Controversial law to surgically castrate child sex offenders in Louisiana could soon be reality

A proposed bill in Louisiana intended to surgically castrate people age 17 and older who are convicted of aggravated assault of a child under 13 years old could soon become law.

The bill is known as Senate Bill 371 and it is sponsored by Louisiana Sen. Regina Barrow, a Democrat. It was passed in the state's House of Representatives roughly a week ago, 74-24 and with few abstentions. The Senate passed the bill 29-9 and now it will be up to Republican Gov. Jeff Landry to sign it or cast it aside with a veto.

It would apply to both men and women.

In Louisiana, chemical castration for a specific set of sexual crimes have been legal since 2008. But under the terms of SB 371, it would empower state judges to sentence certain convicted sex crime defendants to undergo surgical castration or spend another three to five years in prison. Whereas chemical castration involves a patient taking drugs, injections or subcutaneous implants to reduce the impact of their hormone levels while leaving sexual organs intact, surgical castration is a more severe process. It includes removing the testicles or ovaries to stop the production of hormones.

Per the bill, the procedure would be conducted by a licensed health professional and must occur no less than one week before the convicted person's scheduled release from prison.

"Proposed law further provides that if an offender fails to appear or refuses to undergo the procedure, the offender may be charged with failure to comply with the court order and sentenced to imprisonment for between three and five years, without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence," the law states.

The Louisiana legislation is not clear on whether a person who chooses to serve the extra time is allowed to go free without castration of any kind. The bill's sponsor did not return a request for comment to Law&Crime on Thursday, nor did the governor.

The legislation stipulates that the procedure will only be undertaken where "medically appropriate" and adds that it is "contingent upon a determination by a court-appointed medical expert that the defendant is an appropriate candidate for surgery, which determination must be made within 60 days of imposition of sentence."

When the bill came up in the House, the Louisiana Illuminator reported it was only passed after legislators agreed it would be limited to offenders 17 and up.

Rep. Delisha Boyd, a Democrat who championed the legislation in the state House, said the law was meant to protect young people from sexual predators.

"We have to stand and fight for the children," she said.

To emphasize her point, Boyd pointed to a case involving registered sex offender Christopher Francis, a 51-year-old Baton Rouge man who was arrested earlier this month for the alleged rape of a 12-year-old girl in the summer of 2023. The Advocate reported on May 10 that police were not tipped off about the alleged rape until August 2023 and it was not until April of this year that an arrest warrant was issued.

Prosecutors said that long before Francis allegedly raped the 12-year-old, he committed aggravated rape against a 5-year-old in 2007. That charge, however, was downgraded to indecent behavior with a juvenile. It is unclear why, and prosecutors did not immediately return a request for comment. Francis was arrested again in 2022 after he failed to register as a sex offender. He is now facing two counts of first-degree rape and indecent behavior with juveniles.

Proponents of SB 371 say it will stop or greatly reduce sexual predation on children. Its opponents are not so sure.

In 1992, when a Texas man requested surgical castration — and then later changed his mind — following the rape of a 13-year-old girl, it renewed fierce public debate over one of the world's oldest forms of punishment.

A professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine told the Washington Post then that there was a "high degree of folklore about what castration does and doesn't do" and that castration as a treatment option for sex offenders has been "popularized" based on most people's false understanding of how castration works.

Part of the issue with the procedure is its timing. For example, if a man is castrated long after he has entered puberty, he can still get an erection. All that changes is a diminished sex drive since with surgical castration, only his testicles are now missing. Testosterone is still produced in the adrenal glands, though it only a small amount. Surgical castration in a woman would involve the removal of her ovaries since that is where most of the female body's estrogen is produced. But like men, some estrogen also shows up in the adrenal glands.

A special article published for the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law in 2005 found that while surgical castration indicated lower rates of "sexual recidivism," in its conclusion, the authors noted that it wasn't definitive.

The researchers admitted to a "key shortcoming" in its conclusion. The sexual recidivism percentages were calculated "from groups of highly variable castrated sex offenders, whose types of sex offenses and conditions of release were not well specified" and that a "recurrent pattern of sex offending suggests the ingrained nature of deviant sexual interests."

Castration alone "without attendant psychological change," the paper found, "may be insufficient to mitigate sexual recidivism in a person who is in the community and subject to temptations," suggesting that the root of the offender's issue may be in the brain and not in the reproductive organs.

Opponents to the bill, like Louisiana House Rep. Edmond Jordan, a Democrat from Baton Rouge, also compared the law to Jim Crow-era lynchings and castrations of Black men.

Black men are disproportionately incarcerated in the United States and Jordan told his fellow lawmakers when they debated the bill that although they think the legislation is "race neutral," in practice it won't be.

"I know we say it can apply to anybody, but we all know who it affects," he said.

Jordan did not immediately return a request to Law&Crime, but he did say from the floor this week that some human rights organizations have called his office and told him they intend on suing to stop the bill from being enacted.

The Illuminator reported that the state's Department of Corrections and Public Safety estimated the procedure could cost $550 to $680 per offender, though a total predicted annual cost was unavailable.

Currently, besides Louisiana, variations of chemical or surgical castration or both are permitted in Texas, Florida, Montana, Iowa, Alabama and California. The Associated Press reported in 2018 that California was the first state in the nation to pass a chemical castration law in 1996. For a time, Oregon and Georgia allowed for chemical castration but the states repealed those in the mid-2000s.