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 crime much and simply keeps criminals out of the picture while in prison. While the execution of judicial corporal punishment is horrendous and often bloody, the effects of imprisonment are worse. Prison removes offenders from their families, marriages, jobs, friends, communities, and churches, and places them in an extremely bad moral environment for years. Imprisonment does not provide the benefit of the example, because it is hidden behind prison walls. In prison, convicts learn criminal skills, join or rejoin gangs, fight, become insane or depressed, suffer in solitary confinement, and adopt sick prison values and ways. More often than not, 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 whipped the slaves, which demonstrates their effectiveness. Stable nations that use judicial corporal punishment today enjoy significantly lower crime rates than countries that do not. Historically, corporal punishment is abolished 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 reduced or abolished soon after the 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. American and then more fully after the American Civil War. War. After 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 for disciplining young males. Some former slaves said that corporal punishment taught them valuable lessons. The ex-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 authorization from Congress 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 drafted for Virginia. In its early years, the United States dispensed with large-scale penitentiaries.
When executed 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 pain in the future. The boredom of prison does not convey the same message. Physical punishment gives offenders an immediate opportunity to change their behavior and join a law-abiding society. Before imprisoned convicts can reform, they must first endure a clean version of hell that discourages their improvement and does not impart the abilities they will need when released.
Judicial corporal punishment is much less expensive and time consuming than incarceration. Imprisonment burdens taxpayers with food, clothing, housing, medical care, security, personnel costs, construction costs, and other charges. America’s 2.3 million intimate partners are essentially a large mass of full welfare recipients. Imprisonment 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 owned businesses and typically only make products for state use. There are not enough prison jobs to go around.
Flogging does not exclude imprisonment. Like prison time, it can be held over the head of the person on probation or parole. But corporal punishment is faster and more flexible. Several 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 like incarceration does, nor 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 awareness of the social disaster caused by modern mass incarceration.