Parliament has passed a new law introducing chemical castration for convicted paedophiles.

The punishment will be mandatory for serial offenders. The decision on a convict’s obligatory chemical castration will be made through a forensic psychiatrist's report requested by the court.

First-time offenders may ask for voluntary chemical castration. This may help them get parole if they are already serving a sentence or a more lenient sentence if they are still being tried. The final decision will be up to the court.

The law, however, would strictly ban suspended sentences for sexual crimes against children under the age of 14. They would be able to ask for parole only after serving at least 80 per cent of their sentence.

There would be much harsher punishment for paedophile offenses committed by the victims' relatives, teachers or employees of supervision institutions for minors. It would not be a mitigating circumstance that a paedophile offender did not know the age of his victim.

“The most important aspect of this law is that it prevents paedophiles from avoiding prison,” Ekaterina Semyonova, from the State Duma committee on family and children's affairs, told RT. “Now, there will be a jail sentence whether or not the paedophile was aware of the victim's age. Suspended sentences are also now less likely.”

The new law comes amid increased concerns over sexual transgressions against minors in Russian society. The number of sexual crimes against the under-age has increased twentyfold since 2005. A staggering 1,300 Russian children suffered from sexual crime involving violence in 2008 and another 5,233 from non-violent sexual crimes.

More than 2,000 people convicted of sexual crimes in 2010 were at large with outstanding convictions, and 500 more re-offended after being released, according to data provided by the Supreme Court Justice Department.

The procedure of chemical castration is carried out using the drug Depo-Provera, which contains synthetic progesterone. The female hormone progesterone lowers the levels of its male counterpart, testosterone, the hormone responsible for sexual desire, effectively reducing the latter.

The scientific community, however, has differing views regarding the drug’s ability to inhibit a paedophile's desire to abuse a child, while its side effects include depression, fatigue, diabetes, and blood clots, which, of course, are not part of the sentence.

“They will have to take pills or receive injections every three months,” blogger and lawyer Anna Levchenko told RT. “We still don't know how to control this process. They could bribe the doctor to say the injection had been administered. Then another crime of this sort is committed and when the police question the convicted paedophile, he will say: ‘It can't have been me!Look at my doctor's note!’And then, in effect, he'll no longer be under suspicion.”