Easily avoided. Between each stroke, the condemned will be asked a question such as “how do you like that?” or “ready for another?”
Just another form of enhanced interrogation, which we all know is definitely not torture.
So this is really about the public seeking revenge for behaviour rather than attempting to modify the behaviour of the individual so that they do not re-offend.
Granted, one can adequately argue that prison time really isn’t about rehabilitation of the offender (behaviour modification). While in prison too often criminals may become master criminals so when released any re-offense could be substantially worse. What remains is people are put in prison to keep them away from society, often for periods of time so that any who are eventually released may lack the mental and/or physical ability to reoffend anyway. Some argue that is cruel punishment as well.
As already stated, if an offender has the physical capacity to endure the torture, does that really stop them from re-offending? Maybe in such a tightly control society as Singapore, probably yes. But here in America? Give me a break.
Seems to me if we want to achieve true behavior modification, then it needs to start before the crime is committed. You know, identifying societal problems that often lead to such behavior - adequate housing, food, clothing, education, job prospects. You know, basic necessities of life in a society that values everyone. And yes, there will always be those who don’t make the grade as congenial human beings. Unfortunately America is more attuned to fix something that shouldn’t have been broken again, and again, again, rather that spend the money and time the first time to build it correctly the first time.
It’s my remembrance from the months that I worked in Singapore (about 25 years ago), that the ‘cane’ involved was a bamboo rod that had been repeatedly split on the ‘business end’ until it was more like a very flexible bamboo whip. Offenders who were sentenced to ‘strokes’ were given them in stages as the ‘cane’ literally flayed the skin and also left hundreds (thousands?) of tiny bamboo fibers that irritate like Fiberglas. I was told by a Singaporean (exaggerating for the Ferangi, possibly) that 10 strokes could lay a person up for 6 months. Not quite like your Pa giving you a switchin’ for smoking out behind the barn.
But Czarcasm, every one of the arguments you’ve put forth has that same issue. Two years in prison is easy for some and difficult for others. You’re setting out a difference which makes no difference.
The same applies to the references to ‘torture’ here. I’ve known (in my time as a reporter) many people who have been imprisoned and have referred to it that way, especially those in state or higher security prisons. In what way is it not torture to lock someone away and deny them their freedom to move and associate with their loved ones?
I’m not advocating anything here in terms of flogging vs imprisonment. But I am advocating that our current form of punishment, imprisonment, is not working as a means of rehabilitation and requires some sort of correction or new approach.
Rehabilitation, for political reasons, has very rarely ever been tried in more than name only. We don’t know if it would work on a large scale because the outcry of,“Don’t coddle the criminals!” rings out every time it is proposed. Maybe we would have so many people in prison if we didn’t send them there in the first place. This seems to work elsewhere in the world.
I’m always a bit skeptical of the term “rehabilitation.” Where has it ever been successful? And were it to have any chance at success, we need to separate rehabilitation from incarceration.
Perhaps this objection is too semantic: but prisoners don’t need rehabilitation; they need help! There is a difference. The former term is rooted in paternalistic and pseudo-scientific beliefs in a degenerate criminal type. The latter simply says that if people have housing and healthcare and a job and a family, they are much less likely to commit crime.
Of course it’s hard (morally and politically) to provide this help for criminals when we don’t to provide these necessities to non-criminals.
"Maybe we would have so many people in prison if we didn’t send them there in the first place." I couldn’t agree more!
Also, there are some big differences between criminally sanctioned finite corporal punishment and torture. I don’t condone torture. We torture people because we want something from them. Torture continues till a person breaks. Punishment is legal and ends.
Unless one prisoner has a time-speeding device and the other not, your argument is flawed. The punishment is the same; deprivation of liberty for a set period of time.
As opposed to flogging, which deals out unequal punishment by its nature and the nature of the convicted.
Mr. Moskos, I read your article and it is deeply flawed right from the first paragraph. If(it isn’t a given) prisoners would prefer ten lashes over ten years in prison, it would be immediately brought forth that ten lashes just isn’t enough, and the amount would be raised faster than you could shake a cane. If it is even hinted that one punishment is preferred over the other, “tough on crime” politicians(and those running against them) will propose more caning so the convicted don’t get off easy. You can propose an alternate punishment, but openly proposing one you claim the prisoners would prefer means your proposal is dead in the water.
That’s a ridiculous argument. You wouldn’t expect someone claiming that incarceration is not torture to spend twenty years in prison for no good reason, would you?
The same can be said of imprisonment.
Then why is it that the default sentence for stealing a car isn’t thirty years in prison? Why is the death penalty not common in every state?
Your slippery slope argument isn’t particularly convincing.
Regards,
Shodan
Here’s a simple rebuttal for that silly idea: if flogging is on the books, then the State needs to hire official flagellators. But anyone willing to accept money to beat on someone he doesn’t even know is a brute who should be flogged himself. Catch-22.
20 years is a long time to suffer in order to demonstrate or invalidate one’s opinion. But a flogging’s done in 15 minutes, that’s a small sacrifice FOR SCIENCE ! ;).
You left out the “Choice” factor. If it seems that criminals
- Have a choice and,
- Are always picking the supposedly easy choice then,
- That choice will be toughened.
The way to get around the prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” in the eighth amendment is to see that cruel punishment is usual.
What’s wrong with that? 
Although incarceration is expensive, the increase in the prison population has reduced the crime rate. Since 1980 the prison population has grown from 315,974 to 1,428,187. From 1980 to 2009 the crime rate per 100,000 inhabitants has declined from 5,950.0 to 3,465.5.
http://www.jacksonprogressive.com/issues/lawenforcement/punishment.pdf
Bollocks. The people who wrote the constitution would have considered it neither cruel nor unusual.
I’m all for it in the right circumstances. The idea that imprisonment is damn near the only possible punishment for a wide array of crimes committed by vastly different people strikes me as absurd.
Kid does 30 days in county jail for breaking and entering, and it’s long enough to lose his job, his lease, his girlfriend … and then we act surprised when he goes back to stealing. Beat his ass, embarrass him, and then let him learn a lesson and get on with his life.
You know, the trees moving outside my house make the wind blow, or maybe not.
The essential question needs to be asked: will it work? Will flogging deter criminals from committed crimes? Where’s the data?
Most people, after all, assumed imprisonment would deter people from committing crimes or the death penalty would deter people from committing crimes. But the evidence is inconclusive at best.
Imprisonment does serve one clear purpose: it prevents the prisoners from committing crimes against the public while they are in prison.
They also allowed slavery. They were monsters, not some sort of moral guides.
Because it was impossible to do otherwise. Most of them were at heart abolitonists and believed slavery would die out in a few decades.
And if the increase of the prison population didn’t cause the decline in crime what did? There are very few things that have otherwise changed since then with regards to the justice system and morals of the population,