# data[].attributes.body
Why Is Chemical Castration Being Used on Sex Offenders in Some Countries?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Following a horrific act of sexual violence against a 14-year-old girl, the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, recently signed a decree into law, which, among other things, authorised the death penalty for convicted child sex offenders, and also the use of chemical castration of such offenders.

The main justification cited by Widodo was that castration would act as a deterrent. But how do such interventions fit in the criminal justice system? Are they likely to be successful?

The Indonesian decree is more unusual because it authorises judges to impose chemical castration as a non-optional part of an offender's punishment, rather than offering it as an alternative to imprisonment. Yet even in this regard the decree is not unprecedented; other jurisdictions (including, among others, South Korea, Poland, Estonia, and the US states of California and Florida) have authorised the mandatory use of chemical castration for certain convicted sex offenders.
Rehabilitation
Chemical castration involves the administration of drugs that reduce the recipient's libido and, it is hoped, their sexual activity. Unlike physical castration, the effects of chemical castration on the recipient's sex drive are reversible. However, opponents of chemical castration often point out that the long-term use of some of these drugs is associated with permanent adverse side-effects, including an increased risk of osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and impaired glucose and lipid metabolism.

It is commonly claimed that one of the primary aims of punishment is to rehabilitate offenders so that they will not reoffend. Traditional penal methods (such as imprisonment), and psychological therapies (such as cognitive behavioural therapy), have not been particularly effective at preventing reoffending among sex offenders.

While chemical castration is championed as an effective tool for achieving this, the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (an international organisation representing over 4,500 professional psychiatrists) points out that many of the studies that support this claim provide only limited evidence. This is because many of these studies lack adequate controls, partly for ethical reasons. Doctors in Indonesia have also refused to take part in chemical castrations.
Deterrent
Widodo sought to justify the decree by pointing out that "sexual violence against children has increased significantly" in Indonesia, and that the decree will "provide space for the judge to decide severe punishments as a deterrent effect on perpetrators".

"Deterrence" here is ambiguous: it might refer to the effect that chemical castration (and the death penalty) may have on deterring the recipient from reoffending; or more generally to the deterrent effect on others who may offend. Deterrence of the general sort, such as rehabilitation, is often understood as a justifiable aim of punishment that stresses the importance of it leading to good consequences for society. However, the justification for chemical castration as a general deterrent is arguably on weaker ground than the justification of it as a rehabilitative measure.

When it comes to rehabilitation, there are arguably some grounds for authorising chemical castration rather than some other form of punishment, in so far as the available empirical evidence provides at least some (arguably limited) justification for the claim that chemical castration has a direct effect on whether or not the recipient will reoffend.

In an obvious sense, the death penalty will also have an anti-recidivist effect - you're hardly going to reoffend if you're executed. So we might ask, even without considering the lack of empirical evidence regarding whether either chemical castration or the death penalty are effective general deterrents, why chemical castration is necessary for general deterrence, when a more severe punishment is already a possibility.
Retribution
One explanation for why Indonesia legalised chemical castration in addition to the death penalty might be found in retributive approaches to the justification of punishment. These stress the importance of offenders receiving their "just deserts". Some claim that a punishment must not only impose a burden proportionate to the harm the offender caused but must also, in a symbolic sense, fit the crime. While the death penalty might be more severe than the use of chemical castration, the latter might be deemed a more fitting form for sexual offenders.

Non-optional if decreed. Shutterstock

However, this justification of chemical castration, and the argument from general deterrence, both turn on a contentious issue that lies at the heart of a deep moral question regarding sexual offenders.

The theory of retribution holds that criminal offenders deserve to be punished. This relies on the assumption that offenders are morally responsible for their crimes. In a similar vein, the claim that increasingly severe punishments will act as an effective general deterrent assumes that they will influence an individual's decision about whether to commit acts of sexual violence.

However, these assumptions lie in tension with the thought that some sexual offenders suffer from a mental disorder that causes them to act on the basis of compulsive desires. These desires may not be sensitive to rational disincentives, and some might argue that individuals are not morally responsible for acts motivated by compulsive desires.

We can't settle these complex issues here. However, the rehabilitative justification of chemical castration is a stronger justification for these punishments. If Indonesia has legalised chemical castration in order to reduce offending, this may be plausible on the grounds of individual rehabilitation, but we need more evidence to establish that it will be effective as a general deterrent, and more philosophy to establish whether it should be used for retribution.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why Is Chemical Castration Being Used on Sex Offenders in Some Countries?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How do such interventions fit in the criminal justice system? Are they likely to be successful? Following a horrific act of sexual violence against a 14-year-old girl, the president of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, recently signed a decree into law, which, among other things, authorised the death penalty for convicted child sex offenders, and also the use of chemical castration of such offenders.The main justification cited by Widodo was that castration would act as a deterrent.

# data[].attributes.body
Protecting Society against Crime. The Treatment of Crime and the Criminal

# data[].attributes.body
SC prison system, negligent to mentally ill, agrees to reforms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By John Monk
The State

COLUMBIA, S.C. - After years of contentious litigation and negotiations, a tentative agreement has been reached that could sharply upgrade the treatment of an estimated 3,500 mentally ill inmates at the S.C. Department of Corrections.

The agreement in the long-running class action lawsuit is between the South Carolina-based Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities, Inc. and the Department of Corrections, according to a joint press release Wednesday by both parties.

A major feature of the proposed settlement, which still must be approved by a judge, would create an independent process to monitor implementation of the plan that parties to the lawsuit say would transform the culture and performance of SCDC personnel who deal with offenders with serious mental illnesses.

"This is possibly an historic day for justice, one we have been seeking for a decade," said Gloria Prevost, executive director of Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities, Inc, in a prepared statement. "For years we met with stone cold resistance to anything resembling fairness and justice. It was only after Governor Haley appointed Bryan Stirling SCDC director that progress was made. Our many discussions convinced us that the new leadership genuinely desired to do the right thing."

"This settlement marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of another with changes in culture, policy and procedure at SCDC. We will continue the movement towards rehabilitation and comprehensive care for a safer South Carolina," added Bryan P. Stirling, prison director, in a prepared statement.

The agreement establishes measurements that have strict timetables and will be supervised by a panel of independent national experts. The test for satisfaction of the standards is that SCDC would have to achieve and maintain compliance with each component of the plan for at least 18 months.

SCDC will have four years to implement the remedial guidelines.

"This is a critical agreement whose implementation can end a dark chapter in South Carolina history in which offenders with serious mental illnesses were subjected to abject brutality and neglect, much of which was captured on video and shocked the nation when shown in open court," a press release approved by the parties said.

"The evidence in this case has proved that inmates have died in the South Carolina Department of Corrections for lack of basic mental health care, and hundreds more remain substantially at risk for serious injury, mental decompensation and profound, permanent mental illness," Judge Baxley wrote after the trial in 2012.

There will be a one-time cost of $1.7 million for facility upgrades and $7 million annually for mental health staffing, which is being phased in over three years, a press release said.

Wednesday's announcement comes more than two years after S.C. Judge Michael Baxley, after a non-jury trial, found that the state Department of Corrections was so substandard in treating mentally ill inmates that the treatment was unconstitutional and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

"Evidence in this case has proved that inmates have died in the S.C. Department of Corrections lack of basic mental health care," Judge Michael Baxley wrote in his 45-page order, filed in January 2014.

Baxley, of Hartsville, called the lawsuit "the most troubling" of the 70,000 cases he has handled in his 14 years on the bench.

"Hundreds more remain substantially at risk for serious physical injury, mental decompensation, and profound, permanent mental illness," wrote Baxley. He cited numerous individual cases as evidence of "a system that is inherently flawed in many respects, understaffed, underfunded and inadequate."

He found that evidence in the case showed that for more than 10 years, the state prison system has known "its mental health program is systemically deficient and exposes seriously mentally ill inmates to a substantial risk of serious harm."

The settlement had its origins in a class action lawsuit filed in 2005 in circuit court in Richland County. Several prison inmates -identified only by their initials as well as Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities - brought the lawsuit.

"We are now eight years into this litigation. Rather than accept the obvious at some point and come forward in a meaningful way to try and improve its mental healthy system, Defendants have fought this case tooth and nail - on the facts, on the law, on the constitutional issues," Baxley wrote.

"The hundreds of thousands of tax dollars spent defending this lawsuit, at trial and most likely now on appeal, would be better expended to improve mental health services delivery at SCDC."

It could not be learned how much taxpayer money was spent fighting the lawsuit. Prison officials hired the Columbia law firm of Davidson & Lindemann to defend the agency. Agency private lawyers had contended at trial that any abuses cited by the plaintiffs were extreme and that the court did not have the authority to tell the state prison system what to do.

The lawsuit did not seek damages, but only to force the state prison department to develop and fund a "reasonable and adequate system for the mental health care of inmates suffering from mental illness," according to a complaint in the case.

There were no immediate estimates on how much it would cost the state to upgrade treatment for seriously mentally ill inmates.

The judge's order marks a clear turning point of a 11-year legal saga for prisoners and Protection and Advocacy for People With Disabilities, who brought the suit, as well as for Columbia's Nelson Mullins law firm, which has handled the case for free.

The case is apparently the most sweeping legal victory for inmates' rights in South Carolina since the case of inmate Gary Wayne Nelson vs. Leeke in the early 1980s.

At that time, Nelson's class action lawsuit in federal court forced the overcrowded state prison system to sharply upgrade conditions in sleeping areas, build new prisons, limit overcrowding, improve staffing and upgrade health services, fire safety and sanitation. Following that lawsuit, the state spent more than $200 million to build five prisons and make other substantial upgrades.

The state had long resisted improvements before the Nelson verdict.

The mental illness case actually began in 2002, when Nelson Mullins lawyers were approached by the Protection and Advocacy group and the Death Penalty Resources Center, both of which had clients suffering from mental illness who were in the prison system.

In 2005, Nelson Mullins filed suit on behalf of several inmates and the Protection and Advocacy group.

In 2012, the case went to trial. Over five weeks, some 15 inmates and three experts testified for the plaintiffs, and another dozen or so testified for the Department of Corrections.

Over the years, Nelson Mullins estimates, its lawyers and paralegals spent at least 43,000 hours on the case - time that would have cost about $9 million.

Copyright 2016 The State

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
SC prison system, negligent to mentally ill, agrees to reforms

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By John Monk The State COLUMBIA, S.C. - After years of contentious litigation and negotiations, a tentative agreement has been reached that could sharply upgrade the treatment of an estimated 3,500 mentally ill inmates at the S.C. Department of Corrections.

# data[].attributes.body
Correctional Officer and Mentally Ill Inmate

# data[].attributes.body
Mental Illness

# data[].attributes.body
Chemical Castration

# data[].attributes.body
Punishment of Offenders

# data[].attributes.body
Word Summary

# data[].attributes.body
References