Yes, but clearly someone who serially passes bad checks is a menace to society (a non-violent menace, but a menace nonetheless). Imprisonment is the right medicine for those people because they need to be removed from society for a little while so that at the very least they’ll stop victimizing others. The hope is that the experience will be so unpleasant that they won’t do it again.
Pravnik, you seem like you might buy the notion of the economic theories of criminal behavior, that criminals weigh the costs and benefits before deciding whether to offend. Does imprisonment really do a better job of addressing that problem than corporal punishment?
Show me any evidence whatsoever that physical violence has any impact upon reoffending.
Then we may start to have a debate, instead of an opinion poll.
This is another simple answer to crime idea that is just intellectually lazy.It is hard work reducing reoffending, you have to deal with lifetimes of poor behaviour, you have to dealw ith deficient personalities, poor education, lack of skills, a lack motivation, congitive deficits and in the case of a number, what can only be described as sheer evil, and yet somehow a few strokes with a bit of bendy wood or rope will magically iron every one of the problems.
Good lord, how stupid.
They say every person has a stupid idea that will ot work, amply demonstrated here.
Casdave, I already made the point earlier that the deterrent effect of the criminal justice system is probably overstated in any case. So forget deterrence. How about retribution? That’s a legitimate goal of any criminal justice regime. If we presuppose that there’s always going to be some minimum level of criminal activity, and that criminals will roll the dice whether the risk is imprisonment or caning, why bear the expense of locking someone up if you don’t believe imprisonment deters and you consider it just as cruel (if not more so) than inflicting physical pain?
Really, I think a large part of the problem is the lifers–why do we let them near the other prisoners? There’s no way they can be a good influence. If we, as a society, have decided that someone is so unstable that they can never function in society ever again, then why on earth are we letting them influence people who are going to go back out into society? The first thing I would do if I was in charge of revamping prison structures would be to build a prison specifically designed for lifers: big, out of the way, with an eye for security and security only. Or maybe even a penal colony. And the only people there would be lifers.
The goal of law enforcement is to get people to live within the confines of the law. Nothing more, nothing less.
Reading this thread a thought occurred to me. Would this change the legal characteristics of police brutality? Right now smacking around a prisoner is generally frowned upon, but is seen as more or less separate from the eventual conviction and punishment of the prisoner. However, if corporal punishment became more standard, then the beating of a prisoner could be thought of as administration of justice without due process. This seems to me to then go to the very root of our justice system, even more so than current rules against police brutality. Also if a suspect was beaten during arrest, would it make sense for the judge to reduce the sentence for “beatings served”?’
There are two sides to this, and so far we’ve only discussed the criminals. What about the people in charge of meting out the punishment? I’ve read accounts by the people whose job it is to administer the lethal injection or turn on the electricity; very many of them are uncomfortable with it, but see it as punishment that is adminstered to the most hard-core of criminals.
Whatever your stance on capital punishment, beating petty thieves or purse-grabbers is different, IMO. What would it do to a person to go to work every day to beat the women who have written bad checks, or grandfathers who lied to the insurance company? What about prostitutes? For some of them, they’re beaten by a pimp if they don’t hook, and beaten by the government if they do. Who would feel comfortable being the person to administer that kind of punishment? I fear that the people who would want such a job are the very last people who should have it.
I guess what I’m thinking aloud here is that “humane punishment” should also mean that the punisher keeps his/her humanity as well.
Simple - leave that to the lifers.
You’re right about this though - I would be very wary of anyone applying for such a job, and it seems unfair to expect regular guards/police or whoever to have to do it on top of their other duties.
What it would do is remove many of them problems associated with locking people up.
Whether the problems it would replace them with are better, or worse, is what we are debating.
Have you any useful ideas, or did you just pop in to mangle the English language?
And prisoners generally don’t get locked up in cells for months on end either. They get time to roam free on the yard or in communal areas. What’s your point?
Why bother beating them in the first place, though? What good will it do? Prison, at least in theory, is supposed to rehabilitate people, teach them how to properly act in society. It is also supposed to sequester away the people who society deems beyond rehabilitation. Corporal punishment would do neither of those things.
We are not debating a policy here, we are gossiping about an opinion and nothing more.
You have no evidence, there is nothing here to dabate of substance, how do you know it will remove the problems associated with locking up offenders when you simply have no evidence at all that it would actually reduce offending?
In truth, you are the one with the straw man, because you are attempting to debate the implementation of something on the basis that it works, when you have no evidence that it does work.
Where have you worked with offenders? Are you a probation officer? Are you a law enforcer? Have you ever had any direct responsibility for rehabilitation, planning or front line working? Have you worked in a prison on behaviour modification programs?
Do you have any qualifiactions in the offender management field? Have you got any experience of social work?
Give us all a clue, from what authority or body of knowledge do you preach?
We have centuries of experience with corporal punishment, it hasn’t worked yet, throughout myriads if societies, and even with the most oppressive administrations, so we have lots of evidence that, up to now, physical violence is at best, of limited use.
So if you do not have experience in the criminal justice field then you are quite entitled to your opinion, but this in no way represents knowledge, so it really is not a debate, it is just gossip.
Um, well, not sure I am seeing your POINT, since obviously, MOST people would probably (I’m guessing based on my own preference) rather endure the relatively brief misery of a beating than 6 mths or more of incarceration. Hell, back when I was in school, the general consensus among kids when offered a choice between “pops” and detention was to get the beating and get it ovedr with. It was almost universally considerd the milder of the penalties for their misbehavior.
But of course, neither punishment DETERED anyone who was prone to misbehave from doing so. And I would argue that giving the out of a beating instead of a longer period of confinement only served to embolden such misbeahvior.
Neither imprisonment or corporal punishment WORKS, overall, because both rely upon an external locus of control rather than the internal locus of control most well-adjusted individuals develop which prevents them from doing crimes because they are, in their reasoning, WRONG, not because they fear getting caught or punished.
Of course, kids who grow up being beaten (or confined to closets, detention centers, prisons, etc…) tend to develop an external locus of control…so much of our society and approach to everything is built on such an approach, from the military to the police/criminal justice system, parenting…
So it could be argued (as I will) that encouraging the use of corporal punishment will simply result, over the long term, in more individuals lacking an internal locus of control. And will do NOTHING to deter crime and actually serve to encourage it among those prone to carry it out, being seen as the lesser of the 2 consequences.
As a parent and a former Child Development professional, it is worth carrying this line of thought over into how we parent/discipline children. Yes, you can beat them or otherwise punish them into momentary submission, but all you are teaching is that the only reason not to commit “crimes” is to avoid external punishment and to not get caught.
And they eventually get bigger than you and have other outlets for their needs…THEN what do you do? Not so easy to throw them over your knee or withold needs then, is it? If by that point you have failed to instill an internal locus of control (SELF control/discipline, which should be the goal of parenting…you are not raising children, you are raising ADULTS) all is lost.
So my answer to the question is sure I’d rather get 20 lashes than 6 mths. But that in no way means it is a good idea to pursue the suggested “reform”. Quite the contrary.
Once again. Do you have anything useful to contribute?
If all you have to say is “this is a stupid thread”, did you really have to post?
And what authority do you have? Until you can show otherwise, I’m assuming I know as much as you do.
Why don’t you tell us why the prison system is so great?
I’m not. I want the punishment for drunk driving to do something to keep these people off the road. Putting them in prison does that. Beating them does not.
But if there is someone who is found guilty of a crime, yet they do not appear to be a threat to society, the current criminal justice system holds out the possibility that they could be sentenced to a fine, time served, or probation, with no beatings at all.
Let’s just fix this misconception right now. Once you have been convicted of a crime, your ability to hold many jobs or vote is threatened, regardless of whether you serve time in prison or not. Being convicted of a crime and being beaten instead of serving in prison does not address this issue at all, so your argument here is completely wrong.
Dingo: You must spank her well, and after you are done with her, you may deal with her as you like… and then… spank me.
All: And me. And me too. And me.
Dingo: Yes. Yes, you must give us all a good spanking.
Dingo: And after the spanking, the oral sex.
Galahad: Well, I could stay a bit longer…
