Should we bring back corporal punishment for criminals?

[Audley Strange]

Can you have one without the other though?

Is it not pain and fear that deter us, especially in those moments of emotion where much of what we consider crime is committed?

It depends, I think, on an individual's tolerance of such and defence mechanisms at play.

I accept on an intellectual level we are deterred from doing things, but I'm not sure how far that goes. One doesn't put one's hand into a fire because one has the knowlege that it will burn the skin, but rather one has had the experience of burning.

Boredom is subset of frustration, it is therefore like a mental "stress position" that you are making another endure. Fear and Fear of Pain are the same. Is it better to allow people to endure them, as they no doubt endure them for long periods of time in prison. This is an extremely costly and almost entirely negative way of dealing with crime. So how is attacking the physical person temporarily to create a similar outcome, but with less cost and potential short term and long term benefit to the criminal worse?

Imagine it. Let's call it the Blank. A large empty sphere in which you just have to sit for the duration of your sentence. Let say you got caught shoplifting and you have a sentence of 36 hours. However that sentence is only applicable when you are awake. You can sleep as much as you like but it will prolong the sentence and further disorient you. It's a blank space. There is nothing to harm you but your own imagination.

Certainly it's stressful, it is punative, but is such worse than say five whacks with a birch across the arse?

[Trinity]

I hear what you're saying but I guess I'm an idealist in the sense that I wish the powers that be looked at and tackled the causes of re-offending and put in place real strategies to deal with that and not look to trying to fix something which I don't think is fixable without a real compassion and desire to support all members of society.
But that would take a body of people who actually gave a fuck and weren't focussed on how best to get the next vote.

[Audley Strange]

Yes it would. However with the best system in the world you might still get some kid who gets really drunk after his girlfriend leaves him and decides to knock fuck out of someone. The chances of him re-offending are greatly reduced by not allowing him to spend long periods of time with criminals. So for someone like that prison could be causative in a criminal career, so could community service (since they are still networks for criminal organisations). As such would something such as a lash or two not satisfy justice without being detrimental to him and costly to us if they were given the option? I'm not talking about a mandatory sentence.

[Trinity]

I think in that hypothetical case, it is the justice system playing the parent role; this may work but if the guy has a disrespect for authority (psychologically transferred from childhood issues) this is only going to fuel the fire. If the punitive measures worked, one would hope it was because there was a cognition that his behaviour was unacceptable by society's standards and not because it put the fear of bejaysus in him because the latter will not, I think, be conducive to a necessary growth in self awareness.

[Blind groper]

There have been numerous studies into the effect of changing or increasing levels of punishments on convicted criminals. The general result is no reduction in offending. This makes speculation about changing levels of punishment kinda stoopid!

One thing that studies have shown does reduce offending, is to increase the perceived probability of getting caught. A criminal will not be influenced by knowing that his crime now draws a punishment of ten years instead of five. But he will be strongly deterred by the realisation that he is likely to get caught, regardless of whether the punishment is ten or five.

This has been achieved to a large degree by better technology. For example, when video cameras with face recognition technology are installed, and this installation is publicised, then offending goes down.

[JimC]

I think physical punishment lends itself to bravado. I think we need boring, maximum boring. What's the most boring thing you can do to a person over say, a two week period?

If anyone says "solving quadratic equations" I shall get very terse and unpleasant...

[cronus]

I think physical punishment lends itself to bravado. I think we need boring, maximum boring. What's the most boring thing you can do to a person over say, a two week period?

If anyone says "solving quadratic equations" I shall get very terse and unpleasant...

Some of the worst people are good at solving those. Apply a little pressure with some reciprocity theorem work and that'd sort them.

[Tyrannical]

I think some time in the stockade and a few lashes would work miracles for anti-social behavior. For those that do not respond well to that therapy, we have the hangman.

[Hermit]

I think some time in the stockade and a few lashes would work miracles for anti-social behavior. For those that do not respond well to that therapy, we have the hangman.

Like that worked so well in the past.

[cronus]

I think some time in the stockade and a few lashes would work miracles for anti-social behavior. For those that do not respond well to that therapy, we have the hangman.

Like that worked so well in the past.

Hangmen are good. Their humour is the best.

[Tyrannical]

I think some time in the stockade and a few lashes would work miracles for anti-social behavior. For those that do not respond well to that therapy, we have the hangman.

Like that worked so well in the past.

Didn't it? We didn't have costly ineffective over flowing prisons back then.

[NuclMan]

I think some time in the stockade and a few lashes would work miracles for anti-social behavior. For those that do not respond well to that therapy, we have the hangman.

Like that worked so well in the past.

Didn't it? We didn't have costly ineffective over flowing prisons back then.

Justice either.

"A community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime." -Oscar Wilde

[Hermit]

I think some time in the stockade and a few lashes would work miracles for anti-social behavior. For those that do not respond well to that therapy, we have the hangman.

Like that worked so well in the past.

Didn't it? We didn't have costly ineffective over flowing prisons back then.

WTF? Prisons were overflowing well before hangings and lashings were stopped. That's why some of the overflow of prisoners was couped up in coal barges on the Thames, and when that wasn't enough, sent to the penal colonies in Australia, where more hangings and lashings took place, of course. You are talking purely ex recto.

[cronus]

I think some time in the stockade and a few lashes would work miracles for anti-social behavior. For those that do not respond well to that therapy, we have the hangman.

Like that worked so well in the past.

Didn't it? We didn't have costly ineffective over flowing prisons back then.

WTF? Prisons were overflowing well before hangings and lashings were stopped. That's why some of the overflow of prisoners was couped up in coal barges on the Thames, and when that wasn't enough, sent to the penal colonies in Australia, where more hangings and lashings took place, of course. You are talking purely ex recto.

It's a ongoing crisis management - no strict solution, sometimes hanging and sometimes not....arbitrary but call it progress when the hangings stop for a while.