Inspired by this thread in GD.
I think most people would prefer a day or two in prison to a flogging, while prefering a flogging to ten years in the big house. What I want to know is, where’s the crossover point?
Edit: I can’t spell or code. Convected?! What kind of word is that. Mods, a little help?
Minding that there’s a difference between jail and prison and the poll options specify the latter, I’ll take the flogging, thanks. I’m a stubborn-willed smartaleck; I’d likely get my ass beaten in a matter of days in the state pen anyway, and I’d rather it come from someone with an active intent to avoid killing me.
Also, I can explain away the results of a flogging to any interested (and as-yet-unaware) parties as a mugging or somesuch; disappearing for a length of time with no forewarning is a bit harder to explain.
Jail? Meh, I can do 2-3 days there. Would suck, sure, but I know a good couple dozen people who’ve done it with no problems. (Used to work in bars, and I have an interesting extended family.) Longer than that, and it’s back to the cane for me.
Also just realised that the option “I’d take a year or more, higher than that - flog me.” doesn’t make sense unless you eliminate the ‘or more’. Oh, and yes - I was using ‘jail’ colloquially to mean the same as prison. Christ, I’m not doing well today. You get the idea anyway.
Flog me. Let’s get this thing over with.
How many lashes? A dozen? Fifty? Five hundred? That will seriously affect my answer. I’d take six lashes over a week in jail - five hundred not so much.
In the article that sparked the GD thread, it talks about 10 lashes being the equivalent of 5 years in prison, so let’s test that hypothesis. Since I again rather stupidly didn’t put longer prison terms on the poll, let’s half that - call it 5 lashes, Starship Trooper style.
Jail. I do not want to be flogged.
In that case, flog away. You specified Starship Trooper style flogging, which implies no permanent damage.
I’m vain enough that it would depend on whether or not the flogging would leave long-term visible scars.
I already have plenty of scars, but the total amount of lashes would make a lot of difference to me.
2 lashes per year?
Yes.
As long as it doesn’t kill me, flog away. Pain is temporary. Wounds heal. You don’t get back time lost in prison.
I’ll take the prison. They can’t take back the flogging if they decide they screwed up, whereas you can be let out of prison early.
That distinction is really only made in the U.S., and the OP uses both words.
I can handle any amount of temporary pain. Assuming it is not life threatening, flog it.
Them are some long odds. I still think it would be better to take a flogging from a professional than be subjected to random, unexpected fights/beatings in prison.
Well, Hell! Didn’t notice the further additions you made in later posts. I originally said 6 months in jail> flogging, but for just 5 lashes? I’m not gonna waste more than a week in the pen.
But you don’t get back the time lost to healing, either, and it generally hurts more. And as mentioned in the other thread you can be disabled as long as six months from a Singapore style beating. And also as mentioned, if you prefer lashes to prison that just means they’ll increase the number of lashes until you change your mind.
A “professional” in this case means a sadist (who else would take the job?) hired for his expertise in maximizing pain.
I’ve had kidney stones, went through a car windshield, been beaten with gun butts, hit, kicked, smashed, fallen, burned, pierced, frostbitten, had about 10 root canals…especially if the case is “no permanent damage”, hell yes, give me flogging. I can take it. I’m not bragging it’ll be a cakewalk or that I’d just blow it off, but I know I’d survive it.
Whereas if you go to prison you have no freaking idea what could happen to you, even if they do overturn your conviction. Maybe you get raped every single day like clockwork for a year or so. Maybe you get beaten worse than the flogging anyhow by an Aryan Nations prison gang. Or maybe even a scenario like “Hey, guess what, you’re not guilty and now you can go free! Shame some bitch stabbed you with an AIDs-infected needle when you didn’t give her your corn bread at lunch one day…oh well!”
Well if the ratio is 2 lashes per year, then the poll options don’t make a lot of sense, as what would a week or a month’s time in the joint pro-rate to?
As for the “professionalism” of the punishment, I am going to picture the equivalent of the Singaporean practice of “caning” as a corporal punishment: a rattan cane of standard size and thickness, wetted down for greater weight and flexibility, treated with antiseptic to prevent infection.
So Michael Fay, the American who was convicted of vandalism in Singapore back in the late 1990s and sentenced to 6 strokes (reduced to four) and was the subject of much debate about his “human rights” and a minor diplomatic brouhaha between SG and the US, could have chosen 3 years (reduced to 2) in prison? In his position I’d have chosen the caning, as even two years is a pretty long time, and as Uncle Rojelio noted, you don’t get that time back.
This. Back when flogging was in fashion, victims sometimes died from it.