When state Rep. Delisha Boyd of Louisiana read news reports in early May that a man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl was already a registered sex offender who had previously assaulted a 5-year-old girl, she said she couldn’t avoid it. But think about her own family: her mother suffered trauma for much of her life after being raped by a family acquaintance at age 15.
So Ms. Boyd called her friend and fellow Democrat, state Sen. Regina Barrow of Baton Rouge. They promised to push what seemed like a very risky bill, one that would allow judges to order the surgical castration of child sex offenders.
“I said, ‘We have to step up, we have to do something for these kids,’” said Ms. Boyd, who represents New Orleans.
Within two weeks, Boyd and Barrow persuaded their respective chambers, both dominated by Republicans, to approve final passage of the bill on Monday, putting the state on track to become the first to codify such a procedure.
While Louisiana and a handful of other states, including California, Texas and Florida, have long allowed courts to order chemical castration, surgical castration (much more intrusive) propels Louisiana to the forefront of a conversation about a form of punishment that has been more associated with countries, such as Pakistan and Nigeria, with much harsher criminal penalties.
The bill would allow judges to order people who have finished serving sentences for sex crimes against children under 13 to undergo surgical castration within a week of their release from prison. If the prisoner refuses, an additional prison sentence of three to five years could be imposed.
The bill allows the procedure to be ordered for both men and women, through the removal of testicles or ovaries, based on the recommendation of a medical expert appointed by the court.
It now awaits the signature of Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican who took office in January promising to take a tough-on-crime approach. If adopted, it would apply to those convicted of crimes that occurred after August 1.
“We’re talking about babies being raped by someone,” Barrow told lawmakers during a committee meeting in April. “That is unforgivable.”
In some ways, the bill came as a surprise because surgical castration has not been at the top of anyone’s legislative wish list anywhere in the country.
In fact, chemical castration has not been a major problem in recent years either; The last state to enact such a law was Alabama, in 2019, and Louisiana has only had one case in the last decade, according to Boyd.
There is little research to determine the effectiveness of such laws.
In a 2005 article published in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, researchers reviewing medical literature found that chemical castration “reduced testosterone levels and affected sexual deviance.” But they warned that due to their methodology the findings were of “questionable reliability.”
But Louisiana’s law falls into another category entirely, and there’s no evidence to suggest it would help reduce sex crimes against children, said Emily Horowitz, a professor of sociology at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and author of “From Rage to Reason: By “We need sex crime laws based on facts, not fear.”
“This new law is purely vindictive and lacks evidence of effectiveness and targets a despised and powerless population already subject to dozens of draconian post-conviction collateral consequences,” he said. “There is virtually no evidence that increasing punishments has any impact on sexual recidivism.”
National groups focused on prisoners’ rights and sexual crimes questioned whether doctors would violate their Hippocratic oath, based on the principle of “do no harm,” if they performed such court-ordered procedures.
“The idea that, in the name of survivors, we would be mutilating people’s bodies is really an affront to people who have survived sexual violence,” said Amber Vlangas, executive director of the Restorative Action Alliance.
Some groups said they anticipated lawsuits arguing the legislation was unconstitutional, based on the 14th Amendment’s right to privacy as well as the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
“I can assure you we would be prepared,” said Sandy Rozek, spokesperson for the National Association for Sound Sexual Crimes Law. “All we need would be an attorney in Louisiana to partner with us.”
Meanwhile, some lawmakers expressed concern about Louisiana’s history of wrongful convictions and the prospect of racial bias.
“Who does this affect the most?” Rep. Edmond Jordan, a Baton Rouge Democrat who is Black, said during a legislative hearing. “I know he is racially neutral. “I know we say it can apply to anyone, but we all know who it affects.”
Ms. Boyd also sponsored a bill this year that would require a vasectomy procedure for child sex offenders. That measure passed the House but did not come out of a Senate committee.
He said the surgical castration bill would empower women victims of sexual abuse. And she stressed that she hoped it would become a deterrent. In all cases, she said, inmates could choose to stay longer in prison as an alternative.
“Nobody is going to strap you to a gurney and make you do it,” Boyd said.
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