It is a faulty belief that sterilization removes the urges of people to commit the heinous crimes. If you are trying to punish them for their actions and are not worried about repeat crimes, then as parts of the punishment by all means sterilize them. The facts though lie with the brain, even chemical castration has the downside of an intensive drug therapy. Which once a drug is prescribed, we have to trust that the criminal is taking it; as well as the proper monitoring is taken place of these individuals. I am not going to say that these criminals be treated and released upon society again. They should be taken out of society completely by law either by mandatory natural life sentences or capitol punishment.
The problem is that most sexual offenders commit their crimes for reasons other than sexual release. It is a combination of power, control, violence, as well as the sexual that allows them release. When one has so many different factors in their sexual identity removing one will not remove the others. The problem here is the risk of creating a criminal that now is doing these violent crimes without the ability to release and as such his violence and frustration will spiral out of control.
We as as society like to think of ourselves and our neighbors as civilized and as such when there is a beast among us we do not treat them as we should. When a crime is perpetrated against a child than we should, as a collective have such a harsh response that every other potential pedophile rethinks his actions. Psychologist have been trying to cure people with these urges for over twenty years with little or no success. Leaving us again with the problem that if they are cured, then we need to release them from custody, putting children at risk once again!
I see some problems with indefinite confinement as perpetrated by the Adam Walsh Act. Mainly it allows the government to arbitrarily confine someone outside of the court system. We should force our representatives to change the law so no child predator or sexual offender ever be released from incarceration again. No parole, no probation, no compassionate release, they should spend the rest of their lives in prison. That is the way we protect our children. I would offer the death penalty but I feel that it is not an effective deterrent.