State Administered Corporal Punishment

1. Should the State Offer Corporal
Punishment as an Alternative to
Incarceration

2. In Defense of Flogging by Peter Moskos

3. Imagine if tomorrow you were
going to be a felon…
You’ve been convicted of felony
possession of heroin. This is your second
drug offense, and the judge has sentenced
you to 5 years in prison, but he gives you
an option…

4. Prison Or the
? Lash?

5. What is
Flogging?
• Professionally performed
• Observed by a doctor or EMT
• Only the buttocks are lashed
• Searingly painful
• Permanent Scarring

6. Video of Malaysian Flogging
WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES

7. Why is this needed?
 US Prison Population
 More Prisoner than China, Iran, North Korea
 Rape is endemic
 Costs are Soaring
 Prisons make new, and better criminals

8. Is this reform ideal?
 This will not enable rehabilitation
 Less of a deterrent to crime?
 Incarceration (and many issues which
occur with it) will still exist even if this
proposal is implemented.

9. Is this reform effective?
Americans and American politicians are
inclined to advocate punishment (“Hard on
Crime”).
Including this option in the justice system
could be advocated as more “law and
order”, permitting reform which is easy to
sell to such a public.

10.  Is punishment a necessary part of the justice
system?
 Is it effective?
 Could this system be abused?
 What kind of example does this set
internationally?
 Is it congruent with the larger Justice system?
 If implemented, should public humiliation be a
factor in the sentence?
 What crimes should qualify for flogging, and what
crimes should not?
 Are we “Taking two steps back to take one
forward”?