
Bring Back the Lash: Why flogging is more humane than prison. - yummyfajitas
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/mayjune_2011/features/bring_back_the_lash029136.php?page=all
======
enoch_r
For context, rape is so common in prison that _the majority of US rape victims
are male._ [0] Corporal punishment would have to be pretty awful to be more
brutal, humiliating, violent, or vindictive than prison.

[0] [http://nplusonemag.com/raise-the-crime-
rate](http://nplusonemag.com/raise-the-crime-rate)

~~~
lake99
> Corporal punishment would have to be pretty awful to be more brutal,
> humiliating, violent, or vindictive than prison.

 _Would have_? Not really. _Vindictive_? What exactly do you intend to achieve
by putting someone in prison? Revenge?

The fact that these things happen suggests that there is a problem with how
prisons are run now. Full CCTV surveillance of prisons (including toilets)
should solve the problem of rape. If I were ever in prison, I'm sure I
wouldn't mind a camera watch me pinch a loaf, if it meant it's going to keep
me safe from assaults. Even now, the offenders could be chemically castrated.

In any case, these problems arise because prisons prefer to treat prisoners as
animals, rather than work on rehab.

~~~
enoch_r
You may have misunderstood me. I wasn't talking about ideal prisons. I said
that, in order to be more vindictive than prison (meaning, the prison system
as it exists in the US today), corporal punishment would have to be pretty
awful.

In other words, our current system uses prison as a means of punishment and
vengeance. I'm not saying that's a good thing; I'm just saying that corporal
punishment has a very low bar to clear before we can say it's more humane than
the awful status quo. (Yes, rape-free prisons would also be an improvement,
and probably a more realistically achievable improvement, though I disagree
with the methods you suggest.)

~~~
lake99
I see your point. Though I've not made up my mind about corporal punishment
(as a step forward), I am concerned that whip-happy policemen might abuse it
just the way they abuse tasers now.

------
jacquesm
The mother of all false dichotomies here, as if flogging or prisons are the
only options.

You can choose: pay taxes, have a social net to catch people that are left in
bad situations and/or have no way to generate income and have relatively low
crime rates.

Alternatively, you could solve your unemployment problem partially by
criminalizing as much as possible and lock up one part of the population and
have another part stand watch over them, maybe you'll even turn a profit.

In the long run only the first is an option, in the short term the second will
work but replaces humanity with economic arguments.

Flogging is not an alternative to prison, fewer people in prisons is an
alternative.

~~~
vidarh
Did you read the article?

The entire point is to set flogging up as a demonstration of just how extreme
an option prison is (most of us has a visceral reaction to the idea of
flogging - a punishment we tend to associate with backwards dictatorships; yet
the article writer assumes most of us would choose flogging rather than
prison).

The third paragraph explicitly states the purpose is to be provocative.

The last two explicitly points out that if one were to take the suggestion
seriously, then it would serve as a stark demonstration of just how insane the
current system is:

" The lash, which metes out punishment without falsely promising betterment,
is an unequivocal expression of society’s condemnation. For better and for
worse, flogging would air the dirty laundry of race and punishment in America
in a way that prisons—which, by their very design, are removed from
society—can never do. To highlight an injustice is in no way to condone it.
Quite the opposite.

Without a radical defense of flogging, changes to our current defective system
of justice are hard to imagine. The glacial pace of reform promises only the
most minor adjustments to the massive machinery of incarceration. Bringing
back the lash is one way to destroy it—if not completely, then at least for
the millions of Americans for whom the punishment of prison is far, far worse
than the crime they have committed. Yes, flogging may seem brutal and
retrograde, but only because we are in mass denial about the greater brutality
of our supposedly civilized and progressive prisons. "

~~~
jacquesm
You don't think the flogging would be done in the market square do you?

Corporeal punishments were not abolished because they are a way to exemplify
what is wrong with a society but because they are inhumane. Prison can also be
inhumane but you can't successfully attack the prison system by proposing a
barbarian alternative, you need to offer a _better_ option and just
highlighting what's wrong with imprisonment does not in any way address the
underlying issues and those have little to nothing to do with race, even
though there definitely is a bias.

Prison is a means of last resort to remove dangerous entities from society for
a while and to rehabilitate them, even the most civilized countries have them
and for those countries flogging as an alternative is not an option.

The societal wrongs in the USA are not going to be fixed by attacking a
symptom, they need to be fixed by addressing root causes:

\- poverty

\- unemployment

\- drug use / abuse & associated laws (treat drug use as a personal healthcare
issue rather than a criminal one).

All of these are social issues that either lead to crime or that have been
criminalized. Only much later in the chain does the word 'prison' appear and
unless you address those root causes the prisons will remain.

Provocative, sure. Practical, no and it isn't going to convince any person
that still needs convincing.

What will work to convince people that this is not the way is to show the
benefits to society as a whole from walking a different path, as long as those
that make the decision are not at risk of suffering the consequences of those
decisions that is very much an uphill battle.

Once drug users and unemployed people make it to the ballots and get elected
you can expect some change in this respect from experience until then you're
going to have to convince the elected officials that they are harming
societies interests as a whole, which is a far more powerful argument than any
medieval style provocative comparison will be able to do. Short term thinking
vs long term thinking. What prisons look like and how they function is
secondary to changing society so people do not have a large chance of ending
in prison in the first place.

~~~
foobarbazqux
I gather you haven't read A Modest Proposal. The overall argument of the
flogging proposal has the same structure, with less satire and more spelling
things out.

[http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html](http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal)

------
digitalengineer
One of the main points the author makes is "There are 2.3 million Americans in
our prisons and jails. That is too many. "

Might I suggest the US _stops putting people in prison for possession of drugs
for personal use_ and a lot of other relative minor offenses?

~~~
epochwolf
That's the proposal. Sentence them to the lash instead of to prison. ;)

Decriminalizing drugs is a good first step.

Back to the topic at hand. A public lashing is probably a better solution for
non-violent crime than prison. Something to think about.

~~~
rbehrends
Or community service or a fine as they do it in other countries?

There are primarily two things that contribute to the high incarceration rate
in the US:

(1) Incarceration for petty offenses. Heck, pre-trial detention contributes a
lot.

(2) Disproportionately long prison sentences.

Corporal punishment isn't a great alternative for either. If anything, it
reinforces the brutality of the existing incarceration regime.

~~~
digitalengineer
Just read up on some data about flogging up until 1954, Great Britain.
Memories of criminals about flogging. Interesting read, OP seems to have a
point, some men don't fear prison, it's their natural habitat. They do fear
"The Cat" and changed their behavior accordingly. (scroll to "Only the 'CAT'
holds back the brutes"
[http://www.corpun.com/ukpr5407.htm](http://www.corpun.com/ukpr5407.htm)

~~~
colanderman
_Few men get the "cat" twice. I know only one man who did. [...]_

 _Obviously, the only way to get a message of disapproval into such an obtuse
skull is via the nine whipcord communications lines of the Home Office cat-o
'-nine-tails through the flesh of his shoulders and nerves up to his selfish,
destructive, jungle brain._

Mm, the old anecdote + proof by obviousness. A classic form of scientific
study.

~~~
digitalengineer
Not entirely, this Mr Fabian was one of the world's most famous policemen in
the middle of the 20th century. Robert "Fabian of the Yard" Fabian was the
former chief detective of the (London) Metropolitan Police murder squad, based
at Scotland Yard.

------
tokenadult
There is a third way between the two extremes mentioned in the article kindly
submitted here, and I live in a place with a real-world example of the third
way. The golden mean between the extremes is to use imprisonment only on
convicted criminals who are proven dangerous when out in free society, and to
use noncustodial sentences (community service and the like) for convicted
criminals who are not particularly dangerous. Minnesota, where I live, does
this. Minnesota pioneered determinate sentencing based on severity of the
crime and the offender's criminal history[1] and Minnesota has three decades
of history with declining to imprison minor drug offenders.[2] A sentencing
guidelines system[3] could do a lot in many states to reduce the number of
convicted criminals actually sentenced to prison, while making conditions
inside the prisons more humane. (Minnesota spends more per prisoner than
almost any other state, while spending LESS per taxpayer than almost any other
state on its prison system. Many of the worst conditions of prison systems in
other states are simply nonexistent in Minnesota.)

I live in a crime-free, safe neighborhood such that my children can roam
freely for miles from my home without worries. My neighbors and I are
confident that a truly dangerous criminal will be apprehended and kept out of
society if need be. Young people who fool around with illegal drugs will be
diverted to drug treatment programs, but are exceedingly unlikely to face
prison time here. We apply criminal punishments to dangerous criminals, and
try our best to help everyone straighten out their lives after interaction
with the criminal justice system. Other states could do the same--the example
has been available for study for my entire adulthood.

[1] "Sentencing Reform in Minnesota, Ten Years After" [https://litigation-
essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?actio...](https://litigation-
essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=75+Minn.+L.+Rev.+727&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=86cb2db14acb65d69beb97284f1ac86d)

[2] "Minn. serves as example for drug-sentencing reform"
[http://www.kare11.com/news/article/1035319/391/Minn-
serves-a...](http://www.kare11.com/news/article/1035319/391/Minn-serves-as-
example-for-drug-sentencing-reform)

[3] "About the Guidelines" [http://mn.gov/sentencing-
guidelines/guidelines/about/](http://mn.gov/sentencing-
guidelines/guidelines/about/)

~~~
mml
Some reality show (supermax?) did a tour of the Oak Park Heights facility.
It's a bit of an eye-opener really. The whole social scheme there is built
around rewards/privileges for good behavior.

Fun fact: I toured the same facility a few weeks before the "grand opening".

------
peterwwillis
_I propose that each six months of incarceration be exchanged for one lash._

Say what you will for the idea that corporal punishment might be effective in
reducing crime. One lash for six months? Hell, anyone can take one lash. Some
people would gladly commit crimes for this benign sentence.

On the other hand, kids who grow up in a community where going to prison is
normal (like the East Baltimore one of the author) are perfectly fine with
going to jail. They even expect it. So committing crimes that brings you
somewhere you were going to end up anyway, isn't such a big deal.

Actually changing the culture of a place would have a bigger effect on
reducing crime than how we punish people for having committed it. The latter
really depends on the former.

(Aside: i'm a much bigger fan of self-flagellation for punishment than having
someone else do it, as you get the mental terror of having to hurt yourself
along with the pain. You can only blame yourself for how you feel vs blaming
some masked bogeyman)

------
mhb
Breakthrough in the War on Drugs - Posner:

[http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2013/05/breakthough-in-
the...](http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2013/05/breakthough-in-the-war-on-
drugsposner.html)

Alternatives to the War on Drugs - Becker:

[http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2013/05/alternatives-to-
th...](http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2013/05/alternatives-to-the-war-on-
drugs-becker.html)

------
Lagged2Death
He proposes that:

 _...flogging is just a few very painful strokes on the behind. And it’s over
in a few minutes._

But he knows full well that:

 _Even under controlled conditions, with doctors present ... a full recovery
could take weeks or months. In some cases, the scars would remain as permanent
reminders of the ordeal._

How can I take this guy seriously?

~~~
vidarh
You do realise that the point of the proposal is to set us up to think "of
course I'd pick the lash", and then to accept that it is still a brutal
punishment, right?

His idea is that we ourselves tend to have a view of prisons as horrible
enough that we might pick a punishment like flogging that to most of us seem
barbaric. Yet he expects that many will still believe that flogging is somehow
not enough punishment to replace prison, so he points out the seriousness of
it.

This also serves to illustrate just how nasty _prison_ is.

It's meant to draw attention to the inhumanity we allow in the prison system,
with a half-serious proposal, that, if someone were to take it seriously, in
the article writers opinion, would still be more human than what is currently
done, and would at the same time be far more honest about how brutal the
system is rather than hiding the problem away behind prison walls and so be
conducive to further reforms.

(Note also how he proposes it as an alternative to be offered as a choice to
prisoners).

------
jacques_chester
He's teasing apart what are seen to be the traditional purposes of prison:

1\. Retribution.

2\. Rehabilitation.

3\. Removal.

In particular, he argues that the first purpose can be replaced with corporal
punishment for most crimes. The second purpose is still an open question
amongst criminologists because it seems some criminal personalities cannot be
changed; which leads to the third purpose of removing such people from the
general population.

It's all a bit hypothetical, though. Short of amending the Constitution I
think any scheme of corporal punishment would be seen as cruel and unusual.
You need to remember that the substitution of prison for all other punishments
was to prevent abuses of corporal punishment by vindictive governments. That
problem doesn't just go away.

~~~
EliRivers
_any scheme of corporal punishment would be seen as cruel and unusual_

Presumably, as soon as it becomes established, it's no longer unusual; it's
the new norm. It wouldn't meet Brennan's four principles on what is "cruel and
unusual" and as such wouldn't fall foul of the 8th amendment.

~~~
jacques_chester
Thanks.

It seems to me that the difficulty would be in going from unusual to usual
without in the meantime being shot down by the Supreme Court.

Are there cases where something became usual before it was brought to judicial
review?

------
vidarh
It's interesting that he says this:

"Pedophiles, terrorists, serial rapists, and murderers, for example, need to
remain behind bars"

It's an easy list to write. It sounds obvious.

Yet murderers as a group is one of the groups _least likely to reoffend_ on
release, with reoffending rates in most countries in the low single digits. If
you exclude certain groups of murderers (e.g. someone with organised crime /
gang backgrounds), the reoffending rate drops close to zero.

Murderers are a great demonstration of how the system is politicised and
focused on retribution and vengeance, rather than protection and
rehabilitation: You could release almost all of them, and society would be no
worse off.

~~~
grannyg00se
Maybe there's a misleading comma there.

serial rapists and serial murderers is how I read it.

------
padobson
The prison system isn't big because people think it's a good idea to have a
lot of people in jail, it's because the private prison lobby ensures that
various laws (like possession of drugs) keeps prisons full.

~~~
epochwolf
Eh... There's plenty of people in America that rejoice in disproportionate
retribution. We have a huge culture problem. Not everything is a corporate
conspiracy.

~~~
astrodust
Don't confuse market pressures with a conspiracy.

Is there a conspiracy to sell consumer goods on every street corner, and at a
profit, too?

------
EGreg
In the past people also used bloodletting and witch trials. Just because
something has been done for centuries doesnt make it the most effective thing.
What are we trying to accomplish? Reducing recidivism? Deterrence?

Finland has a better system. They actually educate people in the prisons and
give them tasks to prepare them for the real world. And it has been amply
shown that greater education is correlated with significantly less crime.

------
chmod775
Prison shouldn't be used for punishment, prison should be used for
rehabilitation. It's a lesson almost every other 1st world country seems to
understand. How well a convicted criminal is treated directly correlates to
how likely he is to commit another crime after he is released.

The US have some of the worst recidivism rates, which is another reason for
those large numbers of prison inhabitants in the US.

~~~
redcircle
The prison system mirrors American parenting. They do not see anything wrong
with domination.

------
lotsofcows
Is this supposed to be ironic? "Our prisons are inhuman so replace them with
something else inhuman"?

A great lesson for the kids: "Hitting people is bad, if you hit people, we'll
hit you. Dichotomy? Of course not... we're bigger than you."

~~~
bronbron
I think you're missing the point. This is a half-hearted "A Modest Proposal",
the point being that our current prison system is so insanely inhumane that
honest-to-god corporal punishment is actually significantly less inhumane.

~~~
lotsofcows
So it is supposed to be ironic. How am I missing the point?

~~~
bronbron
Well, not to be pedantic, but in this case it actually matters - he's being
satirical, not ironic. It's not supposed to be ironic. He wants the debate to
be about the modern penal system, not about corporal punishment.

It would be ironic if his intention was to point out how awful corporal
punishment is, but that's not his point - it's kind of a given that corporal
punishment is generally viewed as barbaric (see the opening paragraph).
Corporal punishment is just used as an exaggeration to expose the stupidity of
the modern penal system ala eating babies in "A Modest Proposal".

It's slightly more subtle than AMP, which is why I inferred you might've
missed the point (though I can see that's not the case now, so my apologies) -
but for example, if we were talking about AMP and your original comment was:

> Is he being ironic or is he trying to justify eating babies? <sentence about
> why eating babies is wrong>

you can hopefully see how I might think you were confused a little.

~~~
lotsofcows
"it's kind of a given that corporal punishment is generally viewed as
barbaric"

It's exactly that point that made me unsure if this was supposed to be ironic
or not. It is not in anyway "a given" that corporal punishment is viewed as
barbaric. Most USAians support the death penalty.

~~~
bronbron
> It is not in anyway "a given" that corporal punishment is viewed as
> barbaric.

The last instance of judicial corporal punishment was in the 50's. It's a
given.

> Most USAians support the death penalty.

Maybe you should look up the difference between capital punishment and
corporal punishment. They're not the same thing.

Anyway it seems like you've been called out on your reading comprehension and
now you're clawing desperately to save face, or you have an axe to grind in
general - I don't really care which it is. Either way I'll bow out and let you
save face. Read more carefully and/or know the meaning of the words you're
typing before you comment next time.

~~~
lotsofcows
Woah, where did that come from?

------
tomjen3
It would be much better just to end the war on (some) drugs.

Then put additional time on the sentence which is specifically rehabilitation
time - time in which the offender is reintroduced into society, slowly and
given more and more freedom.

Make it possible for those who do especially well to be officially designated
reformed felons - they get some of their rights back, but they also get to not
tick the felony box on job applications.

I don't give a hoot about poverty - if that was an issue 100 years ago almost
everybody would have been a criminal - teach 'em personal responsibility and
how you can better yourself and the benefits of helping others.

------
touristtam
What next? Cut the hand for the thieves and the feet if they try to run away?

The solution precognised here is still in the same register of reaction vs
prevention. Maybe those convicted and send to jail/prison could have had the
social/psychological support to prevent their unruly behaviour that got them
there in the first place?

Or did someone pointed out the 'unbearable' financial cost of preventive
action, without considering the social and psychological impact on individuals
and communities alike?

Anyway, how's that technology news?

------
al2o3cr
Shorter Peter Moskos: "Assume that the current function of prisons-as-torture-
chambers arose totally by accident, and flogging suddenly sounds more humane."

Sorry, d00d, but our prison system didn't "fail" \- it was deliberately
sabotaged and bent from a system that tried rehabilitation to a system
intended solely for retribution and exploitation of convict labor. Handwaving
this away without identifying the forces responsible is sloppy journalism.

------
iSnow
I'd say if you are thinking about re-introducing corporal punishment,
something is very broken in your society.

~~~
brazzy
Yes, that is exactly the point he's trying to make.

