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Abstract

Societies around the world have performed castration, in its various forms, on their male and female members for thousands of years, for numerous reasons. Even within the United States, prisoners have been sentenced to castration (as a form of punishment or crime prevention) since the early twentieth century. In recent years, legislatures have perpetuated this practice but with a modern twist. Now, states use chemical injections to castrate their inmates. It turns out, however, that systemic problems plague the chemical castration sentencing regime. These problems arise from the nature of the crimes eligible for chemical castration sentences, the manner of prosecution of the criminals, and the exercise of judicial discretion when selecting the sentence. Therefore, the public, the government, and the criminals themselves have each contributed to the chemical castration sentencing regime's single greatest flaw: the punishment of chemical castration is, in effect, reserved exclusively for use against male offenders. This Note, broken into six parts, discusses the disparate impact of the current chemical castration regime on male offenders and provides insight into why and how the system must change to eliminate or reduce this disparity.

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