Convicts Offered Reduced Jail Time in Return for Choosing Sterilization

People who are justly outraged at various sexual crimes have claimed that those men who perpetrate such horrific crimes be castrated. We don’t do that. However, what about a man or woman convicted of certain crimes being given a shortened sentence if they agree to voluntary sterilization? Does that make any sense? And what form would it take?

Inmates in White County, Tennessee have been given credit for their jail time if they voluntarily agree to have a vasectomy or birth control implant, a popular new program that is being called “unconstitutional” by the ACLU.

On May 15, 2017 General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield signed a standing order that allows inmates to receive 30 days credit toward jail time if they undergo a birth control procedure.

Women who volunteer to participate in the program are given a free Nexplanon implant in their arm, the implant helps prevent pregnancies for up to four years. Men who volunteer to participate are given a vasectomy, free of charge, by the Tennessee Department of Health.

County officials said that since the program began a few months ago 32 women have gotten the Nexplananon implant and 38 men were waiting to have the vasectomy procedure performed.

Judge Benningfield told NewsChannel 5 that he was trying to break a vicious cycle of repeat offenders who constantly come into his courtroom on drug related charges, subsequently can’t afford child support and have trouble finding jobs.

“I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be burdened with children. This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves,” Judge Benningfield said in an interview.

So these are apparently drug offenders who are being offered this option. It would seem the idea is that drug abusers make bad parents, so perhaps by ending their ability to become parents, the likelihood of their becoming productive citizens somehow improves. This, of course, assumes these offenders will not give up their drug habits which is at the root of the problem.

The district attorney is against the program.

District Attorney Bryant Dunaway, who oversees prosecution of cases in White County is worried the program may be unethical and possibly illegal.

“It’s concerning to me, my office doesn’t support this order,” Dunaway said.

“It’s comprehensible that an 18-year-old gets this done, it can’t get reversed and then that impacts the rest of their life,” he added.

The ACLU, an organization with which we agree about one-percent of the time, is against it as well.

On Wednesday, the ACLU released this statement on the program:

“Offering a so-called ‘choice’ between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional. Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it. Judges play an important role in our community – overseeing individuals’ childbearing capacity should not be part of that role.”

The district attorney makes the best sense. One result of this program is to create situations where young drug abusers give themselves a life sentence of not being able to have children in return for a month less time in jail.

This is not an easy issue. Couples are going to have sex sober, drunk, and while on drugs. Combining sex with a mentally impaired condition resulting from intoxication or drug use is a really bad idea, and the judge’s desire to interrupt that cycle is admirable.

However, it also encourages the situation where a thirty-year old will have to say that he cannot have children because he chose to be sterilized to shorten his jail time on a drug charge by a month when he was twenty.

Source: Nashville News Channel 5

Image: Prison Handbook