Corporal Punishment
How can we stop immoral
people from committing violent crimes? The modern approach is
incarceration but it's not very effective at rehabilitating anyone.
When the criminal gets out, he often goes back to doing what
landed him in prison in the first place. Also, prison is very
expensive. The inmate has to be housed, fed, clothed, medically cared
for, and guarded. And finally, repeat offenders and career
criminals get desensitized to prison after a while so they no longer
fear it. They've been to prison many times and it's not much of a
deterrent anymore.
It is for those reasons that I'm in favor of corporal punishment.
First, it doesn't waste vast sums of tax dollars incarcerating a
perpetrator for years. Second, it provides strong negative
reinforcement, thus dissuading the individual from repeating the
offense. Pain is a much better memory marker than extended confinement.
Therefore, the chances of recidivism with corporal punishment are lower
than with incarceration.
The reason some people have been arrested dozens of times is because
they literally have nothing to lose by committing crimes. They
are obviously unemployed, they have little to no property, and they
have no significant ties to anyone. Why shouldn't they carjack
someone? Or snatch a woman's purse? Or steal a car?
Or rob a store? What's the worst that can happen?
They'll go to prison again? So what? They'll be out
soon enough.
If
instead of prison, we treat the criminal with pain, he'll have a strong
incentive to not commit more crimes. The next time he wants to
rob or steal or vandalize, the memory of the pain will talk him out of
it. The intensity and duration of the pain should be increased
if an individual doesn't learn his lesson the first time and winds up
re-offending. Eventually, he'll get the message.
Some people see corporal punishment as cruel, primitive, and barbaric,
but what's the alternative? If the worst we can do to someone is throw
them in jail, and he's not afraid of jail because he's been there a
dozen times before, then what incentive does he have to not commit
crimes? Absolutely none. He will be a walking menace to society. This
explains why some people have been arrested thirty or forty times. They
spend a month in jail for some crime like theft, assault, or vandalism
and then they're back on the street, ready to re-offend. I'm certain that with corporal punishment, they would learn
very quickly that crime leads to intense pain and they'd curtail their criminal activities. It is regretful that
some people have to be treated like this, but unfortunately they
don't respond to reason or polite language. The only other way to deal with them
is through violence.
Serious crimes against people or property, like rape,
grave injury, vicious beatings, arson, armed robbery, child abuse, stabbings, etc.
cannot be treated with corporal punishment alone because the
perpetrator is a serious threat to society. A combination of
hard labour combined with incarceration is appropriate in such cases.
All these ideas assume an overhaul of the current justice system which uses the absurd idea of trial by jury to determine guilt. In my opinion, too
many innocent people have been convicted on bad testimony and
insufficient evidence to make corporal punishment and hard labour
ethically acceptable.