Castration for Sex Offenders

* Re “A Sex-Crime Law for the Dark Ages,” Commentary, Sept. 18:

Daniel Tsang states that “chemical castration” for parolees convicted of certain sex crimes after the second offense “will do little to stop sexual assaults against children.” If the reports that this procedure has in fact reduced recidivism of child molesters from 80% to 4% in other countries are true, this rhetoric is specious.

As a psychologist I can attest that the human suffering caused by repeated offenses by child molesters and rapists after prior arrests and incarceration is enormous. Our attempts at preventing repeated offenses by punishment and by treatment have been notoriously unsuccessful. To state that “chemical castration” of previous offenders to spare innocent women and children from victimization is “akin to experimentation . . . in Nazi Germany” makes no sense and trivializes the horror of those wartime crimes.

The fact that the new California law would apply only to the worst offenses and the fact that inmates could avoid this procedure under the law simply by not being granted parole is hardly an argument supporting the contention that it represents a “return to the Dark Ages.”

The protection of the innocent from further harm at the hands of compulsive sexual offenders is a higher societal value than “listening to the sexual offender,” whatever that means.

MARVIN S. BEITNER PhD

Fountain Valley