Corporal Capital

How far should humanity go to prevent pain and suffering? Oh wow am I going to make some friends with today’s topic. Many people think that spanking their child is a form of abuse and should be prosecuted to the highest extent of the law and yet on the other side of the coin just as many people believe that if kids were spanked more often then they’d have more respect and discipline and not act out like spoiled little brats. It’s all in the parenting and how much effort the parents are willing to put into the raising of their children. In the long run it’s usually the lack of respect and discipline that leads children to commit crimes simply because they don’t respect the laws or those whose property they affect. True many times it’s poverty that is a root cause of crimes such as theft but I’m talking about really heinous crimes like arson, murder, rape and kidnapping. There are many more but it’s early and I can’t think clearly about crimes right now. The punishment for many of these crimes is usually psychiatric help (if the arsonist is good at talking their way out), life in prison, and in some extreme cases a death sentence. These sentences are usually guaranteed to keep the criminal out of the public eye and away from any future victims for the rest of their lives while locked away, and yet these crimes are still committed every single day.

Amnesty International is an organization I first learned about while I as in high school, their main purpose as I was led to believe was to fight for the rights of and free those wrongly imprisoned around the world such as political prisoners, jailed artists and others of free thinking. A noble cause to be sure, however in recent years they have been fighting against the sentences handed down to those who are rightly imprisoned of crimes, even heinous crimes like murder. So instead of fighting against wrongful imprisonment they have expanded their arguments to include any punishment which they deem is cruel or unjust regardless of whether or not the criminal is guilty or not. Clearly they have never asked the majority of crime victims what should be done with the perpetrators of these horrible acts.

Crime rates are higher now than any other time in history worldwide. Why? Possibly because criminals in recent decades are not afraid of the punishments that can be meted out against them which in most cases end up being:
· Probation
· Fines
· Minimal prison time.
If a drug dealer is simply fined a few thousand dollars for something they did they will gladly pay off their fine with the same funds they have gained from doing the crime before going back to the same business. Hardened criminals will even do their sentenced time and not be reformed as the proponents of jails hope they will become, they simply scoff at the “no no bad dog” reasoning behind it and go back to their crimes as soon as they are released.

Long ago criminals had something to fear from possible sentences they might receive for what they did. They were happy and almost jubilant to receive prison time though people rarely survived prison sentences since the alternative punishments included:
· Flogging
· Hanging
· Stoning
· Beheading
· Maiming
· To be drawn and quartered
· Left to die slowly in a gibbet (those cages hanging from trees or other visible location as a warning

These are the days of criminals with “records a mile long” as they say, back in the time of those just mentioned punishments criminals who were caught rarely lived long enough to have a criminal record started other than to log their trial, sentence, and date of execution.

I’m not one to enjoy another person’s pain, heck I’ll probably pass out or vomit if I ever had to see something along the lines of those punishments. But somewhere along the line of humanity’s march of progress we have forgotten how to keep one another safe from rampant crime and horrible violence. Progress doesn’t always lead to improvement.

In the wild west of the 1800’s there were public hangings of violent criminals, we’ve all seen them in the movies. Punishments like that were used widely to spread the end result of criminal activity. It was the Middle Ages that had the most gruesome of punishments (yes that scene at the end of Braveheart was a common occurrence back then), and yet less than a hundred years ago punishments became less severe and crime rates rose. Two hundred years ago if someone killed somebody they were going to hang from the gallows, and not fifteen years after the fact either, within a week they were swinging and people forgot who they were.

Yes you could call me a supporter of public punishments as a way of keeping criminals from being criminals. Minor offenses such as theft, corruption, bribery should be punished by setting up a grate in a public area, tying the criminal to it, and flogging the crap out of him. The number of lashed to be determined by the severity of their crime. Stole $100; 5 lashes, stole a car; 50 lashes, tanked your investment firm and caused thousands of people to lose their savings and homes; flay the flesh from your bones (maybe a bit extreme but not to those who are affected by them). In relation for crimes more horrible than those little misdemeanors public hanging is always an option again. Also I’m quite sure a rape victim would be immensely happy to throw rocks at a criminal’s head until he was dead.

Criminals these days have more rights than the people they affect and of course it’s not fair. It is time that we gave them their rights back by ensuring that the criminals are punished in the most memorable way so as to deter others from following their example. Maybe we’d have more teachers or police officers or even truthful politicians if somewhere along the line of their childhood and being raised they saw the result of criminal activity and instead decided to keep those criminals from ever happening. Maybe. Maybe I need a pork chop.