A Tennessee judge is gaining national media attention for his unique incentive offered to inmates upon sentencing: convicts can undergo a free taxpayer funded sterilization procedure and get a 30 day reduction in jail time. Dozens have already taken advantage of the program since Judge Sam Benningfield of White County signed a standing order in May which offers vasectomies for men and a less permanent birth control implant, called Nexplanon, for women. Currently, 38 male and 32 female inmates are signed up for the program which the county district attorney is now seeking to get shut down.
Judge Benningfield described the arrangement's purpose as "breaking 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." The Tennessee Department of Health has reportedly given its approval for the local county program, which is now receiving fierce push back at the local and national levels, prompting a statement from the ACLU, which called an environment of coerced or legally pressured contraception and sterilization "unconstitutional" as a violation of basic individual rights.
White County District Attorney Bryant Dunaway has instructed his staff of prosecutors not to enter into any agreement related to Benningfield's program, and told local Channel 5 News that, "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." Local news presented the judge as innovative and benevolent, merely looking out for the community's interests, yet the endeavor is really nothing new. It actually hearkens back to a dirty little secret of the Progressive Era in America which rarely makes it into school textbooks: states once forced mass sterilization upon tens of thousands of citizens deemed "unfit" to produce families in a nation wide Eugenics movement that Hitler himself learned from.
More at: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-0...rogram-inmates
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