Lousiana OK's Rapist CastrationFollow

So what is the point, if they're unlikely to ever get out? Wouldn't it be better to say that a second time offender for serious sexual offences gets life without parole?

Because I don't get the point of castrating people that are already gonna spend the rest of their life in jail.

Or are you guys arguing that we use castration as an alternative to prison? And then what happens when castration doesn't work? When the guy who's been castrated isn't "cured" and rapes someone else? Only then do we stick him in jail for ever?

Think about it. Everything is about cost/effectiveness. These guys are proposing a castration programme, from the second offence, without reducing the prison term. What is the point?

The point is, when they get out in 5-10 years for good behaviour they will be less likely to rape Jenny the 7 year old princess.

The whole "they might be innocent" argument is flawed. The logical conclusion to that line of reasoning is nobody can be convicted of anything without 100% empiracally verifiable proof. After all, if compassion is your goal, prison for any amount of time is hardly, well, compassionate. You still have lost whatever amount of time you were incarcerated and can never get that back, not to mention all the variious indignities and duresses of actual prison life and what all that entails.

That argument is just weak in every sense of the word.

Totem

Castrating rapists will lower the number or rapes. It will not get rid of them all, it will not cut the number in half, but it will prevent some of them.

Of course it won't. What it will do, is increase the number of victims who are murdered after being raped. Nexa's absolutely right, this is just revenge fantasy, pure and simple. Nothing more. It stems from an 18th century belief that rapists are crazed "sex maniacs" which no one has taken seriously in a century.

Making the punishment for any crime as severe or more severe than the punishment for murder simply leads to more dead victims. Why leave someone around to testify if the punishment for killing them is *less* severe?

The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people released from prison after serving time for rape never offend again. The tiny percentage who do should be removed from society, not used as PR tools for fear mongering politicians.

Clearly this is just a PR game, anyway. The legislature knows full well this will be overturned by the courts long before anyone is involuntarily castrated. We don't move very far as a society very quickly, but we *have* moved past the "if you steal a loaf of bread we cut your hands off" stage.

"Making the punishment for any crime as severe or more severe than the punishment for murder "

This is a whole other topic.

No. The logical conclusion is that nobody can be subject to irredeemable punishment for anything without 100% empiracally verifiable proof.

Silly ToUtem

Ya know... they don't castrate you and then send you home.

Talk about some flawed logic.

HAHAHA, yeah I probably should have made 2 sentences out of that and clarified.

Castration doesn't involve removing the ***** or enlarging your prostate, so no it wouldn't. It wrecks your nuts for the most part, removing sexual urges and the ability to get an erection, ejaculate or enjoy sex in general.

Punishments like the death penalty, castration or required daily chemical hormone suppressants should require a higher standard of proof than beyond a reasonable doubt.

It all depends on what you consider reversable. Yes, some forms of castration are permanent. But losing time out of your life spending it in prison for something you didn't do is also permanent. What you've done is placed an artificial value to something which may not true for everyone it might be applied to. Some may very well consider losing a sizable portion of their lives behind bars far worse than chemical castration for instance.

My point is, if you try to use the logic that one kind of punishment-- and let's not lose sight that that is precisely what prison and castration and execution is --is worse than others, you've simply applied your sense of scale to whatever crime we are talking about. One man's solitary confinement is isolated bliss from the depraved animals in general population where he can read and live quietly and for another it is a horrible sentence of lonliness and lack of socialization.

So to say chemical castration is beyond what the framers of the Constitution meant when they said cruel and unusual does not apply here. In fact, I'd argue that beyond treatment designed to inflict permanent pain and agony, there is no punishment presently used in the United States that constitutes cruel and unusual.

Totem

"The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people released from prison after serving time for rape never offend again." -- Smash

This too is immaterial to the discussion. What is not directly at issue is if they will rape again, but what is a suitable punishment for the crime. Castration is a small price to pay in restitution compared to a lifetime of emotional and psychological damage from rape. That they couldn't rape again after castration is just bonus points.

Totem