The front page of the Sun on 22 May was typically subdued. The headline read: “Justice Secretary’s vow: Paedos to be castrated”. Readers of the morning papers would be forgiven for thinking they’d woken up in an alternative universe mirroring the novels of Aldous Huxley or HG Wells. But this is a policy being considered by a Labour government.
A report by the Independent Sentencing Review (chaired by New Statesman columnist and former Conservative Justice Secretary, David Gauke) published this morning calls on the government to build on the evidence base for drugs to “suppress libido” or lower “sexual thoughts”. The government has listened.
The Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood used her statement in the House of Commons this afternoon to announce plans to expand an ongoing pilot which uses voluntary chemical castration on sex offenders in order to limit sexual fantasies and lower their sex drive. The logic is that by suppressing these feelings, offenders will be far less likely to reoffend. Inmates are given two drugs; selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to limit invasive sexual thoughts and anti-androgens which reduce the production of testosterone and limit libido. A trial has been running in prisons in the south-west of England since 2022. The pilot will be expanded to 20 regions of the UK, as part of the Ministry of Justice’s programme of “radical” measures to reduce the number of prisoners across England and Wales by around 9,800 by 2028. Such an undertaking is essential, as my colleague George Eaton pointed out this morning, because when Mahmood took office prisons were operating at 99 per cent capacity.
Expanding access to voluntary chemical castration is clearly one way to do this, but it is a drastic move (and one which, more than any other measure in the review, has caught the headlines). The political calculations behind this are obvious. Rolling out this policy is obviously intended to appeal to a group of voters who want to see Labour crack down on criminals (and who are likely to be heard using the word “nonce” quite profusely – even in polite conversation). Mahmood herself sees potential in such a policy. In her speech to the Commons, the Justice Secretary went one step further, telling gathered MPs that she will consider whether the process should be made mandatory for sex offenders in some instances. Chemical castration is already in use in some US states, Poland, Russia, Moldova and Estonia as a compulsory treatment for paedophiles.
It is also, more interestingly, clearly a cover for some of the more liberal measures in the review, such as the expansion of community sentences and ensuring custodial sentences under 12 months are only used in exceptional circumstances. (These, after all, are measures which haven’t garnered quite the same excitement as the government’s plans to castrate paedos).
Even so, this is a cover which could backfire with Labour MPs and party members. It is unlikely to be overly popular among progressives in the Parliamentary Labour Party and the wider Labour circle. As one party insider, who is sympathetic to the Starmer project, told me, even if the government doesn’t actually follow through with this – and is just using it as a signal – it still “leaves the massive f**king issue that you think even floating it is good”. With tensions over the party’s direction of travel already simmering after the Prime Minister’s “island of strangers” speech last week, this move is unlikely to provide much relief.
This policy will likely prove popular with the public, especially the Reform-curious parts of the electorate which Labour is currently trying to court. But if the government is serious about its mooted plans to “castrate the paedos”, it’s not voters it will need to win over – it’s the government’s own party.
[See more: Labour has put the EU back on the agenda. Will the party regret it?]
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