Student Essay on Bring Back Flogging

During seventeenth century flogging was a popular punishment for convicted people among Boston's Puritans. Fortunately, those times have passed and brutal and inhuman flogging was replaced by imprisonment. Columnist for the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby in his essay "Bring back flogging" asserts that flogging is superior to imprisonment and advocates flogging as an excellent means of punishment. He is convinced that flogging of offenders after their first conviction can prevent them from going into professional criminal career and has more educational value than imprisonment. He also argues that being imprisoned is more dangerous than being whipped, because the risk of being beaten, raped, or murdered in prison is terrifying high. Unfortunately, Jeff Jacoby made some faulty assumptions and his article "Bring back flogging" is filled with misconceptions.

First of all, Jacoby wrongly assumes that flogging can prevent young offenders from going into a professional criminal career. According to him, being publicly whipped will sway juvenile delinquents away from a criminal career. This is an extremely weak argument. There is a well-known fact that many gangs arrange a painful and humiliating initiation for new members, which usually encompasses being severely beaten by older gang members. A new recruit who can deal with the pain and remain strong is one step closer to being accepted. If flogging becomes legalized, it could easily become that stepping stone of violence and humiliation that a youth needs to go through in order to become accepted as a member of a gang or an organized crime unit.

Moreover, I cannot agree with the author that flogging has more educational value than imprisonment. First-time offenders who never held plans to go into a professional criminal career can become so angry and aggravated after a public flogging that they may seek out revenge on those acquaintances who watched their punishment. As a result of public humiliation and disgrace, these offenders are likely to enter a cycle of violence fueled by hate and frustrations towards those who inflicted the punishment and those who witnessed it. The only educational lesson that flogging can teach is hate and violence; therefore, flogging does not have more positive educational impact than imprisonment.

Incredibly, this is not even the most misguided assumption in this article. The author proposes that the next reason why flogging is better than imprisonment is that the risk of being beaten, raped, or murdered in the prison is terrifyingly high. I strongly disagree with this statement. Flogging is a direct danger to the health of persons subjected to it and if it is legalized, our government would be allowing and condoning brutality. To legalize flogging would mean that we are now legally and inevitably handing over convicted persons to be physically assaulted. Beatings would no longer be a rare and terrible side effect of legal punishment; it would be punishment in itself. If our society accepts flogging, convicts would not just be in possible danger of being illegally beaten in prisons, but would be subjected to a "government sponsored beating." Surely, this is inhumane and we cannot allow it.

Jeff Jacoby tries to find the best way to punish law-breakers, but unfortunately, through too many false assumptions and incorrect theories, he fails. He fails to see the real value of imprisonment, the truth behind brutal and inhumane punishment, and the simple reality that violence only breeds further violence. In order to diminish crime and aggression in our society, government cannot use punishment that is in itself an example of brutality, but needs to take humane and reasonable steps in prevention and retribution of crime.