Should Flogging Be An Alternative To Prison?

[Rakhmetov]

I can't believe people in this day and age would even consider putting this issue to a public debate. There is this an academic who says we should. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment. :crying: The ruling class, their mouthpieces and ideological gatekeepers have all kinds of nice things in store for the working class. :cursing:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2079933,00.html?hpt=hp_c2

[Die Rote Fahne]

We should release the violent criminals on the pigs and the bourgeois.

[Rakhmetov]

We should release the violent criminals on the pigs and the bourgeois.

According to Marx the lumpen criminals usually side with the bourgeoisie against the workers.

[Hebrew Hammer]

I don't know, if I could choose between 40 lashes and 10 years in jail, I would choose flogging, hands down. I just get my ass beat and poof, everythings square.

[Rafiq]

How about fuck no.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

What's it supposed to achieve? Does inflicting extreme pain have any corrective or preventative value? I've not seen any evidence.

[Blake's Baby]

No, but it is the only thing that can give some right-wing academics a hard-on. That alone is worth brutalising some people for, isn't it? It's not as if we'd be beating anyone clever, after all (like right-wing academics), just hardened proletarian types. It's the only language these people understand.


Fuck me, I thought my sarcasm ladler was going to snap there.

[Demogorgon]

We have several thousand years of empirical evidence to show us that not only is flogging cruel, inhumane and all the rest of it, but that it doesn't work. In terms of established facts, that must rank not far behind "sticking your hand in a fire is going to hurt".

The proposal is justified on the grounds that it could be a way to reduce the obscene number of people sent to jail in America. Well here is a suggestion from me: do what nearly every other country on earth does and jail fewer people.

[Princess Luna]

I actually have to say yes, while i think both flogging and prison are barbaric. I think locking somebody in prison (particularly U.S. prisons) for 15 years is worse. The person in the prison suffers worse damage, both mental and physical (though terrible medical services and violence from guards and other inmates). Not to mention people who get out of prison after long sentences, almost always have a hard time readjusting to society and such they have to fall back to crime to support themselves. This isn't to say i support flogging, i find it repulsive, but it can be the lesser of 2 evils.

[Blake's Baby]

Of course, instead of supporting flogging, you could reform the prison system. What you are basically saying is 'prison is so shitty that it may be preferable to batter someone until they bleed rather than send them there'. That doesn't mean you should support flogging, it means you need to look at prison.

Of course, instead of tinkering with the prison system, you could reform the whole of society.

[Ocean Seal]

Lets save this debate for when we overthrow the ruling class.

[Kenco Smooth]

Lets save this debate for when we overthrow the ruling class.

Even if we were to limit ourselves entirely to class issues in the modern climate (which frankly I think is the wrong way to go) these proposals would systematically and disproportionately affect the working class. No way around it, in class society punishment for breach of laws and discourses surrounding criminal justice are essentially class issues.

[Kamos]

I'd choose 2n lashes over n years of prison any day. Of course, neither works in terms of rehabilitation, but the way I see it, it would be a huge step up in some areas in the sense that the amount of unnecessary pain inflicted is much smaller. You may suffer some "permanent bodily damage", but you only live once, and you don't want to waste years of that one life.

[Tenka]

I'd choose 2n lashes over n years of prison any day. Of course, neither works in terms of rehabilitation, but the way I see it, it would be a huge step up in some areas in the sense that the amount of unnecessary pain inflicted is much smaller. You may suffer some "permanent bodily damage", but you only live once, and you don't want to waste years of that one life.

But flogging can kill people, especially those without sufficient fat and muscle covering their spines. Blake's Baby has the right idea....

[Spartacus.]

I can't believe people in this day and age would even consider putting this issue to a public debate. There is this an academic who says we should. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment. :crying: The ruling class, their mouthpieces and ideological gatekeepers have all kinds of nice things in store for the working class. :cursing:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2079933,00.html?hpt=hp_c2


I agree. It is simply terrible. But, once we get in power we are going to abolish prisons and establish a really just and humane system of punishment. Just like Stalin did it. :)


http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/soviet-prisoner-labor.jpg

[-marx-]

Sending people to prisons for years on end is equivalent to sending them to "crime university". They come out knowing far more than they did prior. It's common knowledge that the best way to learn about crime and scams etc is in prisons. It has zero rehabilitation value.
The bourgeois scum think in terms of "deterrent" not practical prevention by bettering living conditions before one moves to crime as their ultimate goal is profit, not people.
And flogging, that's just barbaric.

[dez]

Lashing people is completely in accordance with any punitive legal system. In fact, it is more sincere (they're upfront about being barbaric and enacting revenge on the convict) and humane than locking people up for long periods of time with psychopats. I hardly think the academic that suggested it is right winged.

I'd take a near death risk with lashing over any 2 years more prison sentence any day.

Point is that even though I would prefer that sentence, that does not mean it should be allowed. There's no guarantee the lashing wouldn't simply be the icing in the cake of a long prison sentence or even that it wouldn't be regularly employed by prison wardens. In fact, thats exactly what would happen. Some doors are better closed.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Prison was originally established as a supposed societal progression away from the nastier punitive measures of the past (whipping, torture, summary execution), in regards to criminal law.

[piet11111]

Just goes to show the legal system is not about rehabilitation but only as a deterrent to us working class people.

[Blake's Baby]

It's mostly about punishment. This I think is a religious concept not a humanist one.

There are broadly 5 reasons for society to exact some sort of sanction on someone who has transgressed the social rules.

vengeance; the transgressor is sanctioned because the violation of the social rules is seen as something which requires violence (physical of psychological) to punish it - this is derived ultimately from the idea of a 'cleansing', either of the transgressor (purging the sin/besting the evil) or of the community (removing the shame of the transgression through 'righteous' violence);

deterence; the sanction is to discourage others from transgressing - the transgressor is 'made an example of' to force other potential transgressors to consider the advisability of transgression;

restitution; the sanction imposed is an attempt to make the transgressor in some way 'make good' her/his transgression, through enforced socially-beneficial actions;

rehabilitation; the sanction is intended to help (or force) the transgressor to come to terms with the social rules and re-integrate into the social group;

removal; the social group removes the transgressor (or limits their freedom in some way) to prevent a repetition of the transgression - by denying the transgressor social contact the possibility of further transgression is lessened.

Of these it seems to me that the first two are really anti-social and must be abandoned by anyone claiming to be a humanist. The third and fourth I'd support, within limits. The fifth seems to me to be a matter of practicality only, and as a principle I have problems with it (primarily because I don't think it works very well as a strategy).

[brigadista]

flogging? just no -
no "alternative "at all only barbarism -
and nobody knows what they would do until the situation arises