Pennsylvania could become the latest state to legalize castration of convicted child sex offenders. Three Republican representatives in the state have introduced a bill to make the change.
Pennsylvania castration
Reps. Marla Brown, Robert Leadbeter, and Ryan Warner introduced the bill, calling it a way to permanently prevent predators from reoffending.
“While rehabilitative programming may assist child predators in managing and controlling deviate sexual impulses, decades of scientific research has established that there is no known cure for pedophilia,” a memo from the trio reads. “Chemical or surgical castration of child rapists will drastically reduce the likelihood that these dangerous predators will reoffend.”
They also talked about the “profound and long-lasting effects” of child abuse on the victims.“Child victims of sexual abuse commonly develop post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, low self-esteem, and emotional dysregulation, which may lead to self-harm, substance abuse, eating disorders, and interpersonal problems,” the memo reads.
It’s unclear if there’s enough support in the Pennsylvania state legislature or with Gov. Josh Shapiro for the initiative to become law.
The bill would allow for both surgical and chemical castration.
What is castration?
“Castration means that the testosterone levels are going to be lowered to pre-pubertal levels,” Dr. Renee Sorrentino, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, told Straight Arrow News. “So, an adult male’s testosterone level is basically going to drop to the level that testosterone is before puberty, which is low.”
There are two ways to do that.
“One is the old-fashioned way, which is surgical castration, which is called an orchiectomy, or removal of the testes,” Sorrentino said. “When that happens, about 95% of testosterone is depleted.”
The other is chemical.
“It’s basically using medications that interfere with the production of testosterone,” Sorrentino said.
Castration laws
If Pennsylvania does legalize castration, they’d be joining numerous other states who allow castration to be used on convicted child sex offenders.
“In general, sex offenders actually recidivated at a low rate,” Sorrentino said. “Depending on the study, it could be anywhere from 9% to 17%. That’s pretty low. But in these surgical castration studies, the recidivism rate really dropped to like 2% in some cases, so that really got everyone focused on looking at testosterone. And then later on, like in the 1940s, medications were started to be introduced to achieve that same effect.”
Meaning the chemical castration achieved similar recidivism rates to surgical.
California became the first state to allow for chemical castration in 1996.
They were later joined by Alabama, Oklahoma, Florida and more.
In 2024, Louisiana became the first state to legalize surgical castration for convicted child sex offenders. Iowa is now considering legalizing surgical castration for predators.
Last year, 37-year-old Thomas McCartney became the first person to agree to surgical castration in Louisiana as part of a plea deal for accusations he tried to rape a 7-year-old girl. He had previously been convicted of aggravated sexual assault in 2011.
Why castration?
“The challenge about mandating a treatment like this is that it’s not one size fits all,” Sorrentino said. “So, individuals who commit sexual offenses are a heterogeneous group. That means they have different reasons or motivations for engaging in the behavior.”
Sorrentino explained that castration works best on sexual predators who have a paraphilic disorder, meaning an intense, persistent sexual focus on certain things. Pedophilia is an example of a paraphilic disorder.
Removing testosterone all but removes the person’s sexual drive.
“Individuals who have paraphilia are more likely to benefit from this treatment than non-paraphilic sexual offenders,” she said. “For example, a sexual offender who is motivated by anti-social orientation. They’re, they’re not going to be affected by manipulation of testosterone.”
There are no nationwide statistics to show many people convicted child sex offenders have been castrated over the last several decades.
“It’s really for those individuals who have a dangerous paraphilic sexual offense,” Sorrentino said. “When I say dangerous, meaning that they haven’t had any success with other more conventional treatments.”
Ethical concerns
Naturally, ethical concerns come with this kind of treatment especially with surgical castration.
First, medications come with side effects and chemical castration is clearly more common.
But most of the concerns come over who is making the decision for castration. A judge? A doctor?
“It should be someone who has experience and knowledge working with this population,” Sorrentino said. “So, if you think about California was the first state to mandate chemical castration, there are not many individuals in the state of California that have this experience and training. So, the question is, who do you want doing this?”
Surgical castration is obviously not reversible. However, chemical castration can be.
“The longer that someone is on this kind of treatment, the longer it takes them to recover,” Sorrentino said. “So, if we’ve had individuals on it for years, it can take that long to have testosterone come back and it may not come depending on how long you’ve been treated.”
