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Indonesia's president has approved tough new punishments for child sex offenders, including a maximum penalty of death and chemical castration, after the brutal gang-rape and murder of a schoolgirl.

Convicted paedophiles could also be forced to wear electronic monitoring devices following their release from jail under new rules introduced in an emergency decree.

"This regulation is intended to overcome the crisis caused by sexual violence against children," President Joko Widodo said late Wednesday at the presidential palace in Jakarta.

"Sexual crimes against children are extraordinary crimes, because they threaten the lives of children."

The presidential decree brings the new punishments into immediate effect, although parliament could later overturn it.

Widodo was spurred into action after the murder and gang-rape in April of a 14-year-old girl, who was set upon by a gang of drunken men and boys as she walked home from school on the western island of Sumatra.

Her battered body was found three days later in woods, tied up and naked. Seven teenagers, aged 16 and 17, were jailed earlier this month over the assault.

The attack sparked a national debate on sexual violence, led to calls for harsher punishments for child sex offenders and prompted protests in the capital Jakarta.

The case has drawn comparisons with the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in Delhi in 2012, which sparked mass protests and led to an overhaul of India's rape laws.
Death row in Indonesia: the prisoners who face the firing squad
Indonesia is likely to draw fire for expanding its use of the death penalty. Jakarta has faced criticism for use its use of capital punishment against drug traffickers, and sparked international outrage last year when it put seven foreign drug convicts to death by firing squad.

Under previous laws, the maximum sentence for rape - including of a minor - was 14 years in jail.

By introducing chemical castration, Indonesia joins a small group who use the punishment worldwide, including Poland and some states in the US. In 2011, South Korea became the first Asian country to legalise the punishment.

Widodo did not give further details about tagging suspects with monitoring devices. Local media previously reported that a microchip could be implanted in child sex offenders' legs on their release from jail.
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Indonesia introduces death penalty and chemical castration for paedophiles

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Indonesia's president has approved tough new punishments for child sex offenders, including a maximum penalty of death and chemical castration, after the brutal gang-rape and murder of a schoolgirl. Convicted paedophiles could also be forced to wear electronic monitoring devices following their release from jail under new rules introduced in an emergency decree.

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Ukraine's parliament has passed new laws introducing obligatory chemical castration for sex offenders, posing a significant test for the libertarian credentials of President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The new measures, which would force anti-androgen injections on men convicted of serious sex offences with minors, would make Ukrainian practice among the harshest in the world.

Coming on the back of several widely-publicised stories of child abuse, the change is likely to prove extremely popular with voters. But legal experts and medical professionals have roundly criticised the bill, and have appealed to Mr Zelenksy to intervene with a presidential veto.

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Hurriedly introduced in the Supreme Rada's final session on Thursday, the legislation seems to have an eye on next Sunday's general elections.

Its authors, led by the nationalist populist Oleh Lyashko, are currently flagging in the polls, projected not to break the five per cent barrier required to stay in parliament.

In explanatory notes to the bill, Mr Lyashko said that he had introduced the measures in the absence of the death penalty. "It is unlikely that a rapist will now return to what he was doing," he wrote.

The issue of child abuse has become a central issue in Ukraine's election campaign following the abduction, sexual molestation and murder of a young girl in southern Ukraine.

Eleven-year-old Dariya Lukyanenko was found in a cesspool on 19 June, six days after leaving home for a dance class. A 22-year-old family friend later admitted to her murder.

The horrific story focussed attention on a bill already being considered in parliament. That proposal (number 6607) had been introduced in response to concerns that sexual crimes may be more widespread than reported. It suggested increased sentences, a closed paedophile register, and voluntary castration. It was backed by a broad coalition of MPs, police leaders, lawyers, prosecutors and psychologists.

Remarkably, however, at the last minute, a parliamentary sub-committee adopted Mr Lyashko's alternative proposal. Two pages long, the text of bill 6449 was much shorter and had not undergone any expert evaluation. But its contents were much more radical, introducing compulsory castration; a public offenders register; and much harsher sentences.

Remarkably, it passed in two readings, with the support of 247 deputies - 21 more than was needed for it to pass.

The Independent spoke to several MPs who voted. Most admitted they were not fully aware of the details of what they voting for.

Anna Maliar, a criminologist who co-wrote the original bill that proposed only voluntary castration, told The Independent that Mr Lyashko had "deceived" MPs with his last-minute intervention.

"The MPs were not warned about the dangers of the law," she said. "Chemical castration should never be used as punishment. When it is, it is by definition torture. The vast majority of the people convicted of sexual crimes with minors are perfectly healthy people. Forcibly castrating them is not the civilised thing to do."

Mustafa Nayyem, a reformist MP who sponsored the original bill described the Lyashko amendment as "a legislative raid".

"In the end, stupidity won," he said.

Vyacheslav Abroskin, the head of Ukraine's national police who had pushed for harsher punishments for sex offenders, also criticised the Lyashko legislation.

"Sometimes politics get in the way of adopting well-worked laws, on time, and in accordance with the Constitution," he said. "We had hoped for amendment 6607 to be passed in full, but we will [continue] to work for it for the sake of our children."

The new law needs to be signed by the parliamentary speaker and president before reaching the statute book.

The Independent understands that opponents of the bill are lobbying Mr Zelensky's representatives, and urging them not to endorse the bill. But blocking an obviously popular measure may prove difficult. When contacted, Mr Zelensky's spokesperson refused to comment on his intentions.

Oleksii Ryabchun, one of the MPs who voted for the bill, said that a compromise may be found in Mr Zelensky returning a modified bill to parliament early in its next sitting.

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Ukrainian parliament approves measures to forcibly castrate paedophiles

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Ukraine's parliament has passed new laws introducing obligatory chemical castration for sex offenders, posing a significant test for the libertarian credentials of President Volodymyr Zelensky. The new measures, which would force anti-androgen injections on men convicted of serious sex offences with minors, would make Ukrainian practice among the harshest in the world.

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The Former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan is set to chemically castrate around 2,000 convicted pedophiles amid a surge in child rapes across the landlocked country.

A Turkestan sex offender, whose identity is unknown, will be the first to receive the injection under the supervision of Kazakhstan's health ministry, reported Yahoo News. The man was found guilty of sexually attacking a child in April, 2016.

The country's president Nursultan Nazarbayev has allocated $37,000 (RM111,735) to fund around 2,000 castrations. "At the moment there has been one request for chemical castration in accordance with a court ruling," Lyazat Aktayeva, the Kazakhstan's deputy health minister, said. "Funds have been allocated for more than 2000 injections."

Earlier this year, the country passed a new law allowing for chemical castrations. At the time, Senator Byranym Aitimova revealed that the "temporary" castration will come in the form of a "one-time injection." The treatment is intended to prevent an offender from committing sexual violence.

Most chemical castrations do not last a lifetime and are considered to be reversible. The drug, Cyproterone, is an steroidal anti-androgen that was originally created for cancer patients.

When administered through injection, it will dramatically reduce a person's sex drive and libido but effects to dull sexual urges could wear off in time, reported News.com.au. Critics have warned that the procedure is not guaranteed to prevent repeated sexual assaults.

The castrations in Kazakhstan will be executed at regional psychoneurological clinics across the country.

Kazakhstan has reportedly experienced a dramatic rise in sexual crimes committed against children over the past few years. Between 2010 and 2014, underage rapes doubled to around 1000 per year.

Chemical castrations have been used in several countries around the world - including Australia, South Korea, Russia and Poland - to curb sexual offenders. Usually they are granted in exchange for lighter prison sentences.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo passed a controversial law allowing the practice to be performed on convicted pedophiles in 2016, following a high-profiled case where a 14-year-old girl was brutally gang raped and murdered.

Before the law was passed, two opposition parties objected to the notion during intensive debates in parliament.

Human rights groups have also denounced the procedure, claiming that it will not result in the intended effect.

"Other countries that have chemical castration have not seen a reduction in sexual crime against children. Also it's a very expensive procedure and what we should be spending and investing our money in is services to support and help the victims," Azriana, the head of the National Commission for Women, said.

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2,000 pedophiles and sex offenders set to be chemically castrated

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The Former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan is set to chemically castrate around 2,000 convicted pedophiles amid a surge in child rapes across the landlocked country. A Turkestan sex offender, whose identity is unknown, will be the first to receive the injection under the supervision of Kazakhstan's health ministry, reported Yahoo News.

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Why are the worst prisoners in the system given the tag 'vulnerable' prisoners? Calling them 'vulnerable' is insensitive to their victims and inappropriate. Their victims are the vulnerable ones. I think the staff and governors who work with these prisoners like the term VP because it sugar-coats the fact that they are working with sex-offenders. They should be called 'segregated' prisoners, although I can think of a few other names to call them.

Why should these prisoners be treated as victims? I understand that if they come on normal location they will be attacked by other prisoners, and some may say that is a consequence of their actions, they never seem to have been 'vulnerable' when carrying out their crimes. Maybe the system should have a rethink about how they label prisoners?
Editorial note VP stands for vulnerable prisoner not vulnerable person. VP units provide a safer environment for anyone who is considered vulnerable or considers themselves vulnerable in prison regardless of their offence.

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Why are the worst prisoners in the system given the tag 'vulnerable' prisoners? Calling them 'vulnerable' is insensitive to their victims and inappropriate. Their victims are the vulnerable ones. I think the staff and governors who work with these prisoners like the term VP because it sugar-coats the fact that they are working with sex-offenders.

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Last week, a man dubbed Britain's "worst" paedophile was found dead in his prison cell.

Richard Huckle - who was serving 22 life sentences for molesting up to 200 children - had been strangled and stabbed in the vulnerable prisoner unit at HMP Full Sutton. The main suspect is another sex offender, Paul Fitzgerald, who once wrote in his diary, "I love raping women."

The vulnerable prisoner unit (VPU) - known as the "numbers" or "beast wing" by prisoners - houses inmates who would be at risk of attack if kept in the mainstream prison population. The crimes committed by Huckle and Fitzgerald are indicative of the type of men housed on these units: the lowest of the low, in the prison hierarchy. However, the circumstances surrounding Huckle's death illustrate another micro-hierarchy, in which certain sex crimes are looked down upon by other sex offenders.

Malcolm Leach, a 70-year-old from Oldham, spent 14 months on a VPU at Strangeways after being convicted of sexually assaulting a young girl - a conviction that was eventually quashed, with Leach acquitted. He says the fact he always knew he'd eventually be found innocent made his time inside much easier, and that - as the majority of people on the wing were imprisoned for heinous sex offences - he had no choice but to look past his fellow inmates' crimes and attempt to get on with them.

"They might be wrong 'uns, but when you're all in the same boat you've got to get on with people," he says. "I wouldn't say you exactly make friends with people, but you do make some acquaintances."

Leach confirms that a hierarchy does indeed exist among the offenders on these units, with paedophiles occupying the bottom rung of the ladder. "Somebody who'd abused children was regarded as being lower," he explains. "I wouldn't say they were punished because of it, but they were regarded as a lower class of criminal. Someone who'd raped a woman, it's another very bad crime, but that wasn't seen as being as bad as raping a child."

This is in line with the findings of previous research into inmates on VPUs. A study conducted last year by the Prison and Probation Service found that not only do rapists view themselves as a step up from paedophiles, but that paedophiles also stratify themselves according to the age of the victim, with those who target younger victims seen as worse. Those who have assaulted a child as opposed to being caught in possession of child pornography fall lower down in the pecking order. In seems that in spite of the severity of their crimes, sex offenders still find ways of minimising them by stigmatising others they perceive as being more depraved.

Some sex offenders on the VPU go a step further and believe they shouldn't be lower down in the prison hierarchy than non-sexual offenders, arguing that they should be viewed as equal, if not superior, to them.

According to Alice Ievins of the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology, who has previously studied sex offenders behind bars, this can be for a number of reasons. Some offenders believe it's unfair to make a moral distinction between sexual and non-sexual offences, as both cause harm to their victims. Others turn their noses up at the occupants of the mainstream prison population for believing themselves to be part of a criminal subculture. "They question the idea that there's a sort of 'honour among thieves' among mainstream prisoners, and are quite critical of people who they deem to be 'criminals'," Ievins tells me.

Neil Samworth, a former prison guard, says that during his time working on vulnerable prisoner units, drugs and illicit mobile phones were discovered, indicating prisoners there still dabble in the traditional criminal activities they sometimes denigrated the cons on other wings for engaging in. He also says some of the VPU residents seek kudos from their peers for their crimes in the same way regular common or garden criminals do. "The more disgusting and heinous the crime, the more they strut around the place," he says. "Some of the older prolific paedophiles are sort of worshipped by other people as well."

Max*, who was on a VPU for his own protection after discovering his co-defendants had placed a hit on him, tells me the wings aren't actually particularly safe, and don't always offer the protection they claim to provide. "I heard of young lads being raped," he tells me. "I heard of people being slashed up. I've seen drugs and phones and all sorts."

Max served a long sentence for GBH, spending the entirety of it on the VPU. He questions whether it's wise to house young guys with older sex offenders, and lists people he knew who were sexually assaulted by their cellmates. The Prison and Probation Service's study of VPUs identified predation as a drawback of concentrating large numbers of sex offenders on these units. The author noted that this behaviour is also sometimes carried out by non-sexual offenders on VPUs, and that it's used as a means of asserting power over weaker prisoners.

All things considered, prisoners like Max, who are serving time for non-sexual offences but are vulnerable to being attacked in mainstream locations, are faced with a hard choice: either get beaten up on the main wing or risk sexual assault on the VPU.

Britain's prisons are currently crammed with a record number of sex offenders, with 18 percent of inmates having committed a sex crime and one in eight being paedophiles. The prison service is in a difficult situation: on one hand, it has a duty to protect the safety of sex offenders, but on the other, filling VPUs with them risks creating an environment in which their warped perspectives are the norm.
@nickchesterv

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Inside the 'Beast Wing' - Life On Britain's Vulnerable Prisoner Units

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Last week, a man dubbed Britain's "worst" paedophile was found dead in his prison cell. Richard Huckle - who was serving 22 life sentences for molesting up to 200 children - had been strangled and stabbed in the vulnerable prisoner unit at HMP Full Sutton.

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Even prisons are subject to Norway's requirement that every building receiving public money have some sort of public art. Here, a mural by the pseudonymous graffiti artist Dolk in an exercise yard at Halden Fengsel. Credit... Knut Egil Wang for The New York Times

Feature

The goal of the Norwegian penal system is to get inmates out of it.

Even prisons are subject to Norway's requirement that every building receiving public money have some sort of public art. Here, a mural by the pseudonymous graffiti artist Dolk in an exercise yard at Halden Fengsel. Credit... Knut Egil Wang for The New York Times

Like everything else in Norway, the two-hour drive southeast from Oslo seemed impossibly civilized. The highways were perfectly maintained and painted, the signs clear and informative and the speed-monitoring cameras primly intolerant. My destination was the town of Halden, which is on the border with Sweden, straddling a narrow fjord guarded by a 17th-century fortress. I drove down winding roads flanked in midsummer by rich green fields of young barley and dense yellow carpets of rapeseed plants in full flower. Cows clustered in wood-fenced pastures next to neat farmsteads in shades of rust and ocher. On the outskirts of town, across from a road parting dark pine forest, the turnoff to Norway's newest prison was marked by a modest sign that read, simply, HALDEN FENGSEL. There were no signs warning against picking up hitchhikers, no visible fences. Only the 25-foot-tall floodlights rising along the edges hinted that something other than grazing cows lay ahead.

Smooth, featureless concrete rose on the horizon like the wall of a dam as I approached; nearly four times as tall as a man, it snaked along the crests of the hills, its top curled toward me as if under pressure. This was the outer wall of Halden Fengsel, which is often called the world's most humane maximum-security prison. I walked up the quiet driveway to the entrance and presented myself to a camera at the main door. There were no coils of razor wire in sight, no lethal electric fences, no towers manned by snipers - nothing violent, threatening or dangerous. And yet no prisoner has ever tried to escape. I rang the intercom, the lock disengaged with a click and I stepped inside.

To anyone familiar with the American correctional system, Halden seems alien. Its modern, cheerful and well-appointed facilities, the relative freedom of movement it offers, its quiet and peaceful atmosphere - these qualities are so out of sync with the forms of imprisonment found in the United States that you could be forgiven for doubting whether Halden is a prison at all. It is, of course, but it is also something more: the physical expression of an entire national philosophy about the relative merits of punishment and forgiveness.

The treatment of inmates at Halden is wholly focused on helping to prepare them for a life after they get out. Not only is there no death penalty in Norway; there are no life sentences. The maximum sentence for most crimes is 21 years - even for Anders Behring Breivik, who is responsible for probably the deadliest recorded rampage in the world, in which he killed 77 people and injured hundreds more in 2011 by detonating a bomb at a government building in Oslo and then opening fire at a nearby summer camp. Because Breivik was sentenced to "preventive detention," however, his term can be extended indefinitely for five years at a time, if he is deemed a continuing threat to society by the court. "Better out than in" is an unofficial motto of the Norwegian Correctional Service, which makes a reintegration guarantee to all released inmates. It works with other government agencies to secure a home, a job and access to a supportive social network for each inmate before release; Norway's social safety net also provides health care, education and a pension to all citizens. With one of the highest per capita gross domestic products of any country in the world, thanks to the profits from oil production in the North Sea, Norway is in a good position to provide all of this, and spending on the Halden prison runs to more than $93,000 per inmate per year, compared with just $31,000 for prisoners in the United States, according to the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization.

That might sound expensive. But if the United States incarcerated its citizens at the same low rate as the Norwegians do (75 per 100,000 residents, versus roughly 700), it could spend that much per inmate and still save more than $45 billion a year. At a time when the American correctional system is under scrutiny - over the harshness of its sentences, its overreliance on solitary confinement, its racial disparities - citizens might ask themselves what all that money is getting them, besides 2.2 million incarcerated people and the hardships that fall on the families they leave behind. The extravagant brutality of the American approach to prisons is not working, and so it might just be worth looking for lessons at the opposite extreme, here in a sea of blabaerskog, or blueberry forest.

"This punishment, taking away their freedom - the sign of that is the wall, of course," Gudrun Molden, one of the Halden prison's architects, said on a drizzly morning a few days after I arrived. As we stood on a ridge, along with Jan Stromnes, the assistant warden, it was silent but for the chirping of birds and insects and a hoarse fluttering of birch leaves disturbed by the breeze. The prison is secluded from the surrounding farmland by the blueberry woods, which are the native forest of southeastern Norway: blue-black spruce, slender Scotch pine with red-tinged trunks and silver-skinned birches over a dense understory of blueberry bushes, ferns and mosses in deep shade. It is an ecosystem that evokes deep nostalgia in Norway, where picking wild berries is a near-universal summer pastime for families, and where the right to do so on uncultivated land is protected by law.

Norway banned capital punishment for civilians in 1902, and life sentences were abolished in 1981. But Norwegian prisons operated much like their American counterparts until 1998. That was the year Norway's Ministry of Justice reassessed the Correctional Service's goals and methods, putting the explicit focus on rehabilitating prisoners through education, job training and therapy. A second wave of change in 2007 made a priority of reintegration, with a special emphasis on helping inmates find housing and work with a steady income before they are even released. Halden was the first prison built after this overhaul, and so rehabilitation became the underpinning of its design process. Every aspect of the facility was designed to ease psychological pressures, mitigate conflict and minimize interpersonal friction. Hence the blueberry forest.

"Nature is a rehabilitation thing now," Molden said. Researchers are working to quantify the benefits of sunlight and fresh air in treating depression. But Molden viewed nature's importance for Norwegian inmates as far more personal. "We don't think of it as a rehabilitation," she said. "We think of it as a basic element in our growing up." She gestured to the knoll we stood on and the 12 acres of blabaerskog preserved on the prison grounds, echoing the canopy visible on the far side. Even elsewhere in Europe, most high-security prison plots are scraped completely flat and denuded of vegetation as security measures. "A lot of the staff when we started out came from other prisons in Norway," Stromnes said. "They were a little bit astonished by the trees and the number of them. Shouldn't they be taken away? And what if they climb up, the inmates? As we said, Well, if they climb up, then they can sit there until they get tired, and then they will come down." He laughed. "Never has anyone tried to hide inside. But if they should run in there, they won't get very far - they're still inside."

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A card game between inmates. Credit... Knut Egil Wang for The New York Times

"Inside" meant inside the wall. The prison's defining feature, the wall is visible everywhere the inmates go, functioning as an inescapable reminder of their imprisonment. Because the prison buildings were purposely built to a human scale, with none more than two stories in height and all modest in breadth, the wall becomes an outsize presence; it looms everywhere, framed by the cell windows, shadowing the exercise yards, its pale horizontal spread emphasized by the dark vertical lines of the trees. The two primary responsibilities of the Correctional Service - detention and rehabilitation - are in perpetual tension with each other, and the architects felt that single wall could represent both. "We trusted the wall," Molden said, to serve as a symbol and an instrument of punishment.

When Molden and her collaborators visited the site in 2002, in preparing for the international competition to design the prison, they spent every minute they were allowed walking around it, trying to absorb the genius loci, the spirit of the place. They felt they should use as much of the site as possible, requiring inmates to walk outside to their daily commitments of school or work or therapy, over uneven ground, up and down hills, traveling to and from home, as they would in the world outside. They wound up arranging the prison's living quarters in a ring, which we could now see sloping down the hill on either side of us. In the choice of materials, the architects were inspired by the sober palette of the trees, mosses and bedrock all around; the primary building element is kiln-fired brick, blackened with some of the original red showing through. The architects used silvery galvanized-steel panels as a "hard" material to represent detention, and untreated larch wood, a low-maintenance species that weathers from taupe to soft gray, as a "soft" material associated with rehabilitation and growth.

The Correctional Service emphasizes what it calls "dynamic security," a philosophy that sees interpersonal relationships between the staff and the inmates as the primary factor in maintaining safety within the prison. They contrast this with the approach dominant in high-security prisons elsewhere in the world, which they call "static security." Static security relies on an environment designed to prevent an inmate with bad intentions from carrying them out. Inmates at those prisons are watched at a remove through cameras, contained by remote-controlled doors, prevented from vandalism or weapon-making by tamper-proof furniture, encumbered by shackles or officer escorts when moved. Corrections officers there are trained to control prisoners with as little interaction as possible, minimizing the risk of altercation.

Dynamic security focuses on preventing bad intentions from developing in the first place. Halden's officers are put in close quarters with the inmates as often as possible; the architects were instructed to make the guard stations tiny and cramped, to encourage officers to spend time in common rooms with the inmates instead. The guards socialize with the inmates every day, in casual conversation, often over tea or coffee or meals. Inmates can be monitored via surveillance cameras on the prison grounds, but they often move unaccompanied by guards, requiring a modest level of trust, which the administrators believe is crucial to their progress. Nor are there surveillance cameras in the classrooms or most of the workshops, or in the common rooms, the cell hallways or the cells themselves. The inmates have the opportunity to act out, but somehow they choose not to. In five years, the isolation cell furnished with a limb-restraining bed has never been used.

It is tempting to chalk up all this reasonableness to something peculiar in Norwegian socialization, some sort of civility driven core-deep into the inmates since birth, or perhaps attribute it to their racial and ethnic homogeneity as a group. But in actuality, only around three-fifths of the inmates are legal Norwegian citizens. The rest have come from more than 30 other countries (mostly in Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East) and speak little or no Norwegian; English is the lingua franca, a necessity for the officers to communicate with foreign prisoners.

Of the 251 inmates, nearly half are imprisoned for violent crimes like murder, assault or rape; a third are in for smuggling or selling drugs. Nevertheless, violent incidents and even threats are rare, and nearly all take place in Unit A. It is the prison's most restrictive unit, housing inmates who require close psychiatric or medical supervision or who committed crimes that would make them unpopular in Units B and C, the prison's more open "living" cell blocks, where the larger population of inmates mixes during the day for work, schooling and therapy programs.

I met some of the prisoners of Unit A one afternoon in the common room of an eight-man cell block. I was asked to respect the inmates' preferences for anonymity or naming, and for their choices in discussing their cases with me. The Norwegian news media does not often identify suspects or convicts by name, so confirming the details of their stories was not always possible. I sat on an orange vinyl couch next to a wooden shelving unit with a few haphazard piles of board games and magazines and legal books. On the other side of the room, near a window overlooking the unit's gravel yard, a couple of inmates were absorbed in a card game with a guard.

An inmate named Omar passed me a freshly pressed heart-shaped waffle over my shoulder on a paper plate, interrupting an intense monologue directed at me in excellent English by Chris Giske, a large man with a thick goatee and a shaved head who was wearing a heavy gold chain over a T-shirt that strained around his barrel-shaped torso.

"You have heard about the case? Sigrid?" Giske asked me. "It's one of the biggest cases in Norway."

In 2012, a 16-year-old girl named Sigrid Schjetne vanished while walking home one night, and her disappearance gripped the country. Her body was found a month later, and Giske's conviction in the case made him one of the most reviled killers in Norwegian history.

He explained to me that he asked to transfer out of Unit A, but that officials declined to move him. "They don't want me in prison," he said. "They want me in the psychiatric thing. I don't know why."

He was denied the transfer, I was later told, partly because of a desire not to outrage the other inmates, and partly because of significant concern over his mental health - and his history of unprovoked extreme violence against young women unfortunate enough to cross his path. Giske had previously spent two years in prison after attacking a woman with a crowbar. This time, there was disagreement among doctors over whether he belonged in a hospital or in prison. Until the question was settled, he was the responsibility of the staff at Halden. It was not the first, second or even third casual meal I had shared with a man convicted of murder since I arrived at the beginning of the week, but it was the first time I felt myself recoil on instinct. (After my visit, Giske was transferred to a psychiatric institution.)

Omar handed me a vacuum-sealed slice of what appeared to be flexible plastic, its wrapper decorated with a drawing of cheerful red dairy barns.

"It's fantastic!" he exclaimed. "When you are in Norway, you must try this! The first thing I learned, it was this. Brown cheese."

According to the packaging, brown cheese is one of the things that "make Norwegians Norwegians," a calorie-dense fuel of fat and sugar salvaged from whey discarded during the cheese-making process, which is cooked down for half a day until all that remains are caramelized milk sugars in a thick, sticky residue. With enthusiastic encouragement from the inmates, I peeled open the packaging and placed the glossy square on my limp waffle, following their instructions to fold the waffle as you would a taco, or a New York slice. To their great amusement, I winced as I tried to swallow what tasted to me like a paste of spray cheese mixed with fudge.

Another guard walked in and sat down next to me on the couch. "It's allowed to say you don't like it," she said.

Are Hoidal, the prison's warden, laughed from the doorway behind us and accepted his third waffle of the day. He had explained to me earlier, in response to my raised eyebrows, that in keeping with the prison's commitment to "normalcy," even the inmates in this block gather once a week to partake of waffles, which are a weekly ritual in most Norwegian homes.

In the kitchen of the house where some inmates have overnight visits with their families. Credit... Knut Egil Wang for The New York Times

At Halden, some inmates train for cooking certificates in the prison's professional-grade kitchen classroom, where I was treated to chocolate mousse presented in a wineglass, a delicate nest of orange zest curled on top. But most of the kitchen activity is more ordinary. I never entered a cell block without receiving offers of tea or coffee, an essential element of even the most basic Norwegian hospitality, and was always earnestly invited to share meals. The best meal I had in Norway - spicy lasagna, garlic bread and a salad with sun-dried tomatoes - was made by an inmate who had spent almost half of his 40 years in prison. "Every time, you make an improvement," he said of his cooking skills.

When I first met the inmates of C8, a special unit focused on addiction recovery, they were returning to their block laden with green nylon reusable bags filled with purchases from their weekly visit to the prison grocery shop, which is well stocked, carrying snacks and nonperishables but also a colorful assortment of produce, dairy products and meat. The men piled bags of food for communal suppers on the kitchen island on one side of their common room and headed back to their cells with personal items - fruit, soda, snacks, salami - to stash in their minifridges.

I met Tom, an inmate in his late 40s, as he was unpacking groceries on the counter: eggs, bacon, bread, cream, onions, tomato sauce, ground beef, lettuce, almonds, olives, frozen shrimp. Tom had a hoarse voice and a graying blond goatee, and his sleeveless basketball jersey exposed an assortment of tattoos decorating thick arms. His head was shaved smooth, with "F___ the Police" inked in cursive along the right side of his skull; the left side said "RESPECT" in inch-tall letters. A small block of text under his right eye was blacked out, and under his left eye was "666." A long seam ran up the back of his neck and scalp, a remnant of a high-speed motorcycle accident that left him in a coma the last time he was out of prison.

"You are alone now, yeah?" Tom nodded toward the room behind me. I turned around to look.

There were maybe eight inmates around - playing a soccer video game on the modular couch, folding laundry dried on a rack in the corner by large windows overlooking the exercise yard, dealing cards at the dining table - but no guards. Tom searched my face for signs of alarm. The convictions represented among this group included murder, weapons possession and assault.

I was a little surprised, but I stayed nonchalant. I might have expected a bit more supervision - perhaps a quick briefing on safety protocol and security guidelines - but the guards could see us through the long windows of their station, sandwiched between the common rooms of C7 and C8. It was the first of many times I would be left alone with inmates in a common room or in a cell at the end of a hallway, the staff retreating to make space for candid conversation. "It's O.K.," Tom assured me, with what I thought sounded like a hint of pride.

A man named Yassin, the uncontested pastry king of C8, politely motioned for me to move aside so he could get to the baking pans in the cabinet at my feet. When Halden opened, there was a wave of foreign news reports containing snarky, florid descriptions of the " posh," " luxurious" prison, comparing its furnishings to those of a "b outique hotel." In reality, the furniture is not dissimilar from what you might find in an American college dorm. The truly striking difference is that it is normal furniture, not specially designed to prevent it from being turned into shivs, arson fuel or other instruments of violence. The kitchen also provides ample weapons if a prisoner were so inclined. As one inmate pointed out to me, the cabinets on the wall contained ceramic plates and glass cups, the drawers held metal silverware and there were a couple of large kitchen knives tethered by lengths of rubber-coated wire.

"If you want to ask me something, come on, no problem," Tom said, throwing open his hands in invitation. "I'm not very good in English."

Yassin stood up, laughing. "You speak very nice, Tom! It is prison English!" Yassin speaks Arabic and English and is also fluent in Norwegian, a requirement for living in the drug-treatment block, where group and individual counseling is conducted in Norwegian. Like many in the prison, Tom never finished high school. He was raised in a boys' home and has been in and out of prison, where English is common, for more than 30 years. (Yassin's first prison sentence began at 15. Now 29 and close to finishing his sentence for selling drugs, he wants to make a change and thinks he might like to run a scared-straight-style program for teenagers. Before this most recent arrest, the background photo on his Facebook profile was the Facebook logo recreated in white powder on a blue background, with a straw coming in for the snort. He immigrated to Norway as a child with his Moroccan family by way of Dubai.)

"I don't leave Norway," Tom said. "I love my country." He extended his arm with his fist clenched, showing a forearm covered in a "NORGE" tattoo shaded in the colors of the Norwegian flag. But I couldn't detect any tension between Tom and Yassin in the kitchen. Tom was adamant that overcoming his substance-abuse problem was his responsibility alone. But he conceded that the environment at Halden, and the availability of therapists, made it easier. Compared with other prisons, "it's quiet," he said. "No fighting, no drugs, no problem," he added. "You're safe."

The officers try to head off any tensions that could lead to violence. If inmates are having problems with one another, an officer or prison chaplain brings them together for a mediation session that continues until they have agreed to maintain peace and have shaken hands. Even members of rival gangs agree not to fight inside, though the promise doesn't extend to after their release. The few incidents of violence at Halden have been almost exclusively in Unit A, among the inmates with more serious psychiatric illnesses.

If an inmate does violate the rules, the consequences are swift, consistent and evenly applied. Repeated misbehavior or rule violations can result in cell confinement during regular work hours, sometimes without TV. One inmate claimed that an intrepid prisoner from Eastern Europe somehow managed to hack his TV to connect to the Internet and had it taken away for five months. ("Five months!" the inmate marveled to me. "I don't understand how he survived.")

It is perhaps hard to believe that Halden, or Norway more broadly, could hold any lessons for the United States. With its 251 inmates, Halden is one of Norway's largest prisons, in a country with only 3,800 prisoners ( according to the International Center for Prison Studies); by contrast, in the United States, the average number is around 1,300 at maximum-security prisons, with a total of 2.2 million incarcerated (according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics). Halden's rehabilitation programs seem logistically and financially out of reach for such a system to even contemplate.

And yet there was a brief historical moment in which the United States pondered a similar approach to criminal justice. As part of his "war on crime," Lyndon B. Johnson established the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, a body of 19 advisers appointed to study, among other things, the conditions and practices of catastrophically overstretched prisons. The resulting 1967 report, "The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society," expressed concern that many correctional institutions were detrimental to rehabilitation: "Life in many institutions is at best barren and futile, at worst unspeakably brutal and degrading. . . . The conditions in which they live are the poorest possible preparation for their successful re-entry into society, and often merely reinforce in them a pattern of manipulation and destructiveness." And in its recommendations, the commission put forward a vision for prisons that would be surprisingly like Halden. "Architecturally, the model institution would resemble as much as possible a normal residential setting. Rooms, for example, would have doors rather than bars. Inmates would eat at small tables in an informal atmosphere. There would be classrooms, recreation facilities, day rooms, and perhaps a shop and library."

In the mid-1970s, the federal Bureau of Prisons completed three pretrial detention facilities that were designed to reflect those best practices. The three Metropolitan Correctional Centers, or M.C.C.s, were the first of what would come to be known as "new generation" institutions. The results, in both architecture and operation, were a radical departure from previous models. Groups of 44 prisoners populated self-contained units in which all of the single-inmate cells (with wooden doors meant to reduce both noise and cost) opened onto a day room, where they ate, socialized and met with visitors or counselors, minimizing the need for moving inmates outside the unit. All the prisoners spent the entire day outside their cells with a single unarmed correctional officer in an environment meant to diminish the sense of institutionalization and its attendant psychological stresses, with wooden and upholstered furniture, desks in the cells, porcelain toilets, exposed light fixtures, brightly colored walls, skylights and carpeted floors.

But by the time the centers opened, public and political commitment to rehabilitation programs in American prisons had shifted. Much of the backlash within penological circles can be traced to Robert Martinson, a sociology researcher at the City University of New York. In a 1974 article for the journal Public Interest, he summarized an analysis of data from 1945 to 1967 about the impact of rehabilitation programs on recidivism. Despite the fact that around half the individual programs did show evidence of effectiveness in reducing recidivism, Martinson's article concluded that no category of rehabilitation program (education or psychotherapy, for example) showed consistent results across prison systems. "With few and isolated exceptions," he wrote, "the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism." Martinson's paper was immediately seized upon by the news media and politicians, who latched on to the idea that "nothing works" in regard to prisoner rehabilitation. "It Doesn't Work" was the title of a "60 Minutes" segment on rehabilitation. "They don't rehabilitate, they don't deter, they don't punish and they don't protect," Jerry Brown, the governor of California, said in a 1975 speech. A top psychiatrist for the Bureau of Prisons resigned in disgust at what he perceived to be an abandonment of commitment to rehabilitation. At the dedication ceremony for the San Diego M.C.C. in 1974, one of the very structures designed with rehabilitation in mind, William Saxbe, the attorney general of the United States, declared that the ability of a correctional program to produce rehabilitation was a "myth" for all but the youngest offenders.

Martinson's paper was quickly challenged; a 1975 analysis of much of the same data by another sociologist criticized Martinson's choice to overlook the successful programs and their characteristics in favor of a broad conclusion devoid of context. By 1979, in light of new analyses, Martinson published another paper that unequivocally withdrew his previous conclusion, declaring that "contrary to my previous position, some treatment programs do have an appreciable effect on recidivism." But by then, the "nothing works" narrative was firmly entrenched. In 1984, a Senate report calling for more stringent sentencing guidelines cited Martinson's 1974 paper, without acknowledging his later reversal. The tough-on-crime policies that sprouted in Congress and state legislatures soon after included mandatory minimums, longer sentences, three-strikes laws, legislation allowing juveniles to be prosecuted as adults and an increase in prisoners' "maxing out," or being released without passing through reintegration programs or the parole system. Between 1975 and 2005, the rate of incarceration in the United States skyrocketed, from roughly 100 inmates per 100,000 citizens to more than 700 - consistently one of the highest rates in the world. Though Americans make up about only 4.6 percent of the world's population, American prisons hold 22 percent of all incarcerated people.

Guards and inmates teamed up in the exercise yard of Unit C. Credit... Knut Egil Wang for The New York Times

Today, the M.C.C. model of incarceration, which is now known as "direct supervision," is not entirely dead. Around 350 facilities - making up less than 7 percent of the incarceration sites in the United States, mostly county-level jails, which are pretrial and short-stay institutions - have been built on the direct-supervision model and are, with greater and lesser fidelity to the ideal, run by the same principles of inmate management developed for the new-generation prisons of the 1970s. The body of data from those jails over the last 40 years has shown that they have lower levels of violence among inmates and against guards and reduced recidivism; some of these institutions, when directly compared with the older facilities they replaced, saw drops of 90 percent in violent incidents. But extrapolating from this tiny group of facilities to the entire nation, and in particular to its maximum-security prisons, is an impossible thought experiment. Much about the American culture of imprisonment today - the training of guards, the acculturation of prisoners, the incentives of politicians, the inattention of citizens - would have to change for the Norwegian approach to gain anything more than a minor foothold in the correctional system. The country has gone down a different road during the past half century, and that road does not lead to Halden Fengsel.

Even understanding how well the Norwegian approach works in Norway is a difficult business. On a Saturday afternoon in Oslo, I met Ragnar Kristoffersen, an anthropologist who teaches at the Correctional Service of Norway Staff Academy, which trains correction officers. Kristoffersen published a research paper comparing recidivism rates in the Scandinavian countries. A survey of inmates who were released in 2005 put Norway's two-year recidivism rate at 20 percent, the lowest in Scandinavia, which was widely praised in the Norwegian and international press. For comparison, a 2014 recidivism report from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that an estimated 68 percent of prisoners released in 30 states in 2005 were arrested for a new crime within three years.

I asked Kristoffersen if he had spent time at Halden. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a handful of printed sheets. "Have you seen this?" he asked while waving them at me. "It's preposterous!" They were printouts of English-language articles about the prison, the most offensive and misleading lines highlighted. He read a few quotes about the prison's architecture and furnishings to me with disgust. I acknowledged that the hyperbolic descriptions would catch the attention of American and British readers, for whom the cost of a prison like Halden would probably need to be justified by strong evidence of a significant reduction in recidivism.

Somewhat to my surprise, Kristoffersen went into a rant about the unreliability of recidivism statistics for evaluating corrections practices. From one local, state or national justice system to another, diverse and ever-changing policies and practices in sentencing - what kinds and lengths of sentences judges impose for what types of crimes, how likely they are to reincarcerate an offender for a technical violation of parole, how much emphasis they put on community sentences over prison terms and many other factors - make it nearly impossible to know if you're comparing apples to apples. Kristoffersen pointed out that in 2005, Norway was putting people in prison for traffic offenses like speeding, something that few other countries do. Speeders are at low risk for reoffending and receiving another prison sentence for that crime or any other. Excluding traffic offenders, Norway's recidivism rate would, per that survey, be around 25 percent after two years.

Then there was the question of what qualifies as "recidivism." Some countries and states count any new arrest as recidivism, while others count only new convictions or new prison sentences; still others include parole violations. The numbers most commonly cited in news reports about recidivism, like the 20 percent celebrated by Norway or the 68 percent lamented by the United States, begin to fall apart on closer inspection. That 68 percent, for example, is a three-year number, but digging into the report shows the more comparable two-year rate to be 60 percent. And that number reflects not reincarceration (the basis for the Norwegian statistic) but rearrest, a much wider net. Fifteen pages into the Bureau of Justice Statistics report, I found a two-year reincarceration rate, probably the best available comparison to Norway's measures. Kristoffersen's caveat in mind, that translated to a much less drastic contrast: Norway, 25 percent; the United States, 28.8 percent.

What does that mean? Is the American prison system doing a better job than conventional wisdom would suggest? It is frustratingly hard to tell. I asked Kristoffersen if that low reincarceration rate might reflect the fact that long prison sentences mean that many prisoners become naturally less likely to reoffend because of advanced age. He agreed that was possible, along with many other more and less obvious variables. It turned out that measuring the effectiveness of Halden in particular was nearly impossible; Norway's recidivism statistics are broken down by prison of release, and almost no prisoners are released directly from maximum-security prisons, so Halden doesn't have a recidivism number.

After nearly an hour of talking about the finer points of statistics, though, Kristoffersen stopped and made a point that wasn't about statistics at all.

"You have to be aware - there's a logical type of error which is common in debating these things," he said. "That is, you shouldn't mix two kinds of principles. The one is about: How do you fight crimes? How do you reduce recidivism? And the other is: What are the principles of humanity that you want to build your system on? They are two different questions."

He leaned back in his chair and went on. "We like to think that treating inmates nicely, humanely, is good for the rehabilitation. And I'm not arguing against it. I'm saying two things. There are poor evidence saying that treating people nicely will keep them from committing new crimes. Very poor evidence."

He paused. "But then again, my second point would be," he said, "if you treat people badly, it's a reflection on yourself." In officer-training school, he explained, guards are taught that treating inmates humanely is something they should do not for the inmates but for themselves. The theory is that if officers are taught to be harsh, domineering and suspicious, it will ripple outward in their lives, affecting their self-image, their families, even Norway as a whole. Kristoffersen cited a line that is usually attributed to Dostoyevsky: "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."

I heard the same quotation from Are Hoidal, Halden's warden, not long before I left Halden. He told me proudly that people wanted to work at the prison, and officers and teachers told me that they hoped to spend their whole careers at Halden, that they were proud of making a difference.

"They make big changes in here," Hoidal said as we made our way through the succession of doors that would return us to the world outside. There was, improbably, an actual rainbow stretching from the clouds above, landing somewhere outside the wall. Hoidal was quiet for a moment, then laughed. "I have the best job in the world!" He chuckled and shook his head. He sounded surprised.

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The Radical Humaneness of Norway's Halden Prison (Published 2015)

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Feature The goal of the Norwegian penal system is to get inmates out of it. Even prisons are subject to Norway's requirement that every building receiving public money have some sort of public art. Here, a mural by the pseudonymous graffiti artist Dolk in an exercise yard at Halden Fengsel.

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Chemical Castration to be used in Alabama, USA.

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Chemical Castration to be used in Alabama, USA.

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A new law signed in Alabama requires sex offenders with victims younger than 13 to undergo chemical castration as a condition of parole.

"If they're going to mark these children for life, they need to be marked for life," Steve Hurst, who introduced the bill, told NBC affiliate WSFA of Montgomery.

Kay Ivey, the Republican governor of Alabama, signed the legislation on Tuesday and the bill will take effect later on this year.

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Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

The procedure, which is reversible, must start at least a month before the offender is released from jail, and lasts as long as the judge in charge deems necessary.

The local branch of the American Civil Liberties Association (ACLU) says the law is "a return, if you will, to the dark ages."

Randall Marshall, the executive director of the local branch of the ACLU, told The Independent: "It certainly presents serious issues about involuntary medical treatment, informed consent, the right to privacy, and cruel and unusual punishment."

ACLU also believes the bill is unconstitutional, but said it likely won't be challenged until it is actually implemented and ordered by a judge.

But Alabama is not the only state in the US to allow castration of sex offenders. California, Florida, Guam, Louisiana, Montana, and Wisconsin allow for some sort of castration. In most cases, according to NBC News, castration is voluntary and optional in order to speed up the parole process. California was the first state to allow chemical castration of sex offenders in the mid-1990s.

Some countries, like Israel, the UK, and Poland, have also used chemical castration in the past on sex offenders.

In May, Alabama passed one of the most restrictive abortion law in the United States.

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Sex offenders to be castrated under new law approved by US state

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A new law signed in Alabama requires sex offenders with victims younger than 13 to undergo chemical castration as a condition of parole. "If they're going to mark these children for life, they need to be marked for life," Steve Hurst, who introduced the bill, told NBC affiliate WSFA of Montgomery.

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Prison Reform Trust booklet, created for those convicted of sexual offenders being released on licence.

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Prison Reform Trust booklet, created for those convicted of sexual offenders being released on licence.

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In the first season of Showtime's Dexter, the character Dexter Morgan, a vigilante serial killer who also works for the fictitious Miami Metro police as a forensic technician, hunts a child molester who had escaped justice and the law. After nearly strangling his prey, Dexter yells, "Open your eyes and look at what you did!" The molester, a choir director who also murdered some of the young boys he assaulted, cries, "I couldn't help myself. ... Please, you have to understand." Dexter replies, "Trust me, I definitely understand. See, I can't help myself either. But children, I could never do that. ... I have standards."

The success of the series, which ran for eight seasons and attracted a record-breaking 2.6 million viewers for its season four finale, relied on an identification with Dexter, whose compulsive lust for murder was justified by his targeting of bad men. Both Dexter and his victim were obviously guilty, but only his victim-the child molester-was considered incorrigible. Dexter-the-serial-killer, it was hoped, might overcome his compulsion. But to even pose the question of change for child molesters seems an affront to society, as if it shows disrespect for the experience of the victims of such abuse. Yet the abhorrence that we as a society feel toward child molesters is part of the reason that molesters often don't get the help they so desperately need.

In the last half-century in most of the Western world, the child molester has emerged as a new criminal type, a figure of abjection who evokes a visceral reaction of loathing and repulsion. It is common today to describe a child molester as the epitome of evil, a "sexual predator" outside the moral limits of what it means to be human. He shares with the Islamic terrorist the designation of a major security risk. Extraordinary legal doctrines enabling permanent preventive detention-imprisonment, continuous surveillance, forms of house arrest-are applied to both figures. Confounded by this evil, the public unites in a general sentiment that of all criminal types, the child molester is the least deserving of empathy-that he is unredeemable. In legal jargon, he risks becoming a recidivist, doomed to repeat his crime; in psychiatric jargon, he is cursed with a psychic disorder, a "paraphilia" (intense sexual arousal to atypical objects), that makes him virtually incapable of change.

But our beliefs about child sex offenders, as a whole, are rife with stereotypes that don't hold up to expert scrutiny. One particular assumption still dominates our view: They are incapable of change, so they should be removed from the public sphere-either killed or made to endure lifelong punishment. While the judicial system does not typically handle most cases in one of these two ways, such thinking has pervaded our views. Yet incarceration alone does not serve society well, nor is it the most cost-effective or humane way to actually reduce child sex abuse.

This isn't simply about recognizing the humanity of offenders: To foster environments where children are not abused, we must understand why adults abuse them. The inquiry itself is very unsettling; we often experience disgust when asked to examine these acts, these people, and these situations. Our discomfort and fear of incorrigibility are part of the problem: They are often based on a set of unconscious assumptions divorced from the circumstances surrounding child sex abuse. Our inability to question these assumptions makes it even more difficult to address the issues at hand.

In Europe, where for over 30 years I have engaged in research on a variety of topics, from kinship and national identity to retributive justice and the rehabilitation of child sex offenders, there is a greater emphasis on and investment in therapy for child sexual abusers than in the United States. In Germany, a 2002 federal law even mandates that individuals sentenced for sex abuse to more than two years of imprisonment have not only a duty but also a right to treatment.

In 2008, I began an ethnographic study of child sex offenders in Germany who were serving time and participating in therapy. I attended weekly psychodynamic group therapy for 35 men and boys between the ages of 13 and 62 accused or convicted of child sex abuse. In four modules, offenders explored the sequence of events leading to the act (often called "crime cycle"), empathy for the victim and apology, personal biography, and relapse prevention. I also worked in a minimum-security prison, where I examined approximately 200 cases of convicted child sex offenders from between 2001 and 2008 at the archives of the Berlin Senate Department of Justice. I followed offenders from the accusation of abuse to arrest, admission of culpability, trial, imprisonment, treatment, release from prison, and social reincorporation or indefinite surveillance. The results of my five-year study shed light on why some people offend, how therapy might redirect their lives, and the value of understanding both.

Contrary to popular understandings, our stereotypes of pedophiles are misleading when generalized to child sex offenders, who do not share a "sexual orientation" or "object choice" that would be comparable to "homosexual" and "heterosexual" orientations. They are not all men (although over 90 percent of those who are accused and arrested are men), and they are not all interested specifically in sex with children. The type of sexual predator portrayed in popular stories does indeed exist: Lawrence G. Nassar, for example, the longtime team doctor for USA Gymnastics, was recently found guilty of sexually abusing more than 150 women and girls over two decades. He was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison on top of 60 years for federal child pornography.

But most convicted child molesters are not in fact serial offenders. They have a low recidivism rate. When treated in prevention programs, they have a recidivism rate of 14 percent, which is lower than their untreated counterparts, who have a recidivism rate of 26 percent, according to a 1999 meta-analysis. Overall, treatment programs reduce the recidivism rate by up to 50 percent, according to a summary evaluation that compared over 20 studies. Saving even just one child from abuse makes the effort to offer therapy to all offenders worth it.

Furthermore, child sexual offenders often find themselves lumped together, despite the age of their victims, the severity of their crimes, and the duration of abuse. If treated, very few offenders become recidivists; the vast majority are not at risk of abusing additional children. Too often, however, policy prescriptions are made based on sensational cases, the least frequent type. High-risk offenders like Nassar present unusual problems, but should such exceptional cases be the basis for policies intended to address the majority of offenders?

The reasons why men seek out children and youth for sex are numerous, and they grow out of singular histories in which many have themselves suffered from neglect and abuse. In therapy, offenders often reveal motives not driven by a desire for sex but rather ones that emerge out of fears of abandonment, emotional loneliness, an inability to trust adults in intimate relations, low self-esteem, or an opportunism not available with adult partners. Sexual transgressions can easily tend in the direction of a fetish or a perverse and unconscious wish to harm the object of their desire. Yet, of the men I observed in therapy, interviewed, read files on, and consulted their therapists about, the most common motivation was neither to harm nor to have sex with the child. Rather, most men wanted intimacy with something more abstract, such as vulnerability, an image of innocence, or the ambiguity we associate with puberty.

These motivations in no way excuse abuse or lessen the damage to victims of abuse. But if the goal of imprisonment and treatment is to decrease the number of transgressions and bring about a change in the offender so as to eventually reincorporate him into society, then we have to understand and address the actual motivations for intimate transgressions, including sexual.

What, specifically, can therapy do? And what are its limits? To be sure, treatment cannot help all offenders, and some treatment methods are more effective than others. The same approaches are used throughout the Western world: single diagnostic sessions, chemical castration, psychopharmacological treatments, cognitive behavioral therapy, and psychodynamic approaches. Of the treatment options available, psychodynamic therapy has been shown to be the most cost-effective and efficacious. This form of talk therapy goes beyond impulse control, avowed renunciation, or the anesthetization of desire. Optimally, it facilitates a psychic change: a transformation in the emotions and unconscious thoughts driving someone's actions. Psychodynamic therapy stands in contrast to cognitive behavioral therapy, the most commonly used treatment for child sex abuse, which attempts only to modify someone's conscious, rational thoughts and behaviors. While the wrongness of the act is addressed, motivations for transgressive behavior are often left unexamined.

There are no typical cases of child abuse nor of the rehabilitation of offenders. But to illustrate, consider one from the 35 men and boys I followed in therapy. Uwe (a pseudonym), a 37-year-old man, was accused of incest with his 4 1/2-year-old daughter. Below is Uwe's story, as he recounted it to therapists, who grilled him on the specifics, repetitively and painfully. I narrate a brief version of it here because, although terrible to hear and verifiable only through firsthand testimony, I think our disgust inhibits our ability to comprehend such acts and prevents us from dealing with the problem.

Uwe's wife had recently left him and moved in with another woman, taking their two children with her. Uwe claims that his daughter began to play with herself in visits with him; Uwe was accused of participating.

Uwe never disputed the allegations his daughter or ex-wife made of these behaviors, or of his participation in them, but he was so alarmed by what he had done that he could not talk about it during the first four weeks of the group therapy to which he was assigned. He was a man of few words who appeared comfortable listening to the others; he talked only when called upon and then only in barely audible, mumbled phrases. The other men in the group were curious but also a bit angry at Uwe's reticence, and they needled him until he reluctantly explained: "My daughter, who was 4 1/2, discovered that she could gratify herself. I helped her."

The two therapists who conducted the group therapy sessions spent months asking why the daughter discovered masturbation at this point in her life and what role Uwe played in her discovery. The therapists' eventual explanation, based on established psychological theory, was that the daughter had noticed the deep sadness of her father and sought to please him and regain his attentions through sexual play. (Of course, the child is not to blame in any way; it was Uwe's reaction that bears the responsibility for his daughter's behavior.) As Uwe justified it in his fifth month of therapy, he began to stroke her behind, legs, and feet "to take her mind off the vagina." The end result, however, was that he played with her while she played with herself. (The daughter had entered separate therapy, and according to her therapist, she was doing well.) What he did was clearly child sex abuse: engaging in sexual behavior with a child.

Uwe's problem was not the result of a mental error needing correction: He was quite cognizant of his transgressions, which is why he felt so guilty after he realized what he had done. Rather, his problem, the therapists concluded, was of not knowing how he was communicating his feelings of loneliness and abandonment to his daughter, which led him to indulge in an unconscious fantasy with her.

Once he was able to understand why he had encouraged his daughter to perform in front of him, Uwe was better able to accept what he had done and why he deserved to be punished. The judge terminated Uwe's probation after he completed 30 weeks of therapy. His wife has moved to another city, and he no longer has contact with his children. The hope is that he will, at some point, develop healthier attachments and not be pulled back into the vortex of child sex abuse.

It is impossible to measure the extent of psychic change that therapy brings about. Such change is a matter of interpretation. But I can report that Uwe, and nearly all others in the therapy groups I followed for three years after the end of their formal therapy, did not reenter the system of reported abuse, accusation, and investigation. Some of the men I observed had already had access to cognitive behavioral therapy in prison. But they consistently claimed that they were only schooled in what they did wrong; they did not arrive at a better understanding of what they had done and why.

During psychodynamic therapy, in contrast, I observed men who, for the first time, developed the capacity to critically analyze and reflect on themselves and their history of relationships. Although most would insist throughout therapy that they strongly empathized with children, only with the introspection demanded by the therapists did they come to empathize with the specific child or children they had victimized. For Uwe, incarceration without a deeper understanding of who he was, and how he came to molest his daughter, likely would have been costly and useless.

Ultimately, it is judges who are given the most power in assessing whether-and what type of-therapy works. In Germany and elsewhere in the West, judges are more and more frequently demanding evidence not merely of a behavioral change but of a self-transformation in child sex offenders. They are asking for the kind of deeper evidence of psychic change that psychodynamic therapy can best provide.

Even though many of the most extreme cases of abuse still go unreported, by all estimates the number of children who suffer sex abuse has declined over the past two and a half decades. The reasons for this are uncertain, but two important contributing factors are increases in prosecution and the rise of mandatory reporting by teachers and other care professionals of any suspect behavior. This probably reduces serial offenses and also creates a general culture of awareness that makes offenses less likely in the first place.

This is not without unintended effects, however. Opportunities for intimacy of any form between adult males and children have been severely restricted or highly sexualized-men are often driven away from caregiving professions out of fear that their actions might be misinterpreted, for instance. And innocent acts, such as putting a child on one's lap, are often regarded as sexual. Sequestering children from the adult male population to prevent harm may yield a kind of security, but it hardly responds to the child's need for touch, care, and attachment.

Further reductions in child sexual abuse, and the creation of caring environments of trust, require a more precise understanding both of child molesters and of our collective fears of their incorrigibility. Although the scientific community has repeatedly assessed assumptions about the unchangeability of child molesters and found them wanting, incorrigibility continually resurfaces as a convenient way to categorize and stereotype, without having to understand the multiple and often contradictory factors that make change appear impossible.

Are child sex abusers incorrigible? There is no evidence for such a general assumption. Like with all transgressions, there is no single motivation nor a uniform type of offender. Punishing child sex offenders through long-term incarceration neither rectifies the harm done to children nor creates the desired security for children. The best redress of this harm that also reduces recidivism, protecting the public from further criminal acts, is to try to rehabilitate the offenders through therapy.

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Can Child Sex Offenders Be Rehabilitated? - SAPIENS

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In the first season of Showtime's Dexter, the character Dexter Morgan, a vigilante serial killer who also works for the fictitious Miami Metro police as a forensic technician, hunts a child molester who had escaped justice and the law. After nearly strangling his prey, Dexter yells, "Open your eyes and look at what you did!"

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My motive for writing this piece is to give hope to people who are suffering with paedophilia.

I myself was a paedophile - a paedophile who never abused a child, either directly or indirectly, through the use of child abuse pornography. I loathe the way that our rulers, the media, and our public institutions demonise paedophiles and ignore your needs for help, your efforts to avoid abusing, and your yearnings for treatments which will free you of this curse.

I was lucky - I was referred by my GP, in 1972, to the NHS Portman Clinic in London, assessed and then treated free of charge by psychoanalytic psychotherapy, with once a week sessions over three years. I even had my train and tube fares paid, for I was a student and low paid worker. By the end of 1975 I had achieved 100% cure of my paedophilia, and my life was transformed. I no longer had to avoid being in the presence of children in case I unwittingly showed my sexual interest in young boys by some eye movement or turn of my head . I no longer had to watch every conversation or social occasion in case, by some slip of the tongue, I revealed that sexual interest, or my fear and inadequacy in the presence of attractive young women.

I will tell you my story, briefly, then I will describe how my treatment and cure worked, and suggest what you can do. Lastly, I will suggest that we all - your allies - must work towards providing more curative treatment resources for paedophiles, as part of a strategy for ridding the world of all paedophilia and all child sexual abuse.
My Story
I was raised with my siblings in a loving, secure, lower-middle class family, and my mother was a very caring mum. I was a rather sensitive, shy boy who was a bit of a handful sometimes. There was some intermittent low-level conflict between my parents, and, when it happened, I always sided with my mother, because I saw myself as 'mummy's boy'. Our mum usually presided over bath times and made sure we washed and dried ourselves properly. When I was 'choirboy age', perhaps less than eight to more than ten, my mum had the habit of drying me on her knee and then playing with my genitals, pulling my scrotum over my penis and then letting it pop out - that kind of thing. She did this often. I never had an erection and never considered these 'fiddlings' by her to be sexual. My memory is that she was being curious and playful. I never thought of her feelings as sexual, though of course they may have been.

However, those small but regular 'interferings' really did damage. They were, of course, powerfully sexual occasions for me, despite my total blocking - denial - of that fact. My massive repression of my sexual responses to her 'fiddling' had huge consequences for my psychic development. Incest in whatever form has huge consequences for the child victim. I did not develop sexual feelings for girls, but instead became sexually fixated on young boys of the same age at which she had interfered with me. I became fixated on repeating in fantasy the sexual behaviour of my mother towards me.

So massive was my psychic effort to repress the horrifying fact that I had repeatedly been in a sexual act with my mother that I developed awful sadistic fantasies, and acted them out masochistically against myself. My fantasies were of castrating or circumcising (symbolic castration) young boys. My masochism was in cutting and piercing my own genitalia. At one point I feared that my genitals had become gangrenous and I had trouble repressing the blood loss - all in secret. That, I think, was the single worst two days of my paedophiliac youth. My psychic fantasies of castration were a massive attempt to cut away the fact that I had had adult sexual feelings for my mother, and was thus in sexual competition with my father, with whom I already felt myself to be at war, in some way. It was the Oedipus story all over again.

I had no real friends during those years. My feelings towards women were of fear and disgust at their bodies. My whole attitude was one of denial of my perverse sexuality, or of any sexuality. I put massive psychic effort into convincing myself that I was innocent of all adult sexual feelings - a child, a Peter Pan. I did not discover masturbation until I was 17, nor did I attempt to view pornography, and, in any case, I did not imagine that such a thing as child pornography existed. I yearned to be normal, like my brother and other youths.

I went away to university at 18, which provided me with partial independence from the 'stuck' relationships I had within my family. I gained a good group of friends, some of whom I still have, became an active socialist, and grew my hair halfway down my back. I lost my virginity, though my lover realised how unsuitable I was as a boyfriend, with my nervous shyness and limited, semi-sexual responses.

When I was nearly 21, I overheard my 'best friend' telling my other housemates and best friends that he thought I was a paedophile. I listened from another room to their talk and laughter. I put on my coat and walked across town to the home of the leader of my small socialist group, who was not a friend, but whom I admired and trusted. When I sat down I burst into tears and told him who I really was. Together we worked out what to do. He contacted the Richmond Fellowship to get me a referral. I went to the university Health Centre GP. He was a young, relaxed, cheerful man who smiled and scoffed at my fears that paedophilia was not curable, telling me he would refer me to a clinic which dealt with problems such as mine. Within a few weeks I received a letter inviting me to attend an assessment for treatment at the NHS Portman Clinic in Hampstead, London. In the second half of 1972 (only a month or so after my assessment) I started once a week psychoanalysis there. By the end of 1975 I was cured. I have never since had a paedophilic fantasy.

Since then my life has been on an upward trend, sometimes bumpy, sometimes with downward dips, sometimes in the doldrums, but always with an underlying upwards lift. I have been with the woman I love for 13 years and am part of her warm family, with lots of step-grandchildren. I am proud of my achievements, which are small but real.

The NHS and the Portman Clinic salvaged my life and gave me this gift of many years of happiness.
My treatment and cure
Dr Glasser, my therapist, and the Clinical Director of the Portman, told me at my assessment interview that the treatment would consist of me 'free associating' - talking about whatever came into my head. He made an analogy with boats anchored on a tidal river. With the incoming tide a boat appears to float a bit upstream. With the outgoing tide the boat appears to float a bit downstream. By watching the boat swing between these changing positions over time, therefore, an observer can work out where the anchor is hidden below. Thus, my seemingly random talking could reveal to us the underlying - subconscious - patterns of my mind. He also advised me not to read any psychiatric literature for the duration of my treatment, so as to concentrate and avoid creating diversions.

The weekly sessions with Dr Glasser entailed me lying down on the couch in his consulting room and talking, with only occasional comments and interpretations from him. The underlying causes of my paedophilia in my past family relationships were uncovered and explained by Dr Glasser within a few months. His suggested explanations were a surprise to me, and made complete sense. They gave me a new confidence and self-respect, but they did not change my attraction to young boys, at that stage. I did much crying in those sessions - over and over again, session after session, through the years. At first, I was surprised by my crying and told Dr Glasser of my puzzlement. He suggested that I was crying in pity for my past boyhood self, in the same way as one cries in pity when one sees or reads of someone else in distress. There was nothing negative in this pity for my past self. Such things now seem so self-evident to me, but they were all a surprise, back then.

Incidentally, Dr Glasser never used the term 'abuse' to describe my mum's behaviour. His stance was simply to explain, not to blame. It was not until some 10 years after my cure that I ever heard anyone describe my childhood experience as one of abuse. It happened when I was telling my story to a woman friend. I was shocked when she said to me: "your mother abused you." I think that, technically speaking, my friend was right, but I also think that the word 'abuse', in this case, does not best describe what happened. My mother made an important mistake. Shecrossed a crucial boundary, but I don't think she knew she was crossing it, and I am 100% certain that she would have been mortified if I had accused her of being an abuser. Such mistakes can have huge consequences. We all face that reality in our lives. We can all, therefore, forgive ourselves and others.

Things did change for me over the years of treatment. I stopped neglecting my studies and worked hard to gain my university degree. In the second year of my treatment I met an attractive young woman on a working holiday and started seeing her. I was glad she did not press me for sex (for she was a traditionalist Christian) and I strongly avoided pressing her for it, though we did much kissing and stroking. I quickly broke with her, for I still felt my old inadequacy and my horror at adult sexual exchange. Later, I got close to another sexually active woman, but could not respond to her sexually when the opportunity came. That was humiliating.

During the third year of treatment I felt more and more that I was 'stuck'. I understood why I was like I was, but the final loss of my paedophilia did not happen, and I could not see how it would go. The problem was that I hadn't grasped that I must work for that. Explanation was not enough. Dr Glasser broke this stalemate by challenging my inactivity and suggesting that we set a date for the treatment to end that I could work towards (the end of 1975). In that last six months I focussed completely on challenging myself to be in normal social situations with women and seeking out sexual opportunities with them. It worked.

By the time my treatment ended I realised that my paedophilia had disappeared and my sexual interest had been fully transferred to women. That change, when it came, was dramatic. I had a job in an office with several attractive women and I had, up till that point, been bashful and intimidated by their sexual banter and liveliness. I suddenly found that I could cope with - and enjoy - all that normal fun. The women were as surprised as I was, and I overheard them remarking on the sudden change in me. That was nice. I was still naive and very shy and frightened of sex with women, but the deal was done. It took me a while to be ready for full sex, just as it does with any normal adolescent, but I met and went out for some months with a woman who did not press me or want full sex (for she had just left a long relationship and didn't want to dive into another) and we had a lot of fun.

As for my paedophilia, I now found that I could enjoy the company of children. I no longer had to fearfully retreat from them in case I revealed my old sexual feelings to myself and those around me. All those paedophiliac feelings vanished like frost when the warm rays of the sun at daybreak first shine upon it. Children are a delight, and I am so very glad to have them in my life in the way any normal adult can.
The options for cure that paedophiles now have
The NHS Portman Clinic still exists and still treats paedophiles with in-depth psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It also treats many other sexually deviant people and those who have been violent. Its criteria for accepting a patient, however, are now narrower than they were, as a result of cuts to NHS spending and an increase in demand for its services. This increase in demand is fuelled both by the huge increase in internet pornography and the equally huge exposure of the extent of child sexual abuse. The Portman now only accepts referrals of people who have committed offences. That is a major change from my time there. If I was a youngster now, I would not be accepted for treatment at the Portman, because I did not abuse children.

There are, of course, huge numbers of people who have succumbed to temptation and the belief in the 'lesser evil', and committed abuse byusing on-line pornography, as well as all those who have directly abused children.

If you are one of those people, and you are sick of your behaviour and keen to change, then I strongly urge you to seek a referral to the Portman. They will assess you and be looking for you to show an interest in exploring the roots of your sexual damage and offending, as well asa lively wish to be rid of that behaviour and thinking. If you abuse alcohol or drugs, then that will be a problem in getting accepted for treatment, for your attention needs to be unclouded.

The Portman's criteria for success in treatment are also narrower than they were in my time. They now judge success by whether the patient is able to control his or her offending and securely manage their behaviour so that they do not re-offend. Given the intrinsic curative potential of the treatment they still do achieve real cures, but they do not judge their success by such cures.

It is a tragedy that the Portman has had to narrow its criteria for treatment and success in these ways, and non-offending paedophiles should not simply accept their exclusion. In my case, for instance, paedophilia was not just confined to fantasy. I repeatedly self-harmed genitally, and may have put my own life in danger by my mutilations. Would a history of self-harm, perhaps, tip the balance in favour of acceptance for treatment?

For non-offending paedophiles there are private psychoanalytic practitioners who will accept paedophiles for treatment and have appropriate expertise. There are not many, but they do exist. Two years ago I made contact with a woman who shared a somewhat similar developmental history to me, though what she suffered as a child was far worse. She had been repeatedly abused by multiple abusers, from inside and outside her family, both in her infancy and through her childhood. To her great horror, she discovered in early adulthood that she could be strongly sexually attracted to infants of the age at which she was herself first abused. It took all her strength to resist the temptation to abuse, and she succeeded. She found herself a private psychotherapist whom she trusted, and is now cured of her past paedophiliac desires and has much love and achievement in her life.

The specialist psychoanalytic literature has good examples of deeply disturbed paedophiles (again, far worse than I was) who responded over time to caring psychoanalysis and managed to rid their lives of their old damage. For those at the worst end of the paedophile spectrum this process takes long years and full psychoanalysis, with several sessions a week. If the patient sticks at it, they can succeed.

Of course, such treatment requires time and money, and most of us do not have that. It is our job - as your allies - to work to make sure that in the future this will change.
Ridding the world of paedophilia and child sexual abuse
Over 40 years ago, when I was at the Portman, we lived in a time of hope. I wanted to see (and still want to see) the example of their treatments reproduced until every town across the country has such a clinic. Everyone, child, woman and man, who needs them, deserves the chance to be assessed for the proven treatments which are capable of curing so much sexual distress. Though this expansion did not then happen, it still must, and still can. The world can again turn away from the darkness.

It may seem that the demonisation that is directed at paedophiles, irrespective of whether they have offended, is undefeatable, and it is not surprising that many people are so angry at the child abuse which has afflicted so many of us. Yet there is an abundance of good people who realise that many paedophiles were themselves the victims of child sexual abuse, and that other paedophiles will likely have suffered other forms of childhood trauma and abuse. Paedophiles are a sub-set of those many adults damaged in childhood by abuse and adult mistakes.

It is clear that most victims of child sexual abuse are as starved of in-depth psychotherapeutic treatments as paedophiles. We live in a time when the rhetoric of government, state, and media anger at child abuse is demonstrably hollow. It isnot matched by widespread resources made available for the support of all those affected.

There is room for us all to make the argument that we need these potentially curative resources to be universally available. There is room for the argument that the healing of paedophiles brings nearer the day when the horror of all child abuse is a thing of the past. There is room for the argument that all childhood psychic damage that can be healed should be healed...and paedophilia can be healed.

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My experience as a paedophile, cured by NHS psychoanalysis " StopSO UK

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My motive for writing this piece is to give hope to people who are suffering with paedophilia. I myself was a paedophile - a paedophile who never abused a child, either directly or indirectly, through the use of child abuse pornography.

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How Norway designed a more humane prison

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The Daily Express has learnt that Justice Minister Phillip Lee asked officials to look at ways of increasing the use of the medical treatment to stop sexual urges because international evidence suggests it is the best way to stop reoffending.

It is understood that Dr Lee, a practising GP, has said that there needs to be "an evidence-based approach" to making offenders safe enough to release in society.

The work by officials has come in the wake of the John Worboys scandal after the High Court overturned a decision by the parole board to release the former taxi driver and convicted rapist.

Last month the Daily Express revealed that there are more than 1,000 other serious sex offenders who, like Worboys, were on indeterminate sentences and will be considered for parole in the coming months.

Dr Lee knows this is controversial but the medication is voluntary although it can be linked to an increased chance of getting parole

A departmental source

There are fears within the MoJ that if these offenders cannot be released then the prison service will not have the space to accommodate them all because of the need for releasing criminals to make up room for people who have been freshly convicted.

However, the Worboys case highlighted concerns that rapists and other sex offenders could be released even though they may still pose a threat to the community.

There was also anger that victims were not consulted about Worboys' potential release and were not asked about the conditions.

It was revealed last year that chemical castration - the administration of regular medical treatment to suppress sexual urges - was introduced into six prisons last year.

Currently around 120 serious sexual offenders are understood to be on the treatment voluntarily but department officials have said that it could be increased more than tenfold to 1,500.

Criminal psychiatrist Professor Don Grubin has been conducting the national chemical treatment programme, along with the prison service and the Department of Health.

Chemical castration was originally introduced in the UK in 2007 by former Home Secretary John Reid and has had limited use since.

It is understood that Dr Lee asked for a rollout of the programme to more offenders amid concerns that rehabilitation courses run by psychologists are not effective.

It has already been revealed that the course Worboys was on has been discontinued because of doubts over its effectiveness.

Last year a Prison Service spokesman said that two of the eight courses had been discontinued.

International evidence has shown that the use of regular medication to suppress sexual urges is the most effective way to prevent reoffending reducing it to under five percent.

In the past, MoJ figures have said that 10 percent of sex offenders who attended courses reoffended.

Meanwhile, previous figures have said that the general rate of reoffending is 13 per cent for paedophiles and 19 percent for rapists but other figures suggest that recidivism can be as high as 40 percent.

A departmental source said: "Dr Lee knows this is controversial but the medication is voluntary although it can be linked to an increased chance of getting parole.

"There is a debate over the effectiveness of the courses but very little doubt that chemical castration works.

"Essentially, libido suppressing medications in tandem with psychological therapies are more effective than what is generally being attempted currently."

The source added: "It's particularly important with paedophiles because it is like a disease and destroys lives.

"Often the victims themselves become abusers and it carried on spreading."

However, it is understood that for the chemical castration programme to be rolled out the department will need to find extra funding or divert it from other approaches.

Evidence has come from the USA where Oklahoma this year looks set to become the seventh state to introduce widespread use of chemical castration.

The treatment is also used in Sweden, Denmark, Canada and Australia.

Other countries including Indonesia, South Korea and Poland have had forced use of chemical castration.

The issue of tackling sex offence was highlighted earlier this year when official statistics revealed that the number of incidents last year was up 23 percent from 2016 to 138,045.

In March 2015 there were around 50,000 registered sex offenders in the UK but that is now understood to be almost 70,000.

One past advocate of the use of the treatment was the late psychologist Dr Ludwig Lowenstein.

Arguing the case for it in 2015, he said: "Chemical castration requires a high degree of supervision. Offenders have to keep taking the pills to lower their libido. Nor is it a total cure: paedophiles' sexual behaviour is governed not only by hormones but also by fantasies so they will still be drawn to children.

"The idea of giving sexual offenders a pill to destroy their ability to have intercourse always provokes fierce objections on the grounds of civil liberties. But a child's right to protection is far more morally important than the freedoms of paedophiles."

Nick Pearce from the Institute of Public Policy Research said: "It's not an alternative to therapeutic issues, but it takes out the urge that manifests itself in sexual violence.

It takes away the thing that makes them violent because the testosterone is completely reduced. The evidence does show that repeat offending rate is low or zero. This is a voluntary treatment, it's not done as a populist punitive measure. The Danish justice system doesn't go for that. It's not an answer to sexual violence in society, it's a tiny number of cases."
FOR - Andrew Rosindell - Conservative MP for Romford
We need to do what is necessary to make the public safe. Rapists and paedophiles cannot be released unless there is no chance they will offend.

So controlled and monitored use of chemical castration through medication that kills off sexual urges has to be better than putting people on airy fairy courses.

Policy needs to be less about the human rights of prisoners and more about public safety. While something like this would be voluntary it should be prioritised over other methods as it is far more effective.

However, it should not be an alternative to punishment because these are heinous crimes. Instead it should be available when these dangerous criminals who have destroyed people's lives are up for parole and used as a condition for parole. The Worboys case put this issue into the public domain.

The big concern many of his victims had was he could reoffend and continue to be a danger. They were also angered that they had not been consulted.
AGAINST - Marilyn Hawes - Enough Abuse UK
It is probable that if rapists, paedophiles and other sex offenders were undertaking treatment that prevented them reoffending then there would be far less fear and concern about them being released when they are up for parole. The first duty of any government is to protect its citizens and we need a justice system that does that.

Marilyn Hawes set up the charity Enough Abuse UK in 2004 to prevent child sexual abuse.

The former teacher discovered her three sons were sexually groomed and assaulted by another teacher who was a close family friend.

She realised there were many signs she had either missed or not understood. She created training programmes to educate those with a duty of care over children on how to recognise abusers' behaviour. She said: "Every time I hear of chemical castration I feel like banging my head against a brick wall. It's just a knee jerk reaction to try a quick fix.

"All the government is trying to do is put a plaster on the real problem as they are terrifi ed of the enormity of the situation coming out. They'd rather ignore it. Never mind the children, it's all about budgets and fi ddling the statistics. Real solutions are hard and they cost time and money.

"It's so cynical and dishonest. They are deliberately giving ordinary parents a false sense of security. When people who don't know what drives paedophiles hear the idea they can take a drug and children will be safe from them it sounds wonderful.

"The reality is you don't need a sexual part to hurt children. The fantasy starts in the brain and you can't switch that off with chemical castration. It's been shown in some cases if the fantasy is strong enough and the sex parts don't work, then offenders use other things to fulfi l their wishes.

"The only way you can defeat this is through education - teaching both professionals and parents who are the predators and who are their prey.

"We need to arm people with the knowledge to resist. At the moment the training isn't out there.

"The protocol focuses on following a formula. It's all to do with how you cope with a referral of possible sexual abuse, not with dealing with it.

"Dealing with it means you have to take off your rose tinted glasses and see something really ugly."

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'Chemical castration WORKS' Paedophiles face new measures in sex cr...

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