To me, this is a very interesting question:
Of those offenses commited in Western societies that result in incarceration, short of the most egregious such as murder, rape, etc., what percentage of those could be prevented or reduced if the expected punishment was corporal in nature, and not simply a deprivation of freedom?
Another problem with corporal sanctions is the slippery slope, aka “The Abu Ghraib effect.” Suppose we implement a set of mild physical punishments as an alternative to incarceration. Then we have a strong of rapes/murders/robberies committed by scum who had been hard to laugh about how silly the punishment they’d had was, and how it didn’t bother them at all.
Answer: more and more severe punishment. How long until WE are cutting off people’s hands and stoning them to death?
Also what would it do to people to be the ones who inflict the punishment? I’m sure you could get sadists to do it, but do you WANT them to be the ones? Would it be good for them? Or for non-sadists?
I mean, has it ocurred to you (the OP) that there’s been a move away from corporal punishment in civilized societies for a REASON?
Well said. This is what I had failed to say earlier.
How many lashes would be enough? How about lopping off an ear, a nose, a tongue, an eye? A foot or a hand or a private part? “Physical punishment” covers a wide range of atrociousnesss.
While lopping off the penis as a penalty for rape is very tempting, one has t oconsider what level of barbarity one is willing to let society drop to. What becomes acceptable. What kids are raised knowing is OK and right.
“The death penalty may or may not deter… But it sure cures recidivism!”
My problem with the death penalty has always been that it’s impossible to make good if you later find out the convicted is innocent. At least with imprisonment you can apologize and let them get on with their lives.
This should scare you, kid.
I started right after my 15th birthday. Juvenile by the grace of a judge who thought I could be salvaged (I owe him much).
No bars. Locked fire doors with that wire-enhanced glass. Several small rooms around a common room. Television, no cable (not entirely surprising as it was 1982.
Institutional food, three times a day. About what you’d expect.
Guards were easy-going. They mostly relied on intimidation and the locks to keep us under control.
Other inmates were other stupid kids, mostly torched on drugs and infinitely stupider than I was (trust me on this). I know at least 5 of them died before turning 18.
Pitiful library but I was allowed to have books brought it. Including comic books (thank God for Elfquest).
Exercise room. Yes. All weights in the school. There was also an outside area called ‘The Cage’ where we could play basketball and blacktop volleyball (you don’t dive).
No religious services. But we did get school 5 days a week and some form of tiring recreation on weekends (the aforementioned basketball) and near constant sessions with ‘counselors’ who would try to save us from ourselves.
Don’t steal cars, kids. The gain ain’t worth the potential cost.
Nothing is wrong with it! Especially if it involves whipping! A televised whipping on a scaffold in a public square! But not with an ordinary whip, no, a nice, clean, freshly oiled whip that’s laid across their backs in nice, even strokes until a little blood wells up in the gashes . . . a whip soaked in vinegar . . .
Excuse me, I’m going to go smoke a cigarette.
Interesting. That sounds almost exactly like (or slightly better than) most mental hospitals I’ve been to.
The worst:
Your sterotypical '50s ward. The same wired glass JC mentions everywhere. Cheap, old-style hospital beds. Rooms entirely bare. One rec room with chairs and tables, where you spend all day in group therapy sessions. Communal TV. One bookshelf holding mostly old romance novels. Occasionally doctors come by and pull you aside for personal treatment. Line up for drugs at exactly 9 am and 9 pm. Three institutional meals a day. The nurses are underpaid, and it shows. Lights out at 11, sharp. They check on you every hour.
The best:
Built recently, have the same blue carpet beige walls you find in any newer hospital or office. 2 beds to a room, individual bath. Same rec room setup, but you have couches and nicer chairs. TV with cable. Laundry room. They let you outside into a tiny walled garden (it is in the center of the building), for supervised smoke breaks (patients who can are provided with tobacco and paper to roll cigarettes, and they are everyone’s best friend, unless you know someone who lives nearby and can bring you smokes) for 15 minutes. Most people just go out to get outside. Nurses are quite a bit nicer (though they still suck at taking blood samples). Food is regular hospital fare - not crappy, but nothing to call home about. Schedule is about the same - wake up, breakfast, meds, therapy, lunch, therapy, dinner, meds, sleep. They still check on you constantly.
In both places, the people you deal with… well, it is a mental hospital. You have your suicidals, who usually perk up eventually and are quite normal. You have your schizos, schizo-effectives, bipolar… people wander the halls shouting at things, it can occasionally get violent. I knew one guy who went in to do his laundy, and would put his clothes in - the ones he was wearing - then walk around naked. They sedate you pretty well, but at night you can sometimes hear people crying and yelling. In general, people with mental disorders are very annoying. 
Lots of yelling and just random behavior. You can never quite settle down, and you can never quite know what to expect from someone sitting next to you.
For the record, never saw any of them in straight jackets.
I’ve known some people who have stayed there for 2 months. Min is technically 3 days (standard for a 5150 - suicide attempt), but that usually takes a week. Most are around 2-3 weeks. Nothing compared to juvie or prison, but you go in and out of these places. Usually, the people don’t have a means to support themselves, so they move out of the hospitals into group homes or… the street. Though they usually don’t let you out unless you have a support system in place.
I’m sure it is better than prison, though, though I’ve never been there.
Moral of my story is much less appealing than JC’s - if you’re going to kill yourself, don’t miss. Andi f you develop schizophrenia, make sure you’re REALLY nice to your family.
[nitpick]
Not straightjackets. Straitjackets. As in the Straits of Gibraltar and “the strait and narrow path” (not “the straight and narrow path”). Strait, meaning, tight. Sorry. It’s just an error that annoys me because I see it so often.
[/nitpick]
I’m wondering if Skott might have read Starship Troopers and taken it to heart…
Actually, I did read it a while ago, but I had completely forgotten about it. The question came to my mind after reading something about the campaign ads against Dukaks and his so-called “revolving door” paroles as well as thinking back to my childhood punishments (i.e. spanking vs. grounding/sent to my room).
It seems to me that the slippery slope of how hard a punishment to inflict applies not only to physical punishment but to incarceration as well. Most arguements against the former can just as well be applied to the latter. But the infliction physical punishment has come to be seen as “torture”, and we can’t have the government officially sanctioning torture, can we? But to say that prison isn’t torture, for both body and mind, is simply naivity
I’m not saying that violent criminals should be released back into society after, as some one put it, a (relatively) small slap on the wrist. Personally, I would be pro-death penalty for those who have committed murder or rape, but with a 50% accuracy rate in this country, I can’t really support my own convictions.
Quite frankly, in the end, I think that physical punishment is less cruel than prison and that the reasons for having removed it from “civilized” society are bogus.
Perhaps the key to understanding why we don’t have it in modern society is to understand what punishment is. Myself, I see punishment as the consequence of breaking a law, since I would believe that a law without consequence is just a recommendation to society. Others would believe that the point of punishment is to deter that person from breaking the law again and giving an example to others what would happen to them if they broke the law. Another camp believes that punishment should rehabilitate the offender. It is this last that society has seen to be as the “civilized” way of punishing.
Obviously the lines aren’t clearly drawn, since punishment as a consequence of breaking the law could act both as a deterrent and a rehabilitation. In the end, I think the effects would be about the same: some people change for the better, some people stay the same, and some people only get worse. At least with physical punishment, there wouldn’t necessarily be as much people and prison and, at least theoretically, it wouldn’t cost the government as much. And I know that, if it were me, a whipping would send a much stronger message than being couped up for an arbitrary length of time.