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WP Opinion: In lieu of prison, bring back the lash


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This thread just brought back memories when Americans were outraged that a young pampered punk with US Citizenship was going to get caned in Singapore for vandalizing private property over there.

I thought it was a great idea since it should show him he is not above the law and that bad behaviour outside the USA results in consequences Uncle Sam can not rescue you from.

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I didn't even read the article. Prison is big business. Unless lashes can replace the inpact prisons have on our economy, then this idea seems trivial at best. I hope this article spurs people to examine the penile industrial complex, and that everything is not black and white....pun intended.

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Wow. Just a bit. :rolleyes:

And this guy is an educator? No wonder we're getting our asses handed to us on the world stage.

Clearly, you have never been inside a state legislature when the decision to build a new prison is made. The state senator who gets that baby in his district knows that he is going to be in Washington in the next five years. And the hookers in Washington beat the hookers in Cheyenne any day.

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Then why are we putting people in cages?

FWIW, I dont support corporal punishment either. What I do support is understanding that what is being done is also not working and that new approaches, thoughts and ideas must be discussed

Make college accessible and affordable for everyone in the country (free public institutions, tuition for private, just as public and private schools compete, not a perfect solution, but it works for the bottom line), make elementary and high school year round, make all those public schools have to offer breakfast as well as lunch, make that food free, make school supplies free for kids by having the school supply it, and end the "mega-schools," or at least require a certain, reasonable teacher-to-student ratio. Schools become more effective, kids are in it year round and being fed 2 square meals a day, it's not costing their parents anything, and in the end they come out with a good education, continue the cycle into college now that it's free, and come out in a good position in life.

This, combined with ending the drug war, eliminates gangs and starts to break the poverty cycle by giving the next generation a better education and better earning potential. Poor kids can't afford supplies, lunches, certainly not college, and summer time with no supervision and nothing to do, and no money, is a big part of what feeds gangs new recruits.

But until the country as a whole realizes education is the most important issue to significantly reducing poverty and crime, until we actually value education instead of just saying we do, the problems will continue. Take away 1/3 of the military budget and put it into education instead, and a lot of what I proposed is doable. Instead of millions and maybe billions on a political campaign, put that money into public education. Add a stipulation to bailouts that they must be repaid, with interest, and go into public education. Increase state sales tax 1% in all states exclusively to go to public education. I don't mind an extra penny on each dollar if I know it's going directly to education.

Education is the best preventative measure, but the country is too focused on what to do after the fact, instead of going after the source. IMO.

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I concur. If someone (God forbid!) murdered someone in my family I don't think 10 lashes would do justice...

I think his point is to imprison the murderers and truly dangerous, as opposed to throwing lots of others in prison. If someone stole your car while you were at work, would X lashes do justice?

(not that I'm convinced by the article. I'm not)

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In the United States today there are more prisoners than farmers.[2] And while most prisoners in America are from urban communities, most prisons are now in rural areas. During the last two decades, the large-scale use of incarceration to solve social problems has combined with the fall-out of globalization to produce an ominous trend: prisons have become a "growth industry" in rural America.

Communities suffering from declines in farming, mining, timber-work and manufacturing are now begging for prisons to be built in their backyards. The economic restructuring that began in the troubled decade of the 1980s has had dramatic social and economic consequences for rural communities and small towns. Together the farm crises, factory closings, corporate downsizing, shift to service sector employment and the substitution of major regional and national chains for local, main-street businesses have triggered profound change in these areas. The acquisition of prisons as a conscious economic development strategy for depressed rural communities and small towns in the United States has become widespread. Hundreds of small rural towns and several whole regions have become dependent on an industry which itself is dependent on the continuation of crime-producing conditions.

Ironically, while rural areas pursue prisons as a growth strategy, whether this is a wise or effective strategy is far from clear. Increasing evidence suggests that by many measures prisons do not produce economic growth for local economies and can, over the long term, have detrimental effects on the social fabric and environment of rural communities. Moreover, this massive penetration of prisons into rural America portends dramatic consequences for the entire nation as huge numbers of inmates from urban areas become rural residents for the purposes of Census-based formulas used to allocate government dollars and political representation.

http://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/building.html

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One requires physical punishment, the other severely limits personal freedom but feeds you 3 times a day, has education programs, etc. It's so simple it doesn't need to be explained.

Just for the hell of it, I think I'll play a little devil's advocate with you in this thread. Especially this statement.

Why, exactly, is giving someone a physical punishment and some scars more inhumane than stripping them of their freedoms and isolating them from society for years at a time? Why exactly is preventing someone from being a part of society deemed less cruel than a few days/weeks of pain while they continue to enjoy their freedoms? Sure we feed them 3 times a day, but the food is subpar. Sure we might give them a few chances here and there at some educational opportunities, but that's only because we've prevented them from finishing HS, attending college, getting an advanced degree, etc. Is it really more cruel to scar somebody's back and let them go to college than to lock them away for 10 years and let a teacher come in a handful of times a month to teach hundreds of prisoners in a hundred different areas? Why is allowing somebody to watch their kid grow up by seeing do so through pictures and stories of family less cruel than being with the kid but not being able to sleep on your back for a week? Is it just because we, as a society, can see the physical side of punishment and its consequences that we shy from them, while the mental/emotional scarring and abuse from a prison stay are easier to ignore so we do?

Not that I'm in favor of the lash or bringing back the stockade per se, but how many wrongly convicted prisoners do you think would take the "physical pain but no prison" route in exchange for not unjustly losing a significant portion of their lives? Seems to me that, in some cases, isolating and stripping freedoms is the more cruel course to take. :2cents:

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I'm sure you think you just made an argument or something resembling one, but whatever

you showed they were different, nothing about how those differences mean one is worse or better

as for education programs... lol, maybe nominally, such programs are underfunded all the way across and we don't have the money to expand them to anywhere near a significant % of the inmate population. (Well, we might have the money, but won't have the will)

Just more bull**** that makes people think "everything is ok"

http://www.thecrimereport.org/archive/2011-05-ed-prisons

Like I said, you aren't really interested in an explanation. Whipping, or being limited to a cell, and you can't see which one is more barbaric? More like refuse to see.

and education is offered there as an attempt to give those people a better shot at a real occupation once they get out, in an attempt to break the repeat offender/career criminal cycle. It is a good solution, but they don't create a lot of will in most inmates, and a lot of people are too focused on punishment and assert that any benefits prisoners receive is rewarding them, which is an obstinant and impractical viewpoint that does nothing to try and end the career criminal cycle, in fact it only strengthens that cycle. education in prisons is not bs to make people think everything is ok, that's an incredibly ignorant assertion and it's incorrect.

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Like I said, you aren't really interested in an explanation. Whipping, or being limited to a cell, and you can't see which one is more barbaric? More like refuse to see.

and education is offered there as an attempt to give those people a better shot at a real occupation once they get out, in an attempt to break the repeat offender/career criminal cycle. It is a good solution, but they don't create a lot of will in most inmates, and a lot of people are too focused on punishment and assert that any benefits prisoners receive is rewarding them, which is an obstinant and impractical viewpoint that does nothing to try and end the career criminal cycle, in fact it only strengthens that cycle. education in prisons is not bs to make people think everything is ok, that's an incredibly ignorant assertion and it's incorrect.

so basically, you are going to ignore what I am saying, then ramble on about how prisons provide education, and somehow pretend that the ideo of corporal punishment is mutually exclusive of education, and then conclude that corporal punishment is cruel, while prison is not

horrible reasoning, improve it or I actually will ignore you

think about it this way: ask yourself why you want to increase money to education... is because almost no money goes into it now? don't you see that inherent tension? You are trying to use some utopian idea of prisons to defend the current prison system. It makes no sense.

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Not that I'm in favor of the lash or bringing back the stockade per se, but how many wrongly convicted prisoners do you think would take the "physical pain but no prison" route in exchange for not unjustly losing a significant portion of their lives? Seems to me that, in some cases, isolating and stripping freedoms is the more cruel course to take. :2cents:

A parent that grounds his kid, or a parent that just beats his kid with a belt, no grounding. Which would you consider worse?

Prison affords people the time, ideally, to think about their crime and hopefully repent and learn from it, to better themselves. That doesn't always happen, but it does at times. Physical punishment only uses fear as motivation, nothing is learned other than that fear.

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Elkabong: Or, being whipped and having your punishment over vs. being thrown in a cage where you may get raped daily.

prisoners don't get raped, they get rehabilitated, educated, and integrated

:ols:

fact: the percentage of people getting raped in prison is higher (much higher actually) than the percentage receiving an education

In 1974 Carl Weiss and David James Friar wrote that 46 million Americans would one day be incarcerated; of that number, they claimed, 10 million would be raped. A 1992 estimate from the Federal Bureau of Prisons conjectured that between 9 and 20 percent of inmates had been sexually assaulted. Studies in 1982 and 1996 both concluded that the rate was somewhere between 12 and 14 percent; the 1996 study, by Cindy Struckman-Johnson, concluded that 18 percent of assaults were carried out by prison staff. A 1986 study by Daniel Lockwood put the number at around 23 percent for maximum security prisons in New York. Christine Saum's 1994 survey of 101 inmates showed 5 had been sexually assaulted.[5] One in ten male inmates is raped in prison, mostly by fellow prisoners.[6] Among women the number is one in forty and the offenders are more likely to be prison staff members.

Prison rape cases have drastically risen in recent years, mostly attributed to an increase in counseling and reports. The threat of AIDS, which affects many of those raped in prison, has also resulted in the increase of reported cases for the benefit of medical assistance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_rape_in_the_United_States

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Why, exactly, is giving someone a physical punishment and some scars more inhumane than stripping them of their freedoms and isolating them from society for years at a time? Some may see giving lashes to those who commit the socalled victimless crimes as a better option as well as a deterrent while reducing the prison population.

Why exactly is preventing someone from being a part of society deemed less cruel than a few days/weeks of pain while they continue to enjoy their freedoms? Because the victims best interests should come first not the scumbags.Sure we feed them 3 times a day, but the food is subpar. Don't commit crimes and you do not have to eat generic brand Spam or powdered milk. No tears from me about the lunch lady and her prison menu.Sure we might give them a few chances here and there at some educational opportunities, but that's only because we've prevented them from finishing HS, attending college, getting an advanced degree, etc. Wrong we did not prevent them from finishing they did. It is amazing how the majority of the population with similar opportunities can do it, but these low lifes who are guilty have an excuse, someone else to blame but themselves. Those kids that we went to school with who cut class played hooky and did not graduate and turned to petty or major crime in a lame get rich quick scheme, is society to blame or should they realise they are responsible for their actions?

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so basically, you are going to ignore what I am saying, then ramble on about how prisons provide education, and somehow pretend that the ideo of corporal punishment is mutually exclusive of education, and then conclude that corporal punishment is cruel, while prison is not

horrible reasoning, improve it or I actually will ignore you

think about it this way: ask yourself why you want to increase money to education... is because almost no money goes into it now? don't you see that inherent tension? You are trying to use some utopian idea of prisons to defend the current prison system. It makes no sense.

I never said prison wasn't cruel, just that physical punishment is more barbaric. I'm not defending the current prison system either, all I'm saying is that it's a better, and less barbaric, solution than whipping. Perhaps you should ignore me if you can't even grasp what I'm saying.

I'll try again, and this time in short sentences so you don't miss it. Prison is less barbaric than lashing because it doesn't rely exclusively on physical punishment. Prison does offer inmates the chance to better themselves while they are in there. No part of that says prisons are a good system in their current state.

And corporal punishment, in this example of using lashings as an alternative punishment, is exclusive of education. A whipping and you are on your way; the only motivation in whipping is fear, but when it becomes the preferred solution, which could happen in this example where it's preferred over a 5 year sentence, that fear is reduced, it's effectiveness reduced.

---------- Post added June-17th-2011 at 01:20 PM ----------

Elkabong: Or, being whipped and having your punishment over vs. being thrown in a cage where you may get raped daily.

That's a flaw of the prison system, but it is not an intended punishment as whipping is.

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I'll try again, and this time in short sentences so you don't miss it. Prison is less barbaric than lashing because it doesn't rely exclusively on physical punishment. Prison does offer inmates the chance to better themselves while they are in there.

holy **** dude, no they don't, what is it that you can't grasp about that?

6% of prisoners have are in education programs

10-20% are getting anally raped

WTF sort of opportunity to better themselves are you talking about?

BTW, schools exist outside of prison, that's why lashings and education are not mutually exclusive

way to go genius, care to try again?

Pain is temporary and time is the most valuable commodity in the world. I think this would encourage crime.

a plausible theory, if it were not for the fact that prison time has proven to be an abject failure in preventing repeat offenses.

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A parent that grounds his kid, or a parent that just beats his kid with a belt, no grounding. Which would you consider worse?

Not to be a smartass, but it honestly depends. How old is the kid? What did the kid do? I'd say you need some type of physical deterrent to prevent them from serious harm (such as a spanking so they don't touch the hot stove or stick a fork in an electical outlet). Because sometimes a 5 year old is not going to be able to reason out why the laws of electricity make it a bad idea to shove a metal object into an outlet while sitting in the time-out corner for 30 minutes. But he'll damn sure be likely to remember that "trying to touch the stove when it's glowing orange = pain." I don't think a 16 year old kid should be beaten within an inch of their life for coming in 10 minutes past curfew, but I also don't think a 3 year old should be isolated in their room for a week because he broke a lamp.

Prison affords people the time, ideally, to think about their crime and hopefully repent and learn from it, to better themselves. That doesn't always happen, but it does at times. Physical punishment only uses fear as motivation, nothing is learned other than that fear.

So is prison about rehab or about deterring crimes? Obviously in the case of repeat offenders neither method has worked. Or is it the combination that works for some and not for others? Some people break the law because they need rehabbed, but others don't break the law because they fear prison and all it's repercussions. I mean, do we really want people to not break the law out of fear of prison? Not everybody responds to fear, but there's nothing inherently wrong with using fear as a deterrent where it works. Or should we jail all parents who use fear to prevent their kids from doing something stupid that's bad for them?

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holy **** dude, no they don't, what is it that you can't grasp about that?

6% of prisoners have are in education programs

10-20% are getting anally raped

WTF sort of opportunity to better themselves are you talking about?

BTW, schools exist outside of prison, that's why lashings and education are not mutually exclusive

way to go genius, care to try again?

a plausible theory, if it were not for the fact that prison time has proven to be abject failure in preventing repeat offenses.

just because the opportunity isn't taken doesn't mean it's not there. Like I said in a previous post to you, education in prison isn't taken seriously enough because any policy maker in favor of it will receive backlash that he/she is rewarding prisoners, so they take the easy, good looking on the surface route of just being hard on punishment.

Perhaps if education was mandated, instead of voluntary, there would be more headway.

My bad for thinking your comment about mutual exclusiveness with corporal punishment and education was actually relevant to what I was saying, clearly it too was not.

Hilarious you're throwing "genius" out there in a sarcastic manner when you've not only failed to grasp my point, but you've also tried arguing points against me that I never even made.

Other opportunities include reading, and even just sitting still and reflecting on their crime. And I agree that prisons don't do a good job of preventing repeats, that's why I think they need to have a serious, and mandated education program in there, where prisoners can get a GED, certification in some trade, so they have a better opportunity at gainful employment and contributing to society when they get out. We don't do that now, and the result, as you showed, is more people get raped in prison than educated. The opportunity is there, but it's neither mandated nor taken seriously enough to be as effective as it can be.

But even just the time to reflect and possibly learn from ones mistake, is a better method than simple physical punishment. And as I said, when physical punishment becomes a preferred punishment, instead of a feared one, it loses effectiveness.

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I think it's humorous that we're discussing the civility of whipping a person while our nation still uses a chair to strap a person down and flood with enough electricity to kill them.

Perspective?

Todays prisons are not a deterrent to prevent people from comitting the crimes they are committing. I dont know if whipping will either. But it certainly has to be cheaper.

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Not to be a smartass, but it honestly depends. How old is the kid? What did the kid do? I'd say you need some type of physical deterrent to prevent them from serious harm (such as a spanking so they don't touch the hot stove or stick a fork in an electical outlet). Because sometimes a 5 year old is not going to be able to reason out why the laws of electricity make it a bad idea to shove a metal object into an outlet while sitting in the time-out corner for 30 minutes. But he'll damn sure be likely to remember that "trying to touch the stove when it's glowing orange = pain." I don't think a 16 year old kid should be beaten within an inch of their life for coming in 10 minutes past curfew, but I also don't think a 3 year old should be isolated in their room for a week because he broke a lamp.

So is prison about rehab or about deterring crimes? Obviously in the case of repeat offenders neither method has worked. Or is it the combination that works for some and not for others? Some people break the law because they need rehabbed, but others don't break the law because they fear prison and all it's repercussions. I mean, do we really want people to not break the law out of fear of prison? Not everybody responds to fear, but there's nothing inherently wrong with using fear as a deterrent where it works. Or should we jail all parents who use fear to prevent their kids from doing something stupid that's bad for them?

No worries, I don't think you're being a smartass. My example was meant to be one where either form of punishment is a constant method. I agree in the real world that the nature of the offense means the punishment varies. Spanking is ok, IMO, at times, but not to be used exclusively. Plus, at least there's a follow up explanation from the parent.

Also, your first comment sort of backs me up. A quick, physical punishment without lingering pain (as would be the case with lashing, lingering pain and scars) is good for compliance in a small child who can't understand the world yet, but not so much for a teen, who is older and gaining in maturity (in comparison to a little kid, not an adult obviously, lol). But in both cases an explanation from the parent is usually given, and though I'm not a parent, I am an older brother and an uncle, I saw and learned from personal experience growing up, that as you mature, explanations and discussions are very useful in getting the point across and preventing repeats of the offense.

With lashing there is no explanation, it's regression to treating adults like small children who don't grasp much else in explanation, and with prison it's basically timeout but without any kind of discussion, just the assumption that they know what they did was wrong and why. We focus too much on punishment and don't take the time for actual rehabilitation or even prevention, because it's politically favorable to be "tough on crime" and attempts at understanding are viewed as "soft." I think this answers a good part of the second part of your post.

Sure fear can be a deterrent at times, but what happens to the effectiveness of that fear when physical punishment becomes a preferred solution to the one being punished? It is reduced significantly.

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