Policies - bio

• Policies include drug treatments, diet,, surgery and eugenics.
• drug treatments are used to treat criminal behaviour by affecting the body’s biochemical processes.
• the drug Antabuse is used in aversion therapy to treat alcoholism. it works by preventing the body from breaking down alcohol, immediately causing unpleasant hangover symptoms.
• heroin addiction leads to addicts committing crime to pay for the drug. methadone is used to treat addicts, as a long-term alternative to heroin or to prevent withdrawal symptoms.
• stilbestrol is used as a form of ‘chemical castration’ that has been used in prisons to treat male sex offenders. it is a female hormone that suppresses testosterone as a way of reducing male sex drive. however, can have serious side effects such as breast development.
• diet can be modified to change anti-social behaviour.
• Gesch et al found that supplementing prisoners diets with vitamins, minerals and fatty acids caused a remarkable reduction in anti-social behaviour.
• vitamin B3 has been used to treat some forms of schizophrenia
• surgery has been used to alter offenders brains or bodies.
• surgical castration of sex offenders has been used in the past in the attempt to change offending behaviour
• a lobotomy is a major procedure that involves cutting the connection between the frontal lobes and the thalamus. it has been used to treat paranoid schizophrenics and sexually motivated and violent criminals.
• eugenics fear that the human race is in danger of ‘degenerating’ because the poor are breeding faster than the higher classes. as a result, the poor are passing on ‘inferior‘ genes more quickly than the higher class are passing on ‘superior’ genes.
• eugenicists argue that the genetically ‘unfit’ should be prevented from breeding. this led to policies such as the compulsory sterilisation of ‘defectives’ such as criminals.
• eugenicists set up pressure groups to campaign for their policies, which were introduced in several countries such as America
• the most extreme case of eugenic policies was the Nazi’s wanting to purify the Aryan master Race by eliminating those they deemed unfit to breed. they sterilised 400,000 people against their will and killed 70,000.