So to conclude- chemical castration is a red herring. It’s a nice sound byte. It is not a solution, any more than lobotomies were a solution to psychosis. Early warning-sign detection and rapid follow up are solutions. But isn’t it funny how people are willing to have millions spent fighting to castrate rapists rather than spend that money increasing mental health services to help detect at-risk victims and offenders.

This applies here because people cannot understand the environment of the world now, let alone in some thousands of years. Genes that might be maladaptive to society now might eventually mutate into something that is vital for life itself. Combine this with the fact that as you mentioned, the standards of the times prevail. This means that people will selectively remove more and more material from the gene pool, based upon what is unfavorable at the time. There is currently no mechanism to safely add, only to subtract. Isn’t the end result of this the same problems encountered with inbreeding? Homogeneity is fragility in evolution. So to start with, the premise of eugenics as anything but a medicinal treatment for a willing patient has very serious and dangerous implications (for the individual and for society).

Eugenics aside, chemical castration as a useful punishment is debatable. In the US, it is not an approach that is in line with what is considered acceptable as a standard punishment. I would tend to think it falls under the cruel and unusual clause, if coerced. In many other countries, such as those that chop off the hands of thieves, it is very in line with their legal systems. From the US standpoint, I would have to say that forced chemical treatment of any sort that results in permanent damage to bodily organs is objectionable. It requires the assistance of medical professionals to assist, which violates the hypocratic oath- which applies only to the individual patient and not to their relation to society.

So then, there is a medical objection to the practice on those grounds. Secondly there is a practical objection similar to the death penalty. For any irreversible and discrete punishment such as the death penalty, one must be allotted sufficient opportunity to run through appeals. An unwilling prisoner would very likely exhaust all their appeals before undergoing castration. This places an additional burden on the legal system with little obvious benefit, since I have yet to see a study that shows that punishments of any degree of severity actually have significant impacts on sex crime prevalence.

While punishments can reduce recidivism, they have not been shown to decrease risk of offending before capture. This seems to indicate that the failure of the legal system is not about insufficient punishment but on its ability to identify offenders. Psychological study on punishment tends to indicate that increasing the strength of punishment does not generally lead to someone following the rules, but finding more effective ways around them.

Finally, any attempt to compare a what-if for an irreversible physical treatment versus incarceration simply does not make sense. Incarceration is a continuous process, with a specified beginning and end. It has long term effects, but that does not make it immediately comparable to anything else that has long term effects. Castration is discrete. If you want to make a comparison with temporary chemical castration, that is slightly more valid- but since there is little to indicate complete safety in chemical castration then that simply reduces things to a probablistic issue of the same discrete event.

I was commenting on the soft, fuzzy, qualitative standard you invoke in your argument (“cruel and unusual”). Your motives for holding your beliefs are besides the point.

Oh, so my stance is simply a sheepish product of standards in emotional reaction?

demonstrated, monetary compensation would be in order, only difference is one’s time prison ends with them relatively intact

Obviously not, if you count psychological, neurological, or physiological measures.

I am not entirely against the concept of chemical castration if it is offered as an alternative to jail time, but I tend to consider forced drugging and physical mutilation cruel and unusual. I am sure you will probably get into how vague that amendment is, and I will agreed, but that’s what I consider cruel and unusual.

The thing about standards based on emotional reactions is that emotional reactions change. Consider what is considered to be legally obscene now, compared to 50 years ago.

This is especially relevant when soon we won’t have to talk about eugenics at all… we will talk about stem cell therapy [1]

[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/07/03/stem-cell-therapy.html

Criticisms against changes in policy only work when they do do not work as criticisms against existing policy.”

How am I, by default, protecting existing policy?

Well, I don’t know about your policy, but I hear/read Jindal’s legislation does require an addition of jail time, so I don’t know if you could deem it amazing good news.

In the case you demonstrated and the one I demonstrated, monetary compensation would be in order, only difference is one’s time prison ends with them relatively intact once proven innocent (I know you mentioned the default punishment of rape, but measures need to be taken against that that hopefully don’t involve physical mutilation or side effect inducing forced drugging), were as there isn’t an appeals court that can overturn the side effects of one’s drugging without more side effects.

I am not entirely against the concept of chemical castration if it is offered as an alternative to jail time, but I tend to consider forced drugging and physical mutilation cruel and unusual. I am sure you will probably get into how vague that amendment is, and I will agreed, but that’s what I consider cruel and unusual.

What would you do if the Duke Lacross boys were convicted, chemically castrated, and then later proven innocent?

What would you do if the Duke Lacrosse boys were convicted, raped in prison, spent years in prison, and then later proven innocent?

Criticisms against changes in policy only work when they do do not work as criticisms against existing policy.

I know it is such a hypothetical situation, but I am sure the concept of false conviction has ran through your mind at least once?

Does it count as reductio ad Hitlerum if this really is exactly how the Holocaust got started?

Yes.

My Lockean tendencies tell me “increasing the quality of our population” isn’t any concern for the state in the first place anyway, regardless of the great good certain scientists assure us of.

I assume therefore you are against parasite eradication, education, and other activities that increase “human capital”?