of these two posts.
What medication can't achieve
Paedophilia is a continuum that covers a range of behaviours - and chemical castration isn't the solution.
David Wilson
The Guardian
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
I spend a great deal of my time as an academic criminologist working with convicted paedophiles both in prison and the community, and I know from my research - and previously from my work as a prison governor - three things.
First, that "traditional" punishments - whatever form they take - do not necessarily stop paedophiles from committing further crimes. I have worked with those paedophiles, for example, who have been "named and shamed", which has merely driven them further underground. This made it more difficult to keep track of their movements and also, therefore, made it harder to control their access, or potential access, to children. So too have I worked with those who have been chemically castrated - metaphorically had "their balls cut off" - but who still harbour desires to do awful things to children, because ultimately what motivates them has much more to do with psychology than physiology, and therefore what they can't achieve physically they can none the less achieve with fingers, bottles and in one particularly harrowing case, sticks.
Second, and as the previous paragraph was deliberately constructed to show, when we use the word "paedophile" or "paedophilia" we usually mean it to describe predatory paedophiles - strangers from outside of the family who abduct children and are then interested in penetrative sex with babies, infants or young children. Yet, the majority of those paedophiles that I have worked with, or am working with, display a range of behaviours - from those who have downloaded a few (and yes I do mean a few) images of child pornography, to a 21-year-old man who had a three-month relationship with a 15-year-old girl whom he believed to be 19. In short, paedophilia is a continuum that covers a range of behaviours - some of which demand greater attention from us than others.
Above all, those that I work with have abused a position of trust or authority that they held over a child - either as a family member, a sports coach, a teacher, youth worker or priest. In short, I rarely see "stranger-danger", as most children are abused by someone that they knew, trusted and, in many cases, liked.
Finally, I know that the most successful ways to stop paedophiles - both the thankfully fewer "predatory" types and these others that I have just described, stem from two sources that rarely get mentioned when politicians or media commentators want to be seen to be doing something about the sexual abuse of young people. Both sources are inspiring and remind me that we can do something positive to stop paedophiles from offending, or reoffending.
The first is a scheme developed in Canada and now gaining a foothold in this country through the Quakers and the Thames Valley Partnership and is called Circles of Support and Accountability. I have described this scheme in Comment is free before and since that last blog further research by Dr Robin Wilson in Toronto has again demonstrated the long-term success of this scheme that seeks community reintegration of warrant-expired paedophiles, and remains the one real source of optimism when dealing with post-conviction paedophiles.
The second source has been children themselves. Despite being condemned culturally and within our policy approach to be "seen and not heard", I have none the less been amazed time after time when I have interviewed children about how they have overcome abuse, or the threat of abuse, by their resourcefulness and creativity. Some children described to me how, in effect, they would communicate with each other about which family member, teacher, or coach to avoid, and others would talk about strategies that they adopted such as not washing to make themselves unattractive, sleeping with the family dog on the bed to alert them to when someone was coming into the room, or in one particularly sad case forming a relationship with the school bully so that he would keep the stepfather at bay.
What does this latter source reveal? It suggests that children who are being abused or threatened with abuse do not look to the adult world for solutions, but rather to themselves. Not for them demands for "naming and shaming", or a "Sarah's Law", or chemical castration, but rather the simple reality that they have to find ways out of the situation that they find themselves in because mum has a new boyfriend, dad gets drunk, or the coach on the swimming team is getting too personal. It suggests that we should be listening far more clearly to what children are saying about their lives, and the threats that exist within their lives, and that we should act upon what they say rather than dismissing it as nonsense. And you know what, you don't need new laws to do that - just a change in attitude about children and childhood.
david_wilson/2007/06/what_medication_cant_achieve.html
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gandalf (imported)
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Re: Uk chemical castration
Excellent reading. When I read the first post with the title, the thought crossed my mind about how many who really WANT castration (actual or chemical) would pose as pedophiles in order to get the dr. to let them get what they want.
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Kangan (imported)
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Re: Uk chemical castration
gandalf (imported) wrote: Fri Jun 15, 2007 6:14 am Excellent reading. When I read the first post with the title, the thought crossed my mind about how many who really WANT castration (actual or chemical) would pose as pedophiles in order to get the dr. to let them get what they want.
Pose as a paedophile? Not likely - too many adverse social consequences. Now if you really were a repentant paedophile who wanted a cure - that would be wonderful.
As was pointed out, there are many different types of sexual predators. Castration does appear to help those with a sexual addiction (as bourn out by certain personal profiles and various postings on EA).
Non-violent persons who run afoul of the "age of consent" law should not be candidates for castration unless the difference in age of the prepetrator and the victim exceeds 5 years or so. I.e., a male of 19 who has consensual sex with a 15-year old should not be classed as a dangerous sexual predator unless there were other extenuating circumstances. However, an adult who has sex with clildren under the age of puberty does require incarceration and/or castration.
However, if the paedophile is one who commits violent crimes such as rape, castration will not help. These folks need to be locked up.
Sex crime laws vary all over the map from one extreme to another. What is illegal in one jurisdiction is licit in another. I know of one case where the victim sucessfully brought charges in another jurisdiciton after charges were dropped in the original jurisdiction. (Victim lived in one jurisdiction and the perpetrator lived in another.) The biggest problem is that politicians tend to go for simplistic solutions (i.e. lock 'em up no matter what) and are supported in this by the majority of the general public (sheep).
Some sex crimes are true crime. Others are just a mental abberation gone awry and are an illness. How to tell the difference is the problem. Both require different solutions.
However, one wonders if castration would reduce no-sexual criminal acts of violence committed by young males. It would certainly prevent them from mating and producing offspring who carry the "violence" gene. Ah - Eugenics rears it's ugly head... but that is another story....