Should compulsory sterilisation become law?

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After a short discussion in the thread about the French woman who murdered her 3 babies, I thought I'd post this topic.

Should people who are known abusers of children be sterilised? How easy would it be to abuse the system? etc etc

Personally, I think that it should become law. However, to prevent it being abused I think that at least two psychiatrists should be in agreement that the person is likely to re-offend

 

I think it should only be done in cases of irrefutable proof and (realistically) in an instance of a repeat offence to sex offenders and women physically and mentally incapable of having children without doing something awful to them. I also think the process should be voluntary and reversible.

The problem arises in situations where people will introduce "We do this for group X, why not group Y?" and we enter some very tricky ground

 

Yes. Period. It should not need irrefutable proof only removal of reasonable doubt. Irreversable and manditory.

I'm not usually 180° out from you 8 -- I just have zero compassion for people who willingly and intentionally hurt children.

 

What people often fail to realize, is that making someone infertile damages them in ways that aren't immediately apparent. In this case, the people in question can already be considered damaged, but I still think it would create more problems than it solves. Try to think about what a traumatic effect forceful sterilization/castration would have on an already unstable person: You'd be creating a monster! Or an even worse monster in this case...

I was just reading the Whale Wars post today, and i was reminded by this question, about an old ethics course i took. The analogies are surprisingly good, despite it being about animal population control instead of human punishment and prevention.

In the case of psychotic humans, being forcibly sterilized will traumatize them, and make them feel society ('the herd') is against them. You might not realize it, but it would be better to just kill them now.

 

I understand completely, I know if anybody dared touch my child I would be the one to kill them myself. Insane, out of control, whatever, I'd want them struck down.

However the law has to have a dispassioned view in order to remain 'fair' and I was thinking more outside those that just hurt children. I do believe those who hurt children deserve 'special' treatment however, certainly.

 

For aggravated cases of child sexual assault, I believe that sterilisation should be an option. Of course, I think it should be followed 5 minutes later by the death penalty. But as so many people have mentioned, the death penalty is irreversible. What if a mistake is made? Now, in most aggravated cases the evidence is indisputable and the perp doesn't deny what he did, but there have been murder cases wherein later DNA evidence exonerated a convicted murderer. Such could also theoretically happen with a sex offender, which is why I can understand people who feel it should be something reversible.

But to be honest, I've never heard of a decent, upstanding citizen getting railroaded for either murder or aggravated sexual assault. Usually it's dirtbags that this sort of thing happens to, and they are convicted partially based on their lousy repuations. (for example, David Milgaard here in Canada was found not guilty of a murder that he had earlier been convicted for, but it wasn't like he was an upstanding citizen -- he had a list of serious convictions a mile long.)

So, the long and short of it is, kill them. I understand and respect the other side of the argument, but I figure that it'd be cheaper to just kill the slimeballs. If a drug dealer thief accidentally gets killed for the one crime he didn't commit, too effing bad.

 

I totally agree LKD. Although if the sterilisation was done with 2 bricks or some fishing wire then that could be worse than the death penalty!

 

And apparently you have no compassion for those who may be falsely accused. You have to remember that, in the case of child abuse of any kind, where the child is the primary witness (not uncommon), any testimony, especially testimony identifying the abuser, is iffy at best. If you have other eye-witnesses, it's better, though you still have to consider the possibility that they're lying or mistaken. Physical evidence is best, but even that isn't 100%. This is the problem with any kind of irreversible punishment, which the death penalty opponents bring up often. The real issue is the same here.

Ideally, I have no problem with forced sterilization for anyone who has a proven and repeated track record of any kind of child abuse, but the realities of the situation are a little more messy.

 

I do not believe that sterilization would be an effective punishment. I'm sure that our courts would deem it as cruel and unusual.

I do however believe in the effectiveness of the death penalty.

 

Like a captive bolt pistol to the back of the head? Behave like an animal and thus get put down like one?

 

Yeah exactly; if it's humane enough to put down an animal, then it will be humane enough to put down mosters.

It's a tricky situation though; although I support the death penalty, I'm also opposed to unproductively long as well as cruel punishments.
And if you think about it, the mess that is created by a mistaken death penalty is actually less than from a mistaken life imprisonment:
"I'm gonna sue you for millions, for all the years of my life that you took!!!"
"well, you'd better accept our settlement, coz we're charging you for board and lodging!" [seriously, i heard a prison in Britain actually tried this]

Whereas the consequences of a wrong death are more simple:
"We made a big mistake, we're so sorry. If we could undo it, we would"

 

Generally speaking, if the trial is conducted fairly, (meaning the conviction was reversed due to new evidence, not procedural misconduct) I don't think the state is liable. I could be wrong though.

 

No I don't think it will make much of a difference. I doubt it will stop these people and even then the death penalty would be much more efficent in that regard. Not that I support the death penalty either, just saying that if you go for forced sterilisation you might go the whole way and kill the convict while you're at it.

 

I dont think it would solve anything, just probably put other people's children at risk.

 

Cruel from god isn't it, to let us deal with these king of things ourselves.

 

I agree with most here that forced sterilisation would be the equivalent of the death penalty in its irreversability. I'm strongly against the death penalty and so, I'm strongly against forced sterilisation.

Yes, errors can happen in court (and not only criminals can be mistaken for a crime. Ever see Shawshank Redmption? haha). But there are also circumstances that make such a ruling difficult. For example, you have someone who is suffering from a mental disease (the original post talk about poeple being unfit as parents). Would you take that person's right to procreate in the event he forgets to take his medication?

All I'm saying is that something irreversable is unthinkable as there is so many elements in the context. Better to have stronger social bodies that tag and investigate 'unfit' parents.

 

The problem with forced sterilization as a punishment is that the crimes they commit, while the sexual component is a significant one therein, are not merely dependent on having a sex drive. As I have said many times, rape is not merely a sex crime -- it is primarily a crime of control and domination, as in "I have so much control over you that I can take something of great value from you. I can take that which is most precious and make you feel weak and powerless. Making you feel that way makes me feel powerful and strong."

Castration won't make those feelings go away in these sickos. It'll stop them from using their penises on unwilling victims, but these sick bastards will just use a foreign object or something similar. That sort of thing will feed their demons.

So they should be incarcerated in solitary confinement even if we castrate them. At the frigging least.

 

It actually depends on where you live coin. In NC, the most you can sue the state for(for locking you up when you are innocent) is $10,000/year that you are imprisoned.
The only reason that i know this is that a former girlfriends sisters husband spent 9 years in prison because their daughter said that he sexually abused her when she was 15. Long story short, she finally got the mental help she needed & admitted that not only wasn't she raped but she had spent the night partying with her boyfriend. When the police finally tracked him down he corroborated her story.
He got $90,000. for 9 years of his life

 

Hm, I'd be more interested of finding a neurosurgical solution for the permanently ill.

If you're a repeated offender, you don't deserve death. Modifying their behaviour neurosurgically would be a monstrous solution, but think of the benefits!

Zombies!

 

Yes, zombies!

They would make great house cleaners and cart stackers in parking lots of stores...