Corporal Punishment Used in Other Countries - Research Paper Example

Corporal Punishment Used in Different Countries      Abstract:  Corporal punishment is an acute form of punishment, which has been used in most of the nations. This study discusses different forms of corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is still a widely used disciplinary technique in most of the countries across the world. The paper takes a standpoint in favor of some form of corporal punishment and argues to prove that it should be present to some extent such that it may deter the incidents of crime. Introduction:  Corporal or physical punishment is the infliction of physical force causing pain or physical abuse directed for the purpose of regulation, alteration, and control. Physical suffering can be caused in different ways, for example, striking with a hand or other item, lashing out, shuddering or flinging the child, pinching or dragging the hair, beating with cane or thumping, flogging, beheading, cutting of limbs or stoning. Corporal or physical chastisement can be also psychologically harmful (for instance, leading to low self respect, grief, embarrassment, depression, etc.). Psychological aggression, including disgrace or degrading behavior and threats, can be equally or more detrimental (Corporal punishment, 2003, p. 1; Parmelee, 2009, p. 447; Scheb, 2008, p. 40). Despite different protests, corporal punishment should be allowed in some form such that it may act as a crime deterrence event.  Punishment is said to have a deterring impact (Miethe and Lu, 2005, p. 20). The particular ways of imposing corporal punishment are almost unlimited, constrained only by the thoughts and principles of human courtesy. However, the means of choice for torment and imposing pain are also associated with traditions, rites and the accessibility of technology within a particular nation at specific times. Corporal punishment may discourage crime. Studies propose that corporal punishment is a very effectual suppressor of unnecessary behavior (Newman, 1995, p. 8). Yet some researchers powerfully object the use of corporal punishment as preventive measure and the fact that it would be applied in prison or prison like surroundings. Public scrutiny is the best way of control, and it guarantees that we all take direct accountability for the punishment. In the application of corporal punishment, we cannot electrocute somebody to death for a trivial crime and evade responsibility for it. This is not the situation with prisons where the verdict amounts to a quasi-death punishment when some criminals either commit suicide on account of their prison experience, or are killed by other convicts. (Newman, 1995, p. 9) The intensity of pain differs from individual to individual. The severity of pain is much more in cases of imprisonment rather than corporal punishment. Thus, corporal punishment can be applied in the same quantities, for the identical crimes, irrespective of the age, sex or communal class of the criminal. It is sometimes disagreed that the corporal punishment would have to be restricted to young and physically strong criminals. However, there is no proof that the older individuals can resist pain less, and in reality, the doorsill of pain could be established effortlessly enough so that all individuals could withstand it, but still feel it as excruciating. Once again, the point of argument relates to the kinds of sentence systems we currently have. Whether the older individuals can tolerate the prison in comparison to the others-this question is rarely raised.  The result of corporal punishment varies from short-term pain to everlasting disfigurement or injury and also psychological torment. Corporal punishments are popular in contemporary times in particular situations. However, corporal punishment expanded its greatest ill reputation in earlier historical eras of corporal punishment. The most notorious era of corporal punishments happened during the period of the Spanish Inquisition, the authority of Henry VIII and the Elizabethan era, the authority of terror for the period of French Revolution and the group genocides and democides of 20th century (Miethe and Lu, 2005, p. 34). As capital punishment leads to the death of the accused, it is the eventual corporal sanction. The wide diversity of processes of execution is used in due course and situation can be distinguished in accordance with whether they occupy immediate or slow death. Beheadings, hangings and strangulations have been recognized as the most widespread means for generous or immediate death (Miethe and Lu, 2005, p. 37-38). While the ultimate version of corporal punishment, that is, capital punishment might not be morally right, some sort of corporal punishment might sometimes actually serve as a deterring factor. To justify this, the retributive philosophy might be used. Followers of this theory however do not believe in correcting a wrong person and the idea is rather to punish him or her. Newman (1995, p.157) puts forward the example of a rat being given an electric shock whenever it went to steal the food. The fifth time the rat deters itself from advancing towards the food. It takes time but repeated action actually prevents it from stealing and thus resisting the temptation. When a rat without a rational brain has deterred itself from the act of theft, a human being is expected to learn from other examples even if the punishment is not inflicted on him or her. Historically, corporal punishments have been connected most often with some type of public mockery. Whipping and branding were essentially public occurrences. The people of the towns were able to hide the criminal with rotten fruit or stones if he were a hated offender. Sometimes his limbs would be cut off. Some corporal punishments are persistent, such as those that generate permanent disfigurement or wound or visible ugly scars (Newman, 1995, p. 27). There are different kinds of corporal punishment which have been used since ages. One of them is hanging. This process was previously used in Britain in 1964-the death punishment was eliminated in 1973. During execution by drooping, the captive is weighed the day prior to the execution, and a practice is done by utilizing a sandbag of the identical weight as the captive. This is to establish the extent of 'drop' required to make sure a rapid fracture-displacement of the neck. Stoning is another technique which is applied in Iran, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The males or females have their arms and legs bound, and are covered up to their necks in sand. Their heads are covered by sheets. The 'injured individuals' and onlookers hide the captives with stones until they evaluate, by the nonexistence of cries and progresses and the blood on the sheets, that the condemned individual is dead. After that, he or she is obscured (Hillman, 1993, p. 746). Beheading of individuals is applied in Congo, Mauritania, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. It may be carried out by frequent sword slashes to the neck, by an axe exerted by a strong person, or by the loaded cutting edge of the guillotine. The skin, muscles, and spinal column of the neck are hard, so that beheading is not always caused by a single drive. It may be assumed that the captive becomes insensible within a few seconds, but not straight away after, the spinal cord is cut off (Hillman, 1993, p. 747). Putting to death by intravenous injection was first commenced in the United States of America in 1977. When this technique is used the destined individual is bound supine to a trolley and a skilled nurse or technician inserts a cannula within the vein in the position of the elbow (Hillman, 1993, p. 748). While the retributive theory was discussed in the last paragraph, the defense of corporal punishment cannot entirely be based on this. Psychological research shows that corporal punishment like whipping might not always act as a deterring agent. The Committee on Corporal Punishment in March 1938 abolished corporal punishment in Britain. (Newman, 1995, p.159) However the study itself had one important limitation. The prison effect and whipping effect could not be separated. Only those prisoners who were imprisoned and whipped during their servitude were studied. However following the electric shock example, if the prisoners were only whipped each time they committed the crime, then perhaps the outcome would have been different. We must find an alternative sentence that is truly convincing. It should be the type of chastisement which the public can consider is properly agonizing, which can be balanced against the crime, which is gentle, and which is less costly. This penalty may be expressed to the majority of lawbreakers who fall in between the awful and the minor criminals who may continue with trial (Newman, 1995, p. 7). Corporal punishment which applies a non-permanent strong pain for instance, electric shock can do the work. It can be over within seconds. It would not take years like the situation with long, extensive punishment of prison. It can be regulated so that the pain can be felt without any lifelong results to talk about- at least in contrast to the rigorous long-term consequences of the corporal punishments and serving long tenure in prisons. It chastises the offender, and only the criminal for the wrongdoing. It guarantees that the pain to be applied to the crook corresponds directly to the wrongdoing, and there is no other concealed punishment. When an individual is sentenced to jail, the probabilities are very high that he will be raped or battered. (Bedau, 1987, p. 39). In 1949, the Trusteeship Council advocated that corporal punishment should be put an end to right away in the Cameroons and Togoland under British government and that corporal punishment should be officially eliminated in New Guinea. The UN General Assembly provided its complete support to its proposal and itself advocated the acceptance of strong and effectual measures to eradicate instantly the corporal punishment of flogging in Ruanda-Urundi (Joyce, 1978, p. 221; Rodley, 2000, p. 311). In a research, some data have been gathered from about 200 nations to find out whether they have kept or abolished capital punishment. Accounts of extrajudicial assassinations by paramilitary powers and vigilante associations are also comparatively inclusive when compared to other kinds of corporal punishment. The communal and the legal approval of the capital punishment have altered radically across nations in the past century. Patterns of both maintenance and elimination of capital punishment, the extreme form of corporal punishment, are found inside and across continents and areas. However, the most universal international trend in the last half of the century has been in the direction of the eradication of capital punishment in both rule and in practice (Miethe and Lu, 2005, p. 58-59). Although corporal punishment has been extensively banned, the degree to which it persists to be used is hard to determine. Nations that strictly view Islamic law impose both amputation and flogging as punishments. In South Africa, until the mid-1990s, men under 21 years of age could be flogged for any crime to compensate for other sentence, and adult men between the ages of 21 and 30 could be flogged either besides or in place of other chastisement for many crimes, including theft, rape, worsened or offensive assault, housebreak, and auto robbery.  In 1994, the caning of a young U.S. resident in Singapore for a property crime drew extensive political criticism from political leaders of U.S., even though it also had the outcome of momentarily raising public argument over the advantages of legal corporal punishment. On account of an increasing public concern over offense rates, in addition to prison overcrowding, community support of corporal punishment for minor criminals and youthful lawbreakers augmented. The bills were initiated in quite a few state legislatures to reintroduce legal corporal punishment as an option to detention. Nearly all the efforts failed, owing to possible constitutional frailties (Corporal Punishment: Prevalence. n.d.). In accordance with the latest report by Amnesty International (on or after January 2003), a total of 76 nations have eliminated capital punishment for all offenses, 15 other nations have eradicated it for ordinary offenses only. However, they have maintained it for offenses under military law for offenses committed under extraordinary circumstances. Another 20 nations are abolitionists in practice since they have not put anyone to death in the past 10 years. The remaining 84 nations in the world have maintained the application of death sentence. The majority of the nations have eradicated death punishment by law or by practice for normal offenses in the 21st century. This prototype is in sharp contrast to the mid-1960s. It is because less than 25 nations have been recognized as having eliminated capital punishment for these offenses (Miethe and Lu, 2005, pp. 58-59). It has been debated that by eradicating the sentence of death or cutting of limbs, we should reduce the encouragement of criminals to withdraw from adding execution to robbery. However, this might be met by imposing periodical corporal punishment upon assassins, during punitive servitude (Sweet, 1867, p. 174).   Conclusion: All of the methods of corporal punishment applied for executing individuals or torturing them, are likely to cause agony. More serious kinds of corporal punishment, incorporating flogging and amputation, have gone through a rebirth in certain Islamic nations that have experienced revival in fundamentalism. The United Nations Human Rights Committee and other associations have recommended that the forbiddance of brutal, inhuman, or degrading sentence under Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights could be extended by usual law to incorporate corporal punishment. Nevertheless, quite a few of the practices of a number of Islamic nations have drawn criticism and reprimand by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. This organization has (as per 1997 assessment) proposed that only certain forms of corporal punishment may be disregarded by worldwide law, leaving open the question of the degree to which evolving values or general ethics of law will sustain other forms of corporal punishment (Corporal Punishment: Prevalence. n.d.). In conclusion we may therefore state that corporal punishment should be so designed that it acts as an effect of deterrence rather than causing a long term negative impact on the victim.    References: 1. Bedau, H.A. (1987). Death is different: studies in the morality, law, and politics of capital punishment. New Hampshire: UNPE. 2. “Corporal Punishment: Prevalence”. (n.d.). Available at: http://law.jrank.org/pages/737/Corporal-Punishment-Prevalence.html (Accessed on Nov. 9, 2009). 3. Hillman, H. (1993). “The possible pain experienced during execution by different methods”. Perception. Vol. 22. pp. 745-753. Available at: http://web.mac.com/flip/AUR/Archives_of_Uncomfortable_Research/Entries/2006/9/12_The_possible_pain_experienced_during_execution_by_different_methods_files/Hillman1993Execution.PDF (Accessed on Nov. 9, 2009). 4. “Corporal punishment”. (April 2003). International Save the Children Alliance Position on corporal punishment. Available at: http://www.savethechildren.net/alliance/resources/corporal_punish.pdf. (Accessed on Oct. 31, 2009). 5. Joyce, J.A. (1978). Human rights: international documents, Volume 1. Leiden: Brill Archive. 6. Miethe, T.D, Lu, H. (2005). Punishment: a comparative historical perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 7. Newman, G.R. (1995). Just and painful: a case for the corporal punishment of criminals. New York: Criminal Justice Press. 8. Parmelee, M. (2009). Criminology. South Carolina: BiblioBazaar, LLC. 9. Rodley, N.S. (2000). The Treatment of Prisoners Under International Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10. Scheb, J.M. (2008). Criminal Procedure. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. 11. Sweet, S. (1867). The jurist, Volume 12, & nbsp; Part 2. Read More