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Corporal Punishment

NobleSavage

NobleSavage

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The concept seems barbaric, but is it really? If you had a choice of severe corporal punishment or a lengthy prison sentence what would you take? To me prison seems like torture - especially if you get stuck in solitary or end up being abused by other prisoners.

I'm not really a punitive person, so I'm looking at this as "would it be better than what we have now?"
 
NobleSavage said:
The concept seems barbaric, but is it really?
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Is it really? I'm having trouble finding a definition of the term "barbaric" wherein it is possible for something to be determined as a matter of empirical fact, to be barbaric. In the absence of that, how can a concept's barbarism be any more "real" than a piece of food's deliciousness?

If you had a choice of severe corporal punishment or a lengthy prison sentence what would you take? To me prison seems like torture - especially if you get stuck in solitary or end up being abused by other prisoners.
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Prison seems like torture, whereas corporal punishment literally is torture. So to me, your question amounts to either "is the certainty of torture preferable to the possibility of torture?" or "which method of torture is preferable?" I'd have to know the specific form of corporal punishment that you had in mind, but tentatively, I would prefer the quicker punishment over the longer one.

I'm not really a punitive person, so I'm looking at this as "would it be better than what we have now?"
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Surely there are other options which would be "better than what we have now". Why limit the options to "corporal punishment"?
 
Unbeatable said:
Is it really? I'm having trouble finding a definition of the term "barbaric" wherein it is possible for something to be determined as a matter of empirical fact, to be barbaric. In the absence of that, how can a concept's barbarism be any more "real" than a piece of food's deliciousness?
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No need to get pedantic, you know what I'm getting at.

Surely there are other options which would be "better than what we have now". Why limit the options to "corporal punishment"?
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I'm just in a cynical mood. It seems our options usually boil down to the lesser of two evils.
 
NobleSavage said:
No need to get pedantic, you know what I'm getting at.

Surely there are other options which would be "better than what we have now". Why limit the options to "corporal punishment"?
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I'm just in a cynical mood. It seems our options usually boil down to the lesser of two evils.
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Oh, oh, I know that one.... The captain after plying his command staff with a bit of whine brings out two weevils on a dish and .....

Isn't that better than corporal punishment?
 
Corporal punishment's acute, intense, immediate. it makes an impression -- and it's cheap and easy.

Imprisonment is a delayed, drawn-out response. Are we able, psychologically, to make the connection between a particular, discrete action and a decade of separation from society?

I don't know of any penal studies comparing the two approaches.
 
I suppose I'd have to suffer in solitary confinement and begin to mentally breakdown for awhile first. There would probably come a point where 20 lashings to reduce 6 months sentence time would become welcome.
 
fromderinside said:
NobleSavage said:
No need to get pedantic, you know what I'm getting at.



I'm just in a cynical mood. It seems our options usually boil down to the lesser of two evils.
Click to expand...

Oh, oh, I know that one.... The captain after plying his command staff with a bit of whine brings out two weevils on a dish and .....

Isn't that better than corporal punishment?
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You are going to have to explain that better because I have no idea what you are talking about.
 
fast said:
I suppose I'd have to suffer in solitary confinement and begin to mentally breakdown for awhile first. There would probably come a point where 20 lashings to reduce 6 months sentence time would become welcome.
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I'd take corporal punishment over solitary confinement.
 
What sort of gender equality measures are being taken by the Department of Corrections in regards to the corporal punishment? Because if some woman is going to smack me with a whip for being a bad boy, that will just encourage me to commit more crimes.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
What sort of gender equality measures are being taken by the Department of Corrections in regards to the corporal punishment? Because if some woman is going to smack me with a whip for being a bad boy, that will just encourage me to commit more crimes.
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There's plenty of Victorian erotica about naughty school boys.

It's commonly known on the farm that some animals can be contained by an electric fence, and some cannot. Horse, cows, and goats will respect an electric fence. A single wire is enough. One shock and they understand trying to get through the fence means pain.

A pig cannot be contained by an electric fence. The pig understands the wire means pain, but it doesn't take long for him to realize it won't actually kill him. He'll endure the pain long enough to scrape under the wire and be gone.

Corporal punishment, when intended to be a deterrent for future bad behavior, is very limited, because the pain is short lived. Even the British Navy gave up flogging many years ago. While no man really wants to be beaten, present company excluded, there are a lot of men who will take a short beating in place of years in prison. Then, what have we accomplished. If a prison term doesn't do the trick, we can always tack on a few more years. How do we escalate a beating? If you beat a man half to death, twice in a row, he's dead.
 
What about beating him and then, if that doesn't work, sending him to prison? I see no reason that one would need to stick to additional beatings.

Given the expense of prison, adding the option of a whupping for first offenses (aside from major crimes such as murder and cutting infront of me in lines) would seem to be a not bad option.
 
What if you had the option of getting your hand chopped off vs. 10yrs in prison for felony theft? I'm thinking that prosthetic hands will be impressive in 10 years.
 
Loretta J. Hyde said:
NobleSavage said:
You are going to have to explain that better because I have no idea what you are talking about.
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In the film "Master and Commander" with Russell Crowe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4PzpxOj5Cc

**some fool messed with the clip...
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Ok, I'm 50% the way to understanding. The are using weevil as a play on words. However, I had to look up weevil and the internet says it's a beetle. In that clip it looked like they were talking about two different pieces of bread. I realized I've destroyed the humor, but damn it, I want to know. :)
 
NobleSavage said:
Loretta J. Hyde said:
In the film "Master and Commander" with Russell Crowe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4PzpxOj5Cc

**some fool messed with the clip...
Click to expand...

Ok, I'm 50% the way to understanding. The are using weevil as a play on words. However, I had to look up weevil and the internet says it's a beetle. In that clip it looked like they were talking about two different pieces of bread. I realized I've destroyed the humor, but damn it, I want to know. :)
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In the days prior to refrigeration, plastic pest-resistant packaging, and the germ theory of disease, food supplies on long sea voyages were infested with insects.

The staple food in the Royal Navy was 'ships biscuit', aka 'hard tack', which was basically an unleavened bread cooked twice, to eliminate almost all moisture from it. This made it highly resistant to mould, which would have rendered 'soft tack' (traditional bread) inedible within a few days.

While mouldy bread was considered inedible, insect and insect larva infested biscuit was not - the sailors could eat their hard-tack weevils and all; or if they preferred, they could tap the food on the table to dislodge the weevils prior to eating it.

As a result, weevils were a well known and constant companion to sailors around the world in the age of sail.
 
NobleSavage said:
Thanks bilby. Now I'm thinking I should watch that movie.
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If you are interested, I would advise that you read the books instead. The movie is OK, if you can take large doses of Russell Crowe; but the books are far superior. There are 20 books in the series, and they are excellent; the 21st is available but is only half finished, as the author, Patrick O'Brian, sadly died before completing it.

Master and Commander is the first book in the series; the movie is based on the tenth book, The Far Side of the World.
 
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