# why shouldn't sterilization be part of the punishment for certain criminals? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 15, 2002, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075 "2002-07-15T16:18:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/81 "2002-07-22T17:46:34Z")
> [@](#): > > As I see it, our duty to prevent serious harm to children takes precedence over giving the person the benefit of the doubt. I don’t. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure when _I_ am preventing _my own_ troubles (wearing a seatbelt, eating well, wearing shin guards or helmets, etc). So far, as much as I can tell, our society is structured to punish transgression of what it considers wrong, and to discourage transgression in the first place. Now you would have us enact bans on child-bearing. I guess if we can ban one behavior (snorting cocaine) we could ban another (people who have been convicted of such-and-such may not conceive children) by some stretch of existing reasoning. But I still don’t see this as a reason to surgically alter them. > [@](#): > > The point is to prevent there being any abuse at all… Sure it is, I see that. But in this case, I think, the cure is worse than the disease. ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/82 "2002-07-22T21:05:03Z")
and again, won’t prevent what you think it will. PReventing procreation _will not_ prevent any person from being ‘a parental figure’, be it adoptive, shared housing w/the parents, etc. So, it would punish people horrifically for a possible future crime **while not really preventing that future crime** all in all, not a well thought out alternative. ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/83 "2002-07-22T21:33:01Z")
To sum up[ul][_]Won’t change behavior[_]Won’t eliminate the possibility of being a parental figureIs cruel and unusual[/ul] Did i miss anything, **wring** ol’ chum(ette)? ---
**Author:** ![piaffe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@piaffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/piaffe)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/84 "2002-07-22T22:14:14Z")
**wring** , I said above that I assumed it would be obvious that people who would be sterilized on this proposal would also not be allowed to adopt, but it was in a response to someone else (Darwin, I think) so perhaps you missed it. Regarding marrying a person with children, I’m not sure what to do about that case; I’d have to give it more thought than I have time for right now. But, unless it’s the case that all (or almost all) of the people who would be sterilized on my proposal will marry people with children (which I think is false), it _will_ prevent many instances of those people’s parenting children. If, of every 100 people who would be sterilized, 50 go on to marry someone with children, 30 would not have had children anyway if not sterilized, and 20 would have had children if not sterilized, then my proposal prevents 20 instances of parenting children (I think the numbers are more like 30, 5, and 65, but anyway…). To me, that’s enough. So to summarize my responses, as **eris** did for “your” side: [ul] 1. won’t change behavioral tendencies; will prevent many instances of those tendencies being carried out on children, which is the point 2. will sufficiently reduce the likelihood of being a parent and is the most effective way of doing so 3. is not cruel and unusual (ethically speaking, not “as defined by current law”) [/ul] ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2002, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/85 "2002-07-22T22:22:56Z")
“It will prevent…” again, assuming that you’re correct that some one in this scenario will always be a threat _but only to those children whom them supervise_. And I’m finding that impossible to believe. (by the way, you’re also forgetting the other option of some one merely sharing a residence, in/out of a romantic relationship). Nope, sorry, after however many qualifications you’ve attempted etc, I’m still with the basic : if they are that serious of a risk, they should not be out of prison. If they are not that serious of a risk, they shouldn’t be tortured by being foreced to have uneccesary surgery w/o their consent. ---
**Author:** ![kstout6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ce73a5/32.png) [@kstout6](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kstout6)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/86 "2017-07-25T03:36:21Z")
> [@piaffe](#): > > This idea came to mind while thinking about the infamous case of the woman who left her kids in the car while going to have her hair done. It seems to me self evident that 1. this woman does not deserve to have children, and 2. she _should not_ have children because she has demonstrated her lack of fitness to be a parent. Further, I can’t see how our gene pool would suffer a tragic loss if her genes were not passed on. > > Further, as I see it, the same argument can be made about various kinds of criminals (murderers, rapists, child and animal abusers come to mind). If we accept that having children is a privilege and not a right, then there is good reason to deny these people that privilege not only as punishment for them, but because there’s reason to think that they would be pretty terrible parents, and I think we have an obligation to prevent, whenever possible, a child’s having to be raised by terrible parents. > > I don’t think it makes a difference if we think, on the other hand, that having children is a right and not a privilege. Criminals of the above sort have demonstrated by their actions that they both do not deserve that right, and that they are most likely unfit to carry out that right in a manner that will not seriously harm the children they would have. > > Moreover, it seems clear that whatever genetic material contributed to these people’s doing what they did is not such that we shouldn’t prevent it from being passed on, especially given that there are independent arguments (the ones above) against doing so. > > I’m interested to hear what you all think about this idea, particularly if you disagree with it. This is something that I have been fighting a long time. And I may have come to a conclusion that it may not be a feasible punishment. First, reproduction is a very complicated issue, because I don’t really believe it is a right or a privilege, per se. The reason why I am saying it really isn’t either because reproduction generally requires two people, and two people can disagree. A rapist could agree that he has a right to reproduce because that is in his nature, and while reproducing is part of our nature, there is a time and place to do so, and that reproduction has dramatic consequences. Animals rape all the time, but we are not animals, we are something more. If I were to choose between right and privilege, however, I would say that reproduction is more of a right than a privilege. Who is to say that a male panda has the right to mate with a female panda? Well, humans do. We decide for them, and sometimes we try to make decisions for humans as well, but I digress on that. We typically can reproduce spontaneously, but to whom, that is probably the only thing about privilege. We cannot mate with whomever we want, therefore, if you want to mate with someone, and they give you consent to mate with them, then that is a privilege. Because of this, I find it hard to know how we can castrate humans humanely. I don’t think it is a good idea to do so involuntarily, unless there are extreme circumstances. But, I believe we should give the person a choice, to sentence reduction but with sterilization, or normal sentencing. I wish to reduce sex crimes, and violent crimes as well, however, if the person is innocent, but found guilty, and he was castrated, and then was found to be innocent, he could sue for many more millions for state-induced mutilation. Instead of a $90k/year reimbursement, we are looking at a $50 million mandatory payout. No court in the US would ever sentence a person to be mutilated, and could fall under the cruel and unusual punishment clause. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/87 "2017-07-25T04:33:54Z")
I’m curious as to how you came across this fifteen year old thread. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/88 "2017-07-25T07:06:58Z")
Forget being left in a car, this thread is almost old enough for a learner’s permit. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/89 "2017-07-25T13:32:04Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > You must choose your side : either you think drug offenders deserve jail, either you don’t. Drug offenders that commit crimes (beyond using illegal drugs) like theft, rape, and murder deserve jail, those that do not commit crimes do not. I don’t know why that’s a difficult concept for some folks. > [@Ms2001](#): > > I like **mswas** ’s idea. We’d be saving about $50,000 per prisoner per year; we can afford to spend some of that on education, rehabilitation, and maybe even reparations. How ridiculous - if we saved that much per prisoner there’s not a chance in hell it would be spent on education, rehab, or reparations, under the current US society it would be converted into tax cuts for the wealthy. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/90 "2017-07-25T13:42:29Z")
> [@piaffe](#): > > **erislover** , two things: one, I have the impression that tubal ligations and vasectomies are reversible to some extent. No, they’re not, at least the procedure to do so is highly unreliable. Among other things, a man’s body can create antibodies against his sperm after a vasectomy so his own immune system forever destroys the machinery to produce sperm even if you could re-connect the plumbing. The longer the amount of time since the surgery the more likely this is to occur. Your assumption is in error. Tubal ligations and vasectomies should be considered forever permanent. > [@](#): > > Second, even if they aren’t, surely it’s better to mistakenly sterilize someone who doesn’t deserve it than to knowingly permit cretins to inflict their idiocy on innocent children? So, you’re saying it’s OK to punish the innocent in an attempt to get the guilty? Isn’t that the reverse of the principal that it’s better for a guilty man to go free than for an innocent man to lose his freedom? > [@](#): > > Perhaps we could simply store the sperm/eggs of these people so that if we do find that we were mistaken and that their sterilization is irreversible, they could produce their own genetic offspring if they want to. Egg storage is unreliable. Who is going to pay for this storage? If it’s 30 years down the line then would a woman even be able to carry a child to term (again, this punishment is disproportionately harsher for women, requiring major surgery and having greater impact on a “reversal” after the passage of time). > [@Nars\_Glinley](#): > > I’m with piaffe on this one. If a parent can be bad enough at parenting that the state can permanently remove a child from one’s home, why can’t the state also say, “And BTW, you can’t have anymore kids”? Because we had a eugenics movement in the early 20th Century that turned abusive and clearly targeted the poor, minorities, and the otherwise disadvantaged in a bigoted manner. A bunch of people were sterilized for no damn good reason other than they were poor, the wrong color, or some doctor thought “their kind” shouldn’t reproduce. _Babies_ were sterilized, often without parental consent or against the wishes of the parents, often for “reasons” that were later found to be mistaken or incorrect. In other words, we tried that and it turned into a mess. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/91 "2017-07-25T14:33:43Z")
All this talk of undesirables and bad stock is kinda double-edged. A future society where just plain folk rule might decide intelligence, unequal and therefore unfair beauty distribution, a disposition to High Culture, and anything denounced as elitist, were undesirable traits to be ‘removed’. _Pure_ Democracy. Even in previous [puritan — and generally puritans love education, mostly because they love the sound of their own voices] America many working class people aided in their own suppression by rejecting education as unneeded for such as they, and hindering their children from wasting time reading books. And of course, Pol Pot tried to achieve a purely meritocratic happy society where intellectuals were redundant and elitists non-existent. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/92 "2017-07-25T14:40:55Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I’m curious as to how you came across this fifteen year old thread. What a strange question. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/93 "2017-07-25T15:17:05Z")
Was it a question? Incidentally, here’s a story that [was in the papers this week,](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/21/judge-to-inmates-get-sterilized-and-ill-shave-off-jail-time/?utm_term=.9c6bf7c01708) about a judge’s offer to reduce time behind bars for inmates who “volunteer for vasectomies”. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/94 "2017-07-25T16:02:30Z")
I disapprove - saying “if you get a vasectomy you can get out early” is little different than saying “if you refuse to get a vasectomy you’ll be locked up longer”. The “choice” here is not truly a choice and you can’t eliminate a coercive element in the situation. ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/95 "2017-07-25T16:10:53Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Was it a question? > > . Seems to be. Rather like visiting a strange town and having someone pop up beside one whilst sipping a coffee. _“Why are you here, stranger ? What makes you interested in this place ? How long you gonna stay ?”_ ---
**Author:** ![Evan\_Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b487fb/32.png) [@Evan\_Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evan_Drake)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2017, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/96 "2017-07-25T16:15:17Z")
As for the — elected — judge, he seems mentally ill. Prolly qualifying him for a free vasectomy. But from the article I loved the Law blogger’s comment: _Hell, he probably has some phrenology training and knows a genetically predisposed criminal baby when he sees it._ ---
**Author:** ![Thing\_Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2017, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075/97 "2017-07-26T18:46:32Z")
Thought experiment: If you think the State should have the power to prevent bad parents from having more children, even if they want to, do you think it should also have the power to compel good parents to have more children, even if they \*don’t \*want to? If not, what do you see as the difference between the situations? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-shouldnt-sterilization-be-part-of-the-punishment-for-certain-criminals/119075.md?page=4)