Why judicial corporal punishment is better than imprisonment
Today we naturally think of imprisonment as more modern and advanced than judicial corporal punishment, but it is not true that imprisonment is always better. The facts clearly show that prison does not rehabilitate or deter much of crime and simply keeps criminals out of circulation while in prison. While the execution of judicial corporal punishment is horrendous and often bloody, the effects of imprisonment are worse. Prison takes criminals away from their families, marriages, jobs, friends, communities, and churches and puts them in an extremely bad moral environment for years. Imprisonment does not provide the benefit of example, because it is hidden behind prison walls. In prison, convicts learn criminal skills, join or rejoin gangs, fight, go crazy or depressed, suffer in solitary confinement, and adopt unhealthy prison values and ways. Most of the time, inmates don’t learn the job and life skills they need to be successful on the outside. After their release, more than half end up back in prison.
All slave systems in history flogged slaves, which shows their effectiveness. Stable nations that use judicial corporal punishment today enjoy significantly lower crime rates than countries that do not. Historically, corporal punishment is outlawed only because it is an unpopular reminder of lower social status. For example, as Saint Paul reminded a Roman soldier, Roman citizens could not be flogged. In most Western countries, it was curtailed or abolished soon after political equality of citizens was achieved: in France after the French Revolution, in Germany after the 1848 revolution, in the United States after the French Revolution. Americana and then more fully after the American Civil War. War. After Great Britain abolished it, its crime rates increased markedly.
Former slaves interviewed as part of the Federal Writers’ Project from 1936 to 1938 confirmed the efficacy of corporal punishment, especially in disciplining young males. Some former slaves said corporal punishment taught them valuable lessons. Former slaves in particular found it necessary and effective. While we often associate flogging with slavery in the United States, General George Washington used it effectively to discipline his mainly white troops. The Continental Congress initially authorized Washington to apply no more than 40 lashes, but in 1776, Washington sought and obtained Congressional authorization to impose 100 lashes. Shortly before the Battle of Yorktown, Washington sought authority to impose 500 lashes. Thomas Jefferson provided “stripes” in a statute he wrote for Virginia. In its early years, the United States dispensed with large-scale penitentiaries.
When carried out in public, corporal punishment provides a much better example than prison time. Determine the crime effectively. Intense pain fills the offender with the desire to avoid future pain. Prison boredom doesn’t convey the same message. Corporal punishment gives offenders an immediate opportunity to change their behavior and join a law-abiding society. Before the imprisoned convicts can reform, they must first endure a clean version of Hell that discourages their improvement and doesn’t impart the skills they’ll need when released.
Judicial corporal punishment is much less expensive and more time consuming than imprisonment. Incarceration burdens taxpayers with expenses for food, clothing, housing, medical care, security, personnel costs, construction expenses, and other burdens. America’s 2.3 million intimates are essentially a large mass of full-fledged welfare recipients. Incarceration takes people out of the productive economy, cages them, and prevents most of them from working productively or efficiently in the private sector. Prison industries are state businesses and typically only make products for state use. There are not enough prison jobs for everyone.
Flogging does not exclude imprisonment. Like prison time, it can be held over the head of the parolee or parolee. But corporal punishment is faster and more flexible. Multiple doses of flogging can be administered in the time it takes to serve a one-year prison sentence. Some criminals will want to “get it over with” and plead guilty, accepting responsibility first.
Judicial corporal punishment will not break up families, marriages, communities, and careers as incarceration does, nor will it increase welfare costs as much as mass incarceration.
Our society abhors the idea of flogging. Rarely portrayed as worthwhile punishment, it is often confused with more arbitrary parental corporal punishment. But the more people learn about modern mass incarceration in the United States, the less they will oppose judicial corporal punishment. Studies applicable to the often arbitrary and abusive parental corporal punishment do not apply to the rational use of judicial corporal punishment. We do not have scientific studies on judicial corporal punishment. All we have is history… and a growing understanding of the social disaster wrought by modern mass incarceration.