Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

Dear Donald Tusk,

As Prime Minister of Poland you probably aren’t used to causing a stir in the British media but the recent passing of a law making it compulsory for paedophiles convicted of raping children under the age of 15 years or a close relative to undergo chemical castration on their release from prison has done precisely that.  While the pros and cons of such a stance are clear enough, I feel compelled to support you.

“The purpose of this action is to improve the mental health of the convict, to lower his libido and thereby to reduce the risk of another crime being committed by the same person,” your government said in a statement.  Not unsurprisingly, the move drew criticism from human rights groups.  “Introducing any mandatory treatment raises doubts as such a requirement is never reasonable and life can always produce cases that lawmakers could never have even dreamt of,” said Piotr Kladoczny from the Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights.  Even so, the law was approved by an overwhelming majority of 400 with 1 vote against and 2 abstentions in Poland’s 460-seat lower house of parliament.  The bill, which also increases prison sentences for rape and incest, must still be approved by the upper chamber of parliament but you view this as a formality as your Civic Platform party holds a majority of its 100 seats.  You had first raised the issue of chemical castration for convicted paedophiles a year ago, after a 45-year-old man was charged with having raped and held his 21-year-old daughter captive for six years.  The young woman gave birth to two children, in 2005 and 2007, allegedly the result of having been raped.  “I want … to introduce in Poland the most rigorous law possible regarding criminals who rape children,” you said at the time, and you weren’t kidding.

I believe that prison is about punishing those who have committed a crime, but I also believe that rehabilitation must be an essential part of a prison sentence because otherwise society is not any safer once the perpetrator has been released.  Unfortunately with paedophiles, while rehabilitation through conventional means (e.g. counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy) is not impossible, it is far from perfect.  To make an accurate prediction of how a paedophile will think and behave in the outside world when they are sitting within prison walls strikes me as a virtually insurmountable obstacle, and on that basis I feel a grudging sense of support for what you are doing.  The Helsinki Foundation of Human Rights are correct when they say that every case is different and having a universally-applied castration policy for sex offenders is crude to say the least.  Interestingly, though, they did not question the effectiveness of a chemical castration policy in reducing libido and reoffending rates.  Since 2000, around 300 patients in Poland’s southern EU neighbour the Czech Republic have undergone voluntary chemical castration, with around 94 undergoing the surgical removal of genitalia on a voluntary basis - although personally I would consider surgery to be a grossly invasive and unnecessarily brutal form of treatment.

The Daily Mail here in the UK would love your approach to sex offenders and I daresay our electorate might be broadly supportive too.  Getting into a strop about human rights is all well and good but releasing dangerous people from prison fully in the knowledge that they pose a risk to others, particularly children, is surely not tenable.  If we can do something to reduce that risk as part of their rehabilitation programme, I see no reason to stand in its way.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory