Memories of the 28th Century

There were good reasons why the adage “spare the rod and spoil the child” has been in use for so long. In isn’t the act of hitting that instills decent behavior; it is the matter of receiving prompt and appropriate punishment. Even those who have been conditioned by their genetic heritage can be amended to some degree, if the treatment is prompt and appropriate. Not only can that help parents to teach their children to mind their manners at home, but thousands of years of experience have shown that school teachers and civil authorities can also improve people’s behavior with corporal punishment.
The United States of America has an incarceration rate that’s about three times the world average; it’s twice the closest competition’s rate. We really won this one, so let’s ease off. There are cheaper and more effective ways of punishing minor offenses, and I don’t mean meting out the death penalty more liberally. I mean corporal punishment.
Yes, I know that corporal punishment has gone the way of the buggy whip, but a return is in order. There are many crimes that deserve punishment, but jail time wouldn’t make sense, and fines couldn’t be collected, and some of these crimes are very appropriate for corporal punishment. Consider minor disorderly conduct, petty theft, prostitution, public intoxication, simple assault, trespass, vandalism, reckless driving, etc. We might also want to include drug offenses as candidates, but it would be better to legalize drugs and tax them.

There are legitimate questions as to the purpose of criminal sentences. There are people who think that the sentences should improve the criminals and other who think that there should be punishments. I am rather old-fashioned on this question; I believe that the purpose of the sentence is to make it less likely that the criminal will offend again. We also want restitution, but if the criminal stops committing crimes, then the sentence will have been successful. Prison keeps them from crime as long as they are in, but prisons are schools for criminals; they learn more and better ways to commit crimes. Fines are O.K., if they are collected, but fines might push a criminal into more crime just to pay. I think that twenty lashes would be more effective in many cases.
It is no crueler than other forms of punishment, and for many thousands of years corporal punishment has been a way to let criminals feel some pain; it might not be the same pain as their victims, but it would fit some crimes quite well.

Corporal punishment would not be appropriate for all crimes, but I can’t think of a better way to punish drunk and disorderly, and it would work even better for some traffic offenses, shoplifting and petty theft, simple assault, and so on. Picture a vandal who smashed windows or spray-painted a building getting five lashes. Can you imagine him doing that much more? And I think that some traffic offenses would be very appropriate to corporal punishment, such as running stop signs, reckless driving, speeding, etc. The punishment for speeding could be adjusted in line with the speed, as is often done with fines now.

Ask yourself. Would you rather take the chance of getting twenty lashes or stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk? I’d rather stop and not suffer the pain of twenty lashes. Apply the same reasoning to other crimes and see how you might react. We can never be sure of the effect that any punishment would have on a given person, but we know that jail and fines don’t stop people from be behavior, and we also know that the crime rates in times past were lower, and in the past corporal punishment was used. It is uncertain whether there is a causal link between the two items. There are many other matters that may be relevant: there are more criminal laws now, and it has become easier to be a criminal. But how many times do you think that a nineteen year old woman would run a red light after she had gotten just two lashes for her first offense?

Even though it would be relatively effective, the whip wouldn’t completely eliminate petty crime. We know that there are people who are looking opportunities to engage in some anti-social activities, and there are plenty of opportunities when there is no chance of being caught.

While the whip would be effective with people and situations like this, I wonder how effective it would be as part of the sentence for fraud when someone took a few hundred people for a hundred thousand each. The knowledge that most people get caught when they do such things should be a better deterrent, but people aren’t completely ration, so the fear of a hundred lashes might help, but there would still have to be financial penalties in such cases.

One thing that would be in question would be the exact sentence. How many lashes or strokes of what whip, cane, or whatever would be used? In the past many different instruments were used and the number of strokes that would be delivered with what kind of thing was a variable. Twenty strokes with a cane or rod is a lot different from twenty lashes with a whip, but there are many kinds of whips.