Chemical Castration and Male Sex Offenders

For many years, the U.S. has sought to eliminate sexual offenses by treating sexual offenders with various methods such as behavioral modification therapy, relapse prevention and cognitive reconditioning ("Review of the research literature," 2001, p. 5). Since 1981, with the discovery of the effectiveness of specific hormones in reducing testosterone levels in human beings (Berlin & Meinecke, 1981), hormone therapy, known as chemical castration, has been tested extensively on sex offenders. Essentially, the objective of administering these drugs is to reduce the blood serum testosterone levels and lead to a concomitant decrease in sexual arousal and sexual preoccupations. The drugs work by acting on the hypothalamus, thus triggering the release of hormones from the pituitary gland, which controls sperm production. Most significantly, men using these drugs can still enjoy normal sexual activity, while curbing deviant sexual tendencies (Cummings & Buell, 1997).

In recent years, five states have permitted courts to treat recidivist sex offenders with Medroxyprogesterone Acetate (MA), or Depo-Provera--the drug used for the treatment of sex offender in the U.S. For example, California passed a mandatory castration bill that required chemical castration of a second-time sex offender guilty of committing a sex crime against a child below the age of 13. According to this law, sexual offenders would be injected with M

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Thus, even a low reduction of testosterone levels can affect the external behavior of men (p. 2). This study is significant for the use of chemical castration on sex offenders because it assesses the validity of using a low-dose treatment over a long period of time to regulate their sexual behavior. In direct contrast, other research studies have shown that chemical castration does not lower sexual arousal by using other criteria for measuring sexual obsession. In a study by Langevin and others (1979), the researchers measured the penile engorgement (as measured by a plethsymograph) of participants while they watch erotic slides. Although the participants with MA treatment had a 68 percent reduction in testosterone levels, both groups of participants who were treated with either a placebo or MA shared similar patterns of penile engorgement. According to the self-reports of the participants, sexual arousal was reduced during the viewing of the erotic slides. The discrepancy between the measurements of the actual level of arousal (penile engorgement) and the testosterone levels and the self-reports in this study illuminates the problems with experiments that rely on the latter measurements for determining the effectiveness of ch
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