Essay draft

Ketevan Chochishvili

Would you legalize chemical castration? This topic of sexual crimes is very controversial and almost always divides the crowd. The problem of sexual violence has been an ongoing issue for years, and we seem to still be struggling with the solution while the problem remains. The number of victims each year indicates that 60,000 children were victims of sexual abuse, and 433,648 people out of the general public were sexually assaulted or raped (https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence). Some argue that chemical castration is the solution to this issue due to the statistics that indicate that males are most often the ones who commit these crimes. While others disagree and see this reform as inhumane. I believe that chemical castration is a good way to prevent sex crimes. It is a way to reduce levels of testosterone in a man’s body and, in some cases, causes the area preventing sexual arousal to shrink.

Chemical castration is the best solution of all the alternatives out there. Even if we make all sex crimes punishable by life without parole, we will still be facing the problem of other inmates getting assaulted. It is already estimated that 80,600 inmates are sexually assaulted every year. A lot of the people committing these crimes get out of jail, and some do not even have to go there as most of the pedophiles are admitted to mental hospitals and let go after the treatment. The statistics show that sexual recidivism rates range from 5 percent after three years to 24 percent after 15 years. (https://smart.ojp.gov/somapi/chapter-5-adult-sex-offender-recidivism). If we discuss pedophilia in particular, countless psychologists have made their opinion public that pedophilia cannot be cured but only suppressed. The Canadian psychologist Michael Seto also expressed his opinion on this topic in the article “a recent paper.”

Some might argue that pedophilia can be cured. Paul Fedoroff of the University of Ottawa believed it was possible to cure pedophilia and even conducted studies to prove it. He praised the article, “Can people with pedophilia change? Yes, they can!”. In the study, he published, “That study, on which Fedoroff was an author, involved looking at 43 men who underwent genital arousal testing on two different occasions. During testing, participants listened to spoken erotic scenarios depicting children or adults while erectile changes were recorded with a penile plethysmograph, which is a ring that goes around the penis and measures changes in blood flow. All of the men showed signs of pedophilic arousal while they were getting tested. However, about half of these men (49 percent) showed a change in their arousal pattern upon future testing: their arousal to children went down while their arousal to adults went up. (https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbzj5q/pedophiles can’t be cured, and it’s dangerous to suggest they can.) We can’t say why, however, because this wasn’t a treatment study. Participants were selected solely based on having taken the test twice, regardless of whether they underwent treatment. He believes that this study indicates that pedophilia is not “hard-wired” and can be changed. Some might also argue that it is also inhumane to perform chemical castration on people, and even dangerous in the case of a wrongful conviction. They focus more on human morals and the idea of compassion.

I disagree with these arguments. Results show that the effects of chemical castration can be reversed after stopping the intake of the medicine (https://www.healthline.com/health/chemically-castrating#side-effects). I believe it is humane to extend this reform even to criminals because they will not have to suppress their urges anymore. I believe that this reform will even diminish the possibility of these incidents happening in the first place. Many people who go back to this reform and see it as inhuman are men, as most sex criminals are also men. This reform seems to cause compassion in many men, and it will cause fear in some who are thinking of doing something as horrible as rape. As for the research by Paul Fedoroff, many psychologists and researchers came out to underline the fact that the testing and the results were not correct. The article Pedophiles can’t be cured, and it is dangerous to suggest otherwise” talks about this topic, stating that “Studies have shown that non-pedophilic men can intentionally suppress erections when viewing erotic images simply by thinking about disgusting things, such as a filthy bathroom. Could it be that the pedophilic men who were showing changes in their arousal patterns were just trying to control their genital responses, meaning that they might not be showing the true change in their attractions? Furthermore, even some pedophiles themselves got offended by the research and called it “false hope (https://aboutpedophilia.com/2018/08/29/can-pedophilia-be-changed-the-scientific-community-says/).

In the end, chemical prosecution is the best way to deal with sex crimes of all types. It removes the urges from the person and prevents others from committing the crime in the first place. This reform will make sure the general public and children stay safe. As mentioned above These crimes occur on a daily basis to everyone everywhere, and there is no evidence that any metal treatment or prison can adequately correct these violent urges.If we trust the therapy and the person’s ability to suppress their urges, it means that that person is the one choosing if they will act on their urges or not. If you are still thinking about how inhumane it seems to you, ask yourself, “Do you want your and your children’s safety to be someone else’s choice or yours?