The point is that no one would have rioted over King getting an official beating if white people were getting the same punishment for their crimes.
Obviously, if it was some kind of minorities-only punishment, you would have riots, and quite rightly.
I know prison is widely accepted, and that’s my point. Should it be?
I think prison is a *far *more inhumane punishment - you are actually taking a portion of a person’s life away from them. (never mind the fact that they will probably endure more violence inside than the corporal punishment would have entailed in the first place)
Which would you rather - getting 20 lashes, or spending six months in somewhere like Parchman?
I’d take the lashes in a heartbeat.
You presume that it wouldn’t be applied more often and more severely to minorities just like all our other punishments are. You also presume that making it official would prevent rioting, when putting the official stamp of approval on it was what triggered the riots in the first place.
This thread reminds me strongly of the logically inconsistent arguments for torturing accused “terrorists”. Brutality is simultaneously portrayed as no big deal, but at the same time as being powerful enough to break fanatics.
Which is it? Is beating people more humane than prison, or is it going to break the will of people for whole prison isn’t punishment enough?
In my opinion though this is just another example of the hunger for brutality for the sake of brutality. People who push such ideas don’t really care about how effective it is or isn’t, or about the innocence or guilt of their targets; they just want to brutalize people because they get off on it.
Way out of order.
I’m looking at this from the prisoner’s point of view. Suppose you get wrongly arrested (which happens), and the judge offers you 6 months in prison, or twenty lashes. Which would you take?
You mean, the prisoner has been wrongly arrested and wrongly convicted? That is 2 separate fuck-ups. That happens too.
I’d go with the 6 mths and take full advantage of the prison’s gym facilities.
I’ve actually thought about this before, as I think one the reasons that society has so many assholes is that there is insufficient punishment. A quick punishment I think would be a bigger deterrent. That said, I found the idea of escalating so far to corporal punishment to be a bad idea. I’d prefer making more lesser things illegal, and using punishments a few days of hard labor or something.
Note that this is not my ideal punishment: while I’m dreaming, I might as well go for my favorite: some sort of thought transfer, where you feel the exact amount of pain as I did as a result of your actions. People are more strongly motivated to avoid hurting themselves than others, as you can rationalize the latter away.
Except that we live in a society with more punishment, more people in prison than most of the world. I think the opposite is more likely; we have “so many assholes” because we live in a society that gloats over punishing people, praises the virtues of brutality, and sneers at compassion. We raise people to be ruthless and selfish, and then blame everything but our praise of ruthlessness and selfishness when they act that way.
Yup, we aspire to be like those fantastically successful individuals we see on the main stage, while conveniently forgetting that you need a ruthless streak a mile wide, to achieve what they have. Or deliberately cultivating it, in some cases.
Like I said, it depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to take people who have been committing crimes and try to get them to be productive members of society again, I don’t see how whipping them achieves that goal. It doesn’t teach them any skills. It doesn’t teach them anything at all except that violence is the answer. (A lot of them already think this way.)
Some people are not going to reoffend regardless of whether you beat them or imprison them. They comitted a crime for whatever reason but the official punishment is enough. Others are beyond help not matter what you do with them. So this debate is really about the third group, which is people who have broken the law (maybe even repeatedly) but could contribute to society if they had the ability. I can’t estimate the size of any of these groups, but I think there have to be significant numbers of each. And I think actual, functional rehabilitation would deal with that third group a lot better than beating them.
From what I can tell, the U.S. prison system is not good at rehabilitating people. A lot of convicts go in and out over and over again. Does that make whipping a better alternative? I don’t see how. On the other hand if your goal is just vindictiveness, whipping prisoners gets you the result faster and more tangibly than putting them in jail. And it has to be cheaper.
My goal is not vindictiveness.
Please answer:
Which would you rather - getting 20 lashes, or spending six months in somewhere like Parchman?
If we created a cable channel showing live feeds of the punishments on ppv, we could log the credit cards of regular users, and compel them to take counseling.
Again, what’s the point? What makes you think that 20 lashes will work better? And for that matter, what makes you think that the real result of allowing whipping wouldn’t be 20 lashes AND 6 months in prison?
I think the point people are trying to make is that one’s own preference is irrelevant for answering this question. What would you prefer, 20 lashes or two extremely painful shocks to your testicles? 20 lashes or 5 years of your wages being garnished by 10%? Six hours in jail or six hours of tickle fights?
Whatever you choose, the idea that lashes, electric shocks, tickle fights, or wage garnishment is an adequate replacement for the primary purpose of jail – to segregate law breakers from law abiders – is entirely unfounded. You haven’t provided the slightest bit of evidence that beatings or torture are in any way as effective as imprisonment in protecting society.
If we cannot establish to any minimal degree of confidence that beatings actually protect society, then one’s own preference one how one would wish to be punished is entirely irrelevant.
I don’t think I could last six hours of tickle fights!
The main advantage, as far as I can see is that instead of being removed from society unnecessarily, losing your job, and spending months or years locked up with other criminals, learning what they know, practising fighting, etc is that you get punished, and then are free to go and sin no more. You don’t lose your job, it doesn’t ruin your life and it doesn’t make it harder to be a law abiding citizen, which prison does.
Once you’re an ex-con, you can’t vote, can’t get a proper job, etc - none of which is incentive to go on the straight and narrow.
And in terms of seperating actual dangerous criminals from law abiders, you would still need some prisons - but I’d wager the vast majority of prisoners in the US are there unnecessarily.
When I was a kid, I read “Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein. Setting other things aside and looking at his vision for that society I could have lived with it. Still think I could.
Then what’s the goal? Deterring crime? I don’t see how this works better. Doing something more humane? I don’t see it as more humane either.
I don’t know what Parchman is. All I can say is that in spite of the obvious logic of it - take the lashes and get it over with - the corporal punishment sounds a lot more humiliating and that’s a hell of a deterrent.
The goal is punishment without ruining someone’s life via a prison sentence.
Parchman is just one of the US’s more horrible prisons - I just picked that because I figured it was well known. Try Wormwood Scrubs in the UK or Mountjoy Prison in Ireland instead.
I don’t know how much of a deterrent it would be compared to prison. But prison is a terrible solution for most crimes. Bar serial offenders/violent criminals/murderers/rapists, I don’t think anyone should be in prison.
I’m all ears if anyone has another solution (I suggested community service in the OP, but I don’t know about the practicality, or how big a deterrent it would be)
Also, I’m not suggesting a public flogging, just flogger, flogee and an official witness, or something like that.
Ironically, even taking away any considerations of cruel and unusual punishment, brutality, etc., you’re creating an incentive for people to commit crime.
Take theft by check, for example: at my old hometown courthouse they have a number of small time hot check artists that have passed so many bad checks that some lawyers joke that anybody in town who accepts a check from them should be guilty of contributory negligence. Their sentences have to be pretty carefully constructed to make them think twice about doing it again - if they can live high on the hog for six months and furnish their apartment with hot checks and only do a few weeks or months in the slammer when they get caught, they’ve got a pretty decently paying job, so you have to give them enough time to make it not worth their while. If you turn that into 20 lashes and out the same day in return for some free money if they get caught, some will positively jump at the chance. You’ve turned it from punishment into an IMHO hypo: how many lashes would you take for a thousand bucks?
I think you’re underestimating the psychological damage of a government-sanctioned beating.
I agreed with that point earlier. But I don’t think whipping will prevent crime and I don’t see it as more humane. It doesn’t have all the same problems as prison but it has others.
This is a good point.
It doesn’t really solve any problems concerning these people.
I guess after the second or third time, they get locked up - so back to square one.