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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   28508 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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There is simply no way that most people would prefer years of incarceration to caning or similar physical punishments.

Sure, but anyone who's getting a sentence of a year is unlikely to be deterred by a single physical punishment. The tradeoff is more caning vs weeks. I'm not actually sure it's on the pareto frontier. Time in jail sucks in a way you can't shrug off, it's burning time you never get back, whereas pain is just pain, it goes away.I think a most people would just shrug off the pain and do it again, unless the pain was bad enough it corresponded to a lasting injury. (And then you get into things that aren't just 'not-progressive' they're just 'obviously evil' from the usual perspective like using medical science to create a drug that causes extreme pain without permanent damage!)

I think swiftness and consistency of enforcement is much more important than the kind of enforcement, anyway. Even if organized retail theft had no punishment at all, cops just grabbed you, returned the stuff, and dropped you off an hour away, it'd quickly stop because there'd be no benefit.

Sure, but anyone who's getting a sentence of a year is unlikely to be deterred by a single physical punishment.

The physical pain is a part of it, sure. But it's not the whole thing. These punishments are generally done in public (or in the modern day, probably televised/put on youtube). The embarrassment and/or loss of social status is a big part of it.

But if you think about a 'criminal underclass', are going to see it as a loss of social status?

Then do something that will lower their social status. Dress them up in a baby bonnet and spank them instead or something.

Sure, but anyone who's getting a sentence of a year is unlikely to be deterred by a single physical punishment.

There are two types of crimes really. Crimes made impulsively, and crimes that are planned. We can use corporal punishment to deter planned crimes, especially planned crimes that are so minor that sentencing someone to even a day of prison would be overkill but hitting them once with a cane is appropriate, like shoplifting. For crimes made impulsively, like a person having their mother insulted then committing assault against the insulter, we use prison to keep them off the streets because we just can't have them as part of society.

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