The point is to put them on medication and release them from prison. The suppression drugs are at least temporary.

However, ministers are re-evaluating whether to press ahead with Shabana Mahmood’s pledge to explore mandatory chemical castration of serious sex offenders, such as paedophiles and rapists.

This part is the cruelty is the point part.

Not to defend rapists and paedophiles, but chemical castration was what they did to Alan Turing. The government and the legal system cannot be trusted to implement such harsh punishment and not inflict it on innocents.

And more poignantly, Turing’s castration was voluntary as a condition of his early release.