(RepublicanDaily.org) – Child sex molesters who are tried and convicted in Louisiana now face the prospect of undergoing surgical castration as a punishment for their crime thanks to a new law signed by the state’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry.
The new measure effectively makes the Pelican State the first in the U.S. to impose such a penalty on criminal child sex offenders. Only a handful of other territories in the world have similar laws, such as Nigeria and the Czech Republic. The law will take effect August 1 this year. States like California, Texas, Florida, and Louisiana have laws in place that allow individuals convicted of certain sexual offenses to be chemically castrated, with the criminal given the option for a surgical procedure. However, Louisiana is the first state that allows a judge to outright impose a penalty of surgical castration against a defendant found guilty of child molestation.
Chemical castration is a non-invasive procedure that involves the administering of testosterone-blocking medication to reduce a person’s sex drive. Surgical castration, however, is much more invasive, and involves the physical and surgical removal of a man’s testicles or a woman’s ovaries.
The law gives judges the authority – at their discretion – to hand down a sentence of surgical castration against a defendant found guilty of committing certain aggravated sex crimes such as incest, molestation, and rape, against victims who are under 13 years old. The imposition of such a sentence will be on a case-to-case basis, as deemed necessary by the presiding judge for the case.
The Bayou State currently has more than 2,000 individuals in jail who have been convicted of sex crimes against children, but the law will only apply to new convictions after August 1 this year.
Criminals who do not show up for the procedure or refuse to undergo the operation face the prospect of anywhere between three to five years in prison added to their sentence.
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