[etgryphon]

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I'm saying that sex offenders who re-offend, i.e. they have been convicted and punished and then convicted again, are extremely unlikely to have been convicted for multiple offenses wrongly and also by their re-offending have shown that they are a danger to society if released again. So I would therefore say that castration is an appropriate punishment when that repeat offend criterion has been met.

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I'm not talking about the repeat offenders who almost certainly are guilty. If you're saying that repeat offenders should be castrated because they definitely ARE guilty, you are, by corollary, admitting that other convicted sexual offenders might not be guilty. If you admit that people who are convicted in a court of law, supposedly beyond a reasonable doubt, might not be guilty, do you see how that would throw every conviction into jeopardy?

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This really has to do with the legal definition of "beyond a reasonable doubt" and "beyond any doubt". There is a distinction and the reason for the "reasonable" stipulation. One can look at it in terms of thresholds. The closer you are to zero doubt (i.e. DNA evidence and\or repeat offense) the more leeway you can have in irreversible punishments.

Also, lets say that an innocent person gets unjustly punished. Is that all that bad? Are we looking for a perfect system? Its not going to happen. Stuff happens to supposedly innocent people. Some it unjustly convicted orthers its skiing accidents or whatever...

-Gryph