Young offenders should not be subjected to pornographic images, in a science-fiction-like procedure, in order to measure their likelihood to reoffend, and the B.C. government was right to suspend the program yesterday.
The B.C. Civil Liberties Association drew attention this month to an article in Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, published last year. The article's authors are with an government agency called Youth Forensic Psychiatric Services, in Burnaby, B.C. They describe one of their programs, using a device called a "penile plethysmograph." As one sample, they studied 132 teenage boys to whose genitals the device was attached in the hope of discovering their "arousal patterns," and thus the probability of sexual-offence recidivism.
The plethysmography process presented highly sexual images to these youths, accompanied by voiceovers, some of which involve rape of small children.
All these youths have been sexual offenders, 89 per cent having been charged with sexual offences, the remaining 11 per cent not having been "formally charged."
The authors believe this is a voluntary survey, but their study does not make clear how many of these youths are under some form of custodial sentence, or have had some such treatment made part of their sentences. In any case, they have all had a brush with the law and are "known to the police." Considering the heightened consciousness in recent times of lack of real consent by minors in other sexual contexts, the notion that young people can really consent to penile plethysmography seems alarmingly naive.
Presumably, the subjects of this study - like the other patients in this treatment program - are troubled youths when they become involved with Youth Forensic Psychiatric Services. Common sense suggests that they would become more disturbed after such a disorienting sexual experience, evocative of the aversion therapy in the novel and film A Clockwork Orange.
Doubtless, YFPS acted with good intentions, but it is hard not to agree with the BCCLA that the application of penile plethysmography to teenagers has itself been abusive. The suspension of the program should be made permanent.