NationStates Jolt Archive

Would requiring chemical castration for convicted sex offenders (rapists, pedophiles, etc.) be acceptable under current U.N. law if done with humane conditions using standard medical procedures?

I would say no, as the effects are more or less proven not to exist and this therefore would still be an act of revenge and undue punishment.

People being forced to be castrated is not a humane condition itself.

- Leila Dostojevski for the Free Land of Cloudy Somewhere

I would be wary of requiring such a punishment given the state of human justice systems. Chemical castration is justified if the convicted party is 100% guilty, and you can guarantee that there are no flaws in the system that would allow a well-financed defense lawyer to beat an overworked prosecutor without the resources to bring a proper verdict.

Unfortunately, it's impossible to achieve that perfection. Just like putting 100 properly convicted criminals means nothing if you kill one innocent, chemically castrating, while effective, would mean nothing if an innocent person slipped through the cracks.

The Nation of New Vinnland feels that those who violate the rights of others forfeit their own.

The Nation of New Vinnland feels that those who violate the rights of others forfeit their own.

Not an uncommon sentiment, but one I think is already legislated upon by the UN under "The Universal Bill of Rights"
Article 4 -- All human beings have the right to be treated equally under the law of any member nation.
Article 5 -- All human beings must not be subjected to torture or to cruel or inhuman treatment or punishment.

It makes no distinction between criminals and innocents, perhaps rightly or otherwise.

The resolution "END BARBARIC PUNISHMENTS" is probably not relevant as it concerns the outlawing and prevention of torturing of witnesses to receive information.

I'd suggest that chemical castration would be acceptable if consent was received, and perhaps the prospect of a reduced sentance.

I would say no, as the effects are more or less proven not to exist and this therefore would still be an act of revenge and undue punishment.

People being forced to be castrated is not a humane condition itself.

- Leila Dostojevski for the Free Land of Cloudy Somewhere

The effects don't exist? Castration = no sex drive = no repeat offenses.
It's has less to do with revenge and more to do with determent and prevention. If anything, it'd help the criminal by removing what got them into trouble in the first place. Kinda like removing a tumor from a cancer patent... sorta.

But the point about flawed justice systems is indeed a valid one... no, wait. Vinnland's justice system is controlled and operated by extremely advanced robots that can scan your mind. Yeah, that's it.

Edit: Let's not forget the nature of such crimes allows for DNA testing, which proves 100% guilt or innocence.

Actually, I remember hearing somewhere that DNA testing is wrong at least 5% of the time. Can't give a source, but I think someone mentioned it on these forums and did have a source.

DNA testing by itself is accurate, provided there are no human mistakes made. Sloppy lab work or uncalibrated machines can bring a false-positive, condeming a man to an irreversible fate because of human error. And that isn't empty spectulation. This kind of thing has happened around the world, and continues to happen in crime labs from Los Angeles to Paris to Moscow to Beijing.

The public has been regaled with stories of the new wonder technology which will solve crime using a single hair or speck of saliva, that will positively identify the criminal with 1 million to 1 certainty, freeing the innocent, condemning the guilty and ushering in a brave new world of crime fighting. Of course the truth is somewhat less spectacular.

The older technology currently used (Restricted Fragment Length Polymorphism or RFLP) is subject to errors in each of its six stages, including the mysterious 'band-shift' which recently resulted in the accidental release of a rapist in NZ, who went on to commit at least three more rapes before retesting with newer technology detected the error.

The newer technology (Polymerase Chain Reaction amplification or PCR) requires better quality, though smaller, samples and extremely high lab standards to be successful. Due to cross contamination between samples from a Christchurch assault scene and two Wellington murder scenes, a NZ man spent four months under police investigation for double murder. Fortunately he had an airtight alibi, he was in Christchurch being assaulted. NZ Justice Minister Phil Goff said of the case "What worried me was that, okay, this was a very clear-cut case where the man couldn't have committed the crimes. Had he been a gang member and lived in Wellington ..."

It needs to be remembered that DNA testing does not produce 'fingerprint' like results positively linking a suspect with a crime scene, rather it produces a statistical probability such as "there is a one in a million chance that a randomly selected person will have a DNA profile as close to the sample as that of the suspect". This may seem conclusive when linking a single suspect to a single crime scene but were someone to be tested against the 15,000 profiles currently in the NSW police database a one in a million chance becomes one in 67. If all of NSW's 8000 prisoners are subjected to such tests it becomes a near certainty, with simple chance indicating that around 120 false positives will result. Should such a test be applied to the Australian population as a whole, the labs would find around 300,000 'culprits' for the 15,000 unsolved crimes.

If the objections are over concern about innocents getting punished by mistake due to human error (or curruption), then I can understand the stance against it. However, if the objections are based on empathy for the criminals, then I have to disagree. Rapists, pedophiles, and the like aren't exactly a basket of newborn kittens. Are such people really worthy of concern and compassion; that which they denied their victims? Also, Cloudy Somewhere stated such procedures would be an "act of revenge". Well, how do we differentiate between justice and revenge?

It isn't a matter of empathy, or sympathy or anything like that. It's just a matter of basic human rights.

Additionally, I am strongly of the belief that even the most horrific criminals have a chance of reforming and becoming a new person, so a punishment which permanently disfigures them is not constructive, partly because it stops them becoming a "normal" person again, and partly because even if they can reform, they keep suffering the punishment.