More sex offenders will be offered medication and psychological treatment, the Ministry of Justice has said. A pilot project in the south-west of England will be extended to the north-west and north-east.
Why did the ministry announced this in a press release yesterday? The justice secretary David Lammy had already told MPs two days earlier that “medication to manage problematic sexual arousal” would be offered to all prisoners in the future.
These drugs restrain sexual urges in offenders who could pose a risk to the public, and are delivered alongside psychological interventions that target other drivers of offending, including asserting power and control. Although the evidence base is limited, it is positive.
In its report on Tuesday, the BBC obligingly headlined a phrase that was bound to attract readers’ attention. But there is no suggestion that the medication is compulsory or, indeed, permanent in its effects.
The Ministry of Justice is doing its best to divert attention from the more contentious aspects of the Sentencing Bill, which I summarised when it was published by Shabana Mahmood earlier this month. But how well did her successor do on Tuesday when he supported the bill at his first appearance in the Commons as justice secretary? That’s the subject of my latest column for this week’s Law Society Gazette.
I guess its better than nothing but I know that chemical castration is a very temporary fix in dogs: it takes the edge off, but not much more, takes a few weeks to kick in and has to be repeated every few months. So monitoring will be essential and personally I think it must be accompanied by tagging/monitoring, which requires someone i be observing at all times.
Can't find the link to your Gazette column. Digital incompetence perhaps.