What was Alan turing prosecuted for in 1952?

Answer 1

Turing reported a domestic burglary to the Manchester Police in 1952. Officers visited his home to look for clues, and noticed that the house appeared to be occupied by two men.

Turing acknowledged this, and freely admitted that he was engaged in a homosexual relationship. At the time, sex between two men was illegal, and the Police decided to prosecute him for "Gross Indecency". Before charging him, the Police had no idea that he had done invaluable work on code breaking during World War Two, because the work was classified Top Secret, and his status only came to light when he mentioned it to his solicitor after being charged and remanded, and his file was extracted by a Manchester Special Branch officer. At this point, it was too late to quietly drop the charge, as it was in the public domain.

However, if the Police had known about his work in advance, they would certainly have reported the case directly to Special Branch, who would have contacted MI5 or Military Intelligence, as his illegal activity would have made him a prime blackmail target for the Soviet Intelligence Directorate.

It is possible that Turing thought his ongoing vital work on computers and military-grade cryptography would make him somehow untouchable, but in the event, his prosecution and subsequent conviction ruined his career.

It is not true (as sometimes asserted) that he was forced to undergo "chemical castration". In fact, the standard sentence for homosexual activity in 1952 was a term of penal servitude (imprisonment). The court offered Turing what was seen as a much more lenient option - a course of hormone treatment, designed to reduce his libido. This nowadays appears ludicrous, but in the 1950s it was considered to be at the vanguard of treatments for sex offenders, and much more humane than several months of hard labour in a gloomy prison - the sentence that Oscar Wilde had suffered in a similar case.