The law for allowing chemical castration as a possible punishment for child sex offenders has been passed in South Korea. This follows several recent cases of horrific child-molesting cases which have hit the headline news. They are also bringing down the age of the offender from 25 to 19, and the age of the child victim has also been changed from below 13 years of age to inculde below 16 years of age. It will come into effect from July next year. Also, first time offenders are included in those punishable by the new law. What exactly is chemical castration and how is it different from other forms of castration? This article (in Korean) explains it in detail.
A mini-Spoiler Alert of the Korean Film “The Chaser”
Having seen that terrible and frightening film “The Chaser”, which had me quaking in my boots for days, I wonder if any sort of impotence whether induced or not, has much of an effect on the real psychos.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Good on them for lower the offender age and increasing the age of the “child victims”.
however chemical castration is a misnomer and completely reversible when the offender discontinues taking the medicine. (no permanent physical change is wrought in the body).
It lowers the libido and has a decrease in sex drive, but all men, even on chemical castration drugs still have the urge to *****, and still will do it. They just do it less often.
How much less often? Significantly less often? If so, then I’m all in favor.
Chemical castration is a minefield of human rights concerns. You could argue that there are no long-term effects… but every drug has prolonged-use side-effects. “No permanent physical change” – except of course for man-boobs, dick-shrinkage, osteoporosis, and heart problems. No big deal, right? I mean, we’re talking about child molesters and rapists, right? And no one’s ever been falsely convicted of those crimes… right? Right?!?
Why is locking people up in a cell not a human rights concern? If I had a choice between having to take chemical castration drugs indefinitely vs being sent to the slammer for 10+ years, I’d choose the former. I think most others would do so too, which would indicate the high severity of jailtime penalty.
JW
The sex offender, upon conviction, will still be locked up in a cell for a considerable (I hope) period of time. The ‘chemical castration’ occurs after you are released. The idea is to prevent/inhibit the future offenses after the convicted offender has been released.
As to Yuna’s concerns regarding whether it is effective or not – that is a matter that is still widely debated, with many arguing that the evidence (admittedly based on studies of rapist, not pedophiles) points to it being an ineffective means of preventing repeat offenses.
Unless chemical castration involves pouring acid on the offender’s balls, it’s not a strong enough punishment.
It does nothing to address the psychological urges of the criminal. Such a person when confronted with the physical inability to rape will simply turn to the use of foreign objects or worse. Ineffective.
The only sure-fire way to prevent a repeat offence is execution.
I think it would depend on what type of sex offender you are dealing with. Someone who simply has a sexual preference for young people might be greatly assisted by reduced libido. I have no doubt physical castration would greatly decrease the frequency and intensity of their urges. However, someone who has a sadistic sexual fascination would probably be less likely to be helped by physical/chemical castration because here the sadism side of their urges would not be controlled through normal sexual arousal mechanisms. I’m very curious as to the efficacy of this system, especially if it is combined with solid research in to identifying individuals for whom it will work and those for whom it won’t.
This is true of every criminal act. Of course then you run the risk of killing a lot of innocent people. I think several dozen innocent people would have been murdered during the day care sex abuse hysteria of the 80s and early 90s if this were the policy in the U.S.
Why do people persist with the counter-argument to state execution being the death of the innocent? State execution of prisoners is (arguably) amoral as it lowers the instrument of justice to no better than the criminals it supposedly punishes. Isn’t the purpose (not the reality) of punishment to return the criminal to productive society?
No one can forfeit their basic human rights. Not even disgusting predators or enemies of the state.
Come on people. Read your Batman.
Wow. I cannot believe you think sexual assault is a matter of the libido. If this is the prevailing attitude here, now I know why Korea has such difficulty dealing with rape; Refusal to accept the fact that sexual assault is an act of violence.
It has nothing to do with sexual urges. Horniness does not cause rape or paedophilia. The compulsion to assert power and domination using a violent act does.
I don’t understand why chemical castration is even being considered. Anyone who finds pleasure in raping and molesting minors should be thrown in prison for life. (Even if it’s a first offence.) Chemical castration is merely a slap on the wrists when you consider the permanent psychological damage done to the child. Anything less than a life sentence shouldn’t be considered justice at all.
# 9
I have to disagree. Horniness does contribute and enormous amount towards paedophilia.
Sexual assault often is because of unreleased sexual desire and tension.
Remember most children who are molested (etc) are done by people who know them (or know their families) including teachers, uncles, neighbors, family friends etc.
These paedophiles don’t “hurt” the children but do it with the child in a pleasurable way and usually give the child gifts, toys, money etc.
Sexual assault is NOT always an act of violence and it often has to do with sexual urges. Horniness does cause rape or paedophilia.
However, based on what I just said, Chemical castration still won’t fix that problem.
The paedophile is so attracted to young, cute children, that even if they are taking drugs to lower their libido, they will still be attracted to the children and still want to touch, fondle and **** the children.
Their is NO drug yet discovered/invented that can turn a paedophile into a person who is attracted to other adults (instead of children).
And, follow up cases show, that even after a paedophile has been caught and made to take chemical castration medicine, they are still extremely attracted to children and still molest, etc children, just because they love doing it.
The other type of sexual assault of an adult male raping a female or a female adult raping a teenage boy because of a compulsion to assert power and domination using a violent act, cannot be stopped by medicine either.
Hence, Chemical castration is useless regardless of why the person is performing the sexual assault.
The BIGGEST problem in Korea at the moment, is the previous (and still current to a certain degree) lax attitude of parents to allow their children to wander the streets alone, to allow “drunk” strangers to wander into schools until they grab a child whilst everyone just turns their heads and ignores the strangers stalking the schools, and that Korean children have not been taught properly NOT to talk to strangers, and not to get into Strangers cars.
As for adult females in Korea being raped, its once again ignored in Korea. We have all seen abusive boyfriends beating their girlfriends on the street during a drunken argument at night and all spectators standing around just ignore it and look the other way, whilst the boyfriend drags the female off somewhere.
Nobody really even knows if the adult male is a boyfriends or not, they just turn their heads and ignore it.
Attitudes need to change in Korea, before half of these crimes will begin to decrease.
A 34 year old passer-by who witnessed a suspicious looking man who tried to abduct a 13 year old girl has been commended for preventing another possible tragedy. The witness saw from his car, a man trying to coerce and follow a girl when she tried to get away and immediately stopped them and called the police. It turns out that the abductor who first approached the girl pretending to be a teacher, to come with him to “help with the computers” had been previously convicted of child sex abuse in 2005 and had spent 6 months in jail.
Well if 6 months in the slammer didn’t reform him god knows what will.
Uh .. what about a few bullets or even better a loose? I once suggested such to a co-worker in Seoul who told me she had no idea I could be so violent to people who experience mental and emotional stress that make them do these abnormal things. I got a kick out of that.
When was the last time Korea actually used the death penalty anyway for someone who wasn’t a “spy”?
No the purpose of punishment should be to protect law-abiding citizens, i couldn’t care less about the fate awaiting violent criminals, some data seems to point out the fact death penalty does indeed work in lowering violent crime rate and there’s not such a thing as human rights anyway.
Sorry dude Hokuto no Ken, 3×3 Eyes and One Piece account for most of my Weltanschauung
Damnatio ad bestias !
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