Actually I think it may be possible to rehabilitate pedophiles.
Unfortunately the method I believe would work would most likely be considered unethical.
I believe aversion therapy would work it electrodes were inserted in the pedophile’s brain at the pain centers.
The subject would them be shown movies with clips of child porn inserted at random intervals. When the child porn appeared and the subject became aroused the pain centers in his brain would be stimulated.
This therapy would be continued until the subject no longer was aroused by child porn. Basically you teach the pedophile’s brain that sex with children is painful.
The subject would then be introduced to real children in controlled environments (CCTV monitored but so that the subject would be as unaware of the monitoring as possible). Remote electronic monitoring of his arousal state would verify that he was no longer stimulated by children.
This type of reconditioning may take years of treatment and may require periodic repeated reconditioning and testing to remain effective.
Maybe it would work maybe it wouldn’t, but I doubt that my proposal would be approved of by medical ethicist and may by some be considered torture.
But let me say that I do not propose this for Couey. He has killed an innocent child in a most horrendous way and deserves quick and lethal punishment. Jessie Lunsford deserves justice.
Pain/Sex/Pleasure........
Not a deterrent to perverts!
Why should society bear the cost of this rehabilitation? I agree that what you propose would possibly work, but does the benefit to society outweigh the cost?
In manufacturing, you have a certain percentage of defective units. Throw 'em on the scrap pile.
I think that the real solution is for the government, acting on behalf of "society" -- we the people -- to identify and destroy people like Couey early, before he has a chance to destroy an innocent child's life. You know as well as I do that this character has committed similar, if less notorious, acts early in his career.
This should happen in a dispassionate, predictable way. The fact that government does not do this is the reason that every time something like this happens, we always have people expressing helpless rage by proposing gruesome tortures or, even worse, hoping that a prisoner in the general prison population will do what our government should have been done in the first place.