Germany urged to end castration for sex offenders

Germany is under pressure from the Council of Europe’s anti-torture committee to do away with surgical castration of sex offenders.

The use of castration to prevent convicted sex criminals reoffending is “quite rare”, with fewer than five cases annually in Germany, but it is an “irreversible intervention ... (that) could easily be considered as amounting to degrading treatment”, the committee said in a report released in Strasbourg, France, today.