DetectableNinja's Tournament: Sex offenders should be sterilized/chemically castrated.

I would like all the reader's to know that chemically castrating an individual will not by any means cure them of their problem. It simply slows the sex drive. I also want to let everyone know that 99% of sexual offenses go unmentioned [1] I have a couple of contentions in order to strengthen my case; therapies, and how they are extremely effective; and Recidivism. C1. Recidivism Let's start by looking at recidivism rates, as told by the United States Department of Justice. Since 1983, the recidivism rate for all sex offenders is 9% [2] Since 2002, the recidivism rate for all sex offenders is only 5.3% [2] As we can see, in recent years it is a relatively small chance for sex offenders to make a repeat offense. To be precise, it's 1 out of 19, instead of the 3 out of 4 my opponent suggests. This leads us to believe that repeat offenses are very rare, and have been mitigated as time has gone on. If less S.O. (sex offenders) are committing repeat offenses, that means that the majority of sex crimes are committed by first time S.O., which cannot be prevented by a post event measure, I.E. chemical castration. Therefore, it is safe to say that chemical castration simply wastes money on S.O. who will NOT make a repeat offense. C2. Costs The costs of chemical castration will be compared to my stance on what should happen to sex offenders, which is therapy; this will be discussed at length later in the round. There is a major problem with chemical castration; it doesn't cure the problem. My opponent said himself that it's a temporary fix. S.O. who have been taken off the treatment have been known to go right back to sexual offenses, showing it to be only helpful while it's administered.[3] This leads me to what everyone is thinking, which is this would need to be implemented indefinitely in order to achieve long term success. "Judges, not doctors or even the convicted sex offender himself, will determine when, or if, the use of the experimental drug can be discontinued." [4] You can imagine now a defendant lobbying for a set amount of years this drug will be administered, which would cause this S.O. to be right back out there. On the other hand, you can have judges that the prosecutor really gets to, and sentences the S.O. for a lifetime of chemical castration, which is more likely the case [4]. Since the majority of sex offenders are of the age 36 [2], and since the average lifespan for an American is 78 [5], we can speculate that this drug will need to be administered for an average of 42 years. Going off of my opponent's costs of $450 a month (the $180 treatment needs to be administered weekly, actually amounting in more costs), we can see the costs for each S.O. for this treatment. The total costs equal $226,800 EACH. This leads me to my next contention C3. Castration fails to treat the psychological roots of sexually deviant behavior. It has been shown that C.C. targets a very small amount of sex offenders. As I have stated, the recidivism rate is only 5.3%. This was shown without the use of C.C. With it, my opponent claims to have gotten that number down to 2%, though his source is an opinionated article. So for a quarter of a million dollars for each Sex Offender, we can get that number down by 3%! OH boy. What I am about to propose will take all that money and stop wasting it on such a minuet decrease, and actually show how we can stop sex offenders at the source. Remember how I stated that 99% of sexual offenses go unreported? Through this method of therapy, it is possible to tell who is a sex offender and who isn't, giving us the opportunity to eliminate a large mass of sexual offenses in the United States, an opportunity that C.C. will never give us. "Some researchers have attempted to answer the problem of assessment by studying patterns of sexual response via penile plethysmography, which measures penile erectile responses to stimuli in the laboratory. Proponents have argued that plethysmography can identify rapists and can differentiate those with the most victims and those who show sadistic behavior. Plethysmography has been successful in identifying child molesters, and in differentiating offenders who use excessive force in their assaults" [6] On top of this... "plethysmography is useful in identifying individuals with high levels of inappropriate arousal and low levels of appropriate arousal...plethysmography can be a helpful adjunct to treatment as well" [6] Once these S.O. are identified, we can move on to therapy, a much more cost effective treatment then chemical castration. Two major types of therapy that have been successful in dealing with sex offenders are operant conditioning and respondent conditioning, both of which greatly reduce the recidivism rates of sex offenders. [7] A. Operant Conditioning Operant conditioning focuses on a reward and punishment strategy, which trains new behaviors in patients. [8] One of these behaviors is problem solving. With this strategy, we can work to establish a higher level of appropriate arousal, which was mentioned earlier as a key to helping cure these S.O. B. Respondent Conditioning Respondent Conditioning uses procedures such as aversion therapy, which is known to reduce rates of recidivism.[8] This type of therapy implements covert sensitization and odor aversion, which both have a large amount of psychiatric science behind them that I will not bore the reader with. However, let it be know that these methods work. On top of these therapies, in 2007, a Texas sex offender treatment program helped drastically in the recidivism of S.O. The rates of repeat offenses dropped by 60%. [9] If we were to take the millions we are going to be spending in chemical castration, and direct it to formulating more advanced stages of therapy and more treatment programs, it isn't unfeasible to suggest that we could potentially eliminate not only the 1% of reported sexual offenses, but the high majority of ALL sexual offenses. The costs of these therapies would be minimal as compared to the cost of chemical castration to be effective. According to the American Journal of Psychiatry, the average costs for 15 sessions of psychiatric help would be $1,331.[10] Now let's say that this goes on for 1-5 years for each patient, and we can all assume that sessions are held weekly. There are about 52 weeks in a year, so that's 52 sessions. This would equal out as follows: 1 year: around $4,500 2 years: around $9,000 3 years: around $13,500 4 years: around $18,000 5 years: around $22,500 Even if you were to say there are multiple sessions a week, everyone can obviously see the large decrease of expenditures from chemical castration to therapeutic methods. |Conclusion| I have shown that a different action would be more beneficial for multiple reasons. Through everything I lobby, we would identify more sexual offenses and we would create a much more cost effective way of dealing with them once found out. Not only this, but through what I advocate, we would be keeping society safer, as opposed to chemical castration, which only keeps them under wrap for as long as it's administered, which is decided under the judges discretion. Sources 1. http://atsa.com... 2. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov... 3. http://serendip.brynmawr.edu... 4. http://www.aclufl.org... 5. http://www.cdc.gov... 6. http://ps.psychiatryonline.org... 7. http://en.wikipedia.org... 8. Rea, J. (2003). Covert Sensitization. The Behavior Analyst Today, 4 (2), 192-201 9. http://en.wikipedia.org... 10. http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org...