Word: mentality
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...offender and those around him. Thus, in order to honestly evaluate this proposed treatment of pedophiles, it is necessary to ascertain whether chemical castration is intended as a punishment or a cure. This classification in turn rests on the definition of pedophilia as either a crime or a mental disorder . Although many pedophiles are subject to a personality disorder that dictates a sexual preference “for children, boys or girls, or both, usually of prepubertal or early pubertal age,” according to the World Health Organization, others commit the act for emotional reasons...
...criminal code in Poland identifies pedophila as a crime, not a mental disorder, and accordingly punishes with imprisonment. To describe chemical castration as a cure for pedophilia, as has been the recent discourse in Poland, would thus conflict with its Polish juridical definition as a crime. Although criminals may sometimes be re-defined as patients with mental disorders on an individual basis, to combine mental treatment and criminal punishment as standard legal action confounds these two starkly different aspects of the justice system. Thus the proposition of a “cure” for criminal pedophiles is inappropriate...
...Moreover, the notion that pedophilia can be “cured” is misleading. In doing so, it implies that pedophilia, if defined as a mental disorder, is not a permanent state. This contradicts common legislation throughout the developed world, such as Megan’s Law in the United States, which ensures that the public may perpetually identify registered sex offenders after prison release, and affects pedophiles for their entire lives. Such laws holds pedophiles accountable for their past actions, and thus are inconsistent with the notion that pedophilia is simply a mental disorder that can be overcome...
...Poland’s use of chemical castration is also a blatant misuse of medical science. Chemical castration for pedophiles carries the same implications as the prodcedure used to forcibly sterilize mental patients in Sweden as late as the 1970s, and Nazi Germany before. To treat pedophilia as a disease that can be eradicated though superficial- and abusive- treatment reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the roots behind pedophilic crimes. Preventing criminal acts by enforcing chemical control of the mind is an unethical exertion of the methods reserved for mental patients...
...Compulsory chemical castration has no place in the modern world. Its implementation as a so-called “cure” for mental illness violates the morals of medicine and contradicts criminal punishment of pedophiles. Similarly, chemical castration as punishment undermines the foundations of a modern legal system, and is a serious violation of human rights, It is utterly unethical for governments to enforce mandatory chemical castration on pedophiles; the Polish Parliament should reject the proposed legislation...