Corporal punishment

“ After positive conviction, no punishment can be too severe for a crime that produces such mischief; but to degrade a man by corporal punishment, to ruin his character, and render him an object of abhorrence and contempt, in the absence of even bare presumptive evidence, was an act of cruelty and injustice, which could excite but one feeling ”

“ If all the philanthropists in the world, together with all the legislators, met in order to bring forward their reasons for the total abolition of corporal punishment, I would not be persuaded to the contrary. ”

“ In short, whipping, which invades the integrity of the human body, is an antiquated and inhuman punishment which blocks the way to understanding the pathology of crime." [46]
[33] ⁠ The Court in Tyrer v United Kingdom characterised the whipping of a juvenile thus:
"The very nature of judicial corporal punishment is that it involves one human being inflicting physical violence on another human being. ”

“ Cruel or unusual punishment is not to be inflicted, but who is to decide what is cruel and what is unusual? * * * Each officer may define cruelty according to his own temper, and if it is not usual, he will make it usual. Corporal punishment, imprisonment, the gag, the ball and chain, and the almost insupportable forms of torture invented for military punishment lie within the range of choice. ”

“ Corporal punishment in defence of self or others needs no comment, except that, like all other acts done in defence, its justification depends on whether or not it was reasonably necessary for the protection of the person attacked. Among persons invested with punitive authority, mention must first be made of parents and guardians, and of teachers, who have, by implied delegation from the parents, and as incidental to the relation of master and pupil, powers of reasonable corporal punishment. ”

“ To every breach of discipline, certain punishments are allotted; some, indeed, appear very severe; and for many misdemeanours, corporal punishment is not merely held out in terrorem, but inflicted. Attempts at escape are liable to be punished by labour in chains, or flogging up to 100 lashes, or to a renewed sentence of transportation ”

“ I freely allow, loudly confess, that corporal punishment, in the way in which it has been practised until now, has much in it that is insulting for the person being chastised as well as humiliating for the person chastising. ”

“ Rewards and Punishments.—In the public elementary school of to-day, sound methods and principles in the matter of rewards and punishments find but little application. Corporal punishment is freely used, and in many cases the children are grossly ill-treated. In the United States of America, the general experience has been that in schools in which corporal punishment is unknown, better results are obtained and a higher general level is reached than in schools in which corporal punishment is customary. ”

“ That there are numbers of persons who would be quite willing to bring back, if it were possible, the medieval forms of torture cannot for a moment be doubted by any one who, like myself, has had the experience of working for over twenty-five years for the discontinuance of flogging. There are, of course, many reasonable advocates of corporal punishment in one or another of its forms ”

“ The following offences committed by male prisoners convicted of felony or sentenced to hard labour will render them liable to corporal punishment:—
1st. Mutiny or open incitement to mutiny in the prison, personal violence to any officer of the prison, aggravated or repeated assaults on a fellow-prisoner, repetition of insulting or threatening language to any officer or prisoner. ”

“ And, chiefly, abolish the senseless, utterly unnecessary and shameful system of corporal punishment, which has been retained only for the most industrious, moral, and numerous class of the population. ”

“ Although repugnant to civilised ideas, the various forms of corporal punishment, fasting, cold shower-bath, or even the rod, are very suitable substitutes for imprisonment in the case of children guilty of petty offences, because not only are these punishments inexpensive and have the advantage of creating a deeper and more immediate impression, but they do not corrupt minor offenders nor do they interrupt their regular occupations, whether work or study. ”

“ It is contended by petitioners that the infliction of corporal punishment in any degree and in any circumstances upon an adult human being, either as an initial punishment for crime or as punishment for an infraction of prison discipline by a convict, is abhorrent to the modern mind, and that whatever view of it may have been taken in times past it is today a cruel and inhuman punishment prohibited by the Constitution. ”

“ We were also advised that at a meeting of the Board held February 29, 1968, with all members in attendance, a resolution was adopted that corporal punishment in any form "be abolished as a means of discipline in the institution." ”

“ In the remand prisons and penal establishments under the Ministry of Justice, there was no need to introduce corporal punishment as a disciplinary measure. The experience of the administration of justice has taught that a well trained, reliable, and conscientious personnel of wardens is in a position to set up and to maintain model order under a strict discipline, even without corporal punishment. ”

“ As already indicated, the courts in this country have acknowledged the international consensus against corporal punishment and, in a sense, associated themselves with it in many judgments which have criticised, sometimes in the strongest terms, the infliction of corporal punishment. [73] Judicial condemnation has resulted in adult whipping being imposed only in exceptional circumstances and juvenile whipping, in general, only as a device to keep the juvenile out of prison. ”

“ In the first place it brutalizes the child; secondly, in many cases it breaks the child's spirit, making it a moral coward; and, thirdly, it tends to weaken the sense of shame, on which the hope of moral improvement depends.
Corporal punishment brutalizes the child. We may be justified in beating a brute, though, of course, never in a cruel, merciless way. A lazy beast of burden may be stirred up to work; an obstinate mule must feel the touch of the whip. Corporal punishment implies that a rational human being is on the level of an animal. ”

“ Under the present system, when the verbal appeal fails, recourse is often had to corporal punishment. We have no room here for a discussion of the ethics of punishment; but a method more foolish could scarcely be devised, if the aim is to enable the boy to overcome temptation. And of all forms of punishment, corporal punishment is the worst. The physical side of the boy's nature is asserting itself in all its strength; and you attempt to combat it by making a physical appeal which must from the nature of the case be far less powerful and compelling. ”

“ For all offences, except the worst, a beating is the obvious, and therefore the natural penalty; and a man who will not listen to reason will yield to blows. It seems to me right and proper to administer corporal punishment to the man who possesses nothing and therefore cannot be fined, or cannot be put in prison because his master's interests would suffer by the loss of his service. There are really no arguments against it: only mere talk about the dignity of man—talk which proceeds, not from any clear notions on the subject, but from the pernicious superstition I have been describing. ”

“ There can be no argument that excessive whipping or an inappropriate manner of whipping or too great frequency of whipping or the [*580] use of studded or overlong straps all constitute cruel and unusual punishment. But if whipping were to be authorized, how does one, or any court, ascertain the point which would distinguish the permissible from that which is cruel and unusual? (7) Corporal punishment generates hate toward the keepers who punish and toward the system which permits it. It is degrading to the punisher and to the punished alike. ”

“ The criminal suffers severe imprisonment, and is so closely chained, that he has no more liberty than serves for the indispensable motion of his body.—Chained criminals suffer a corporal punishment once a year, as an example to the Public. ”

“ Despite the January 1966 requirement that no inmate was to inflict punishment on another, the record is replete with instances where this very thing took place. (3) Regulations are easily circumvented. Although it was a long-standing requirement that a whipping was to be administered only when the prisoner was fully clothed, this record discloses instances of whippings upon the bare buttocks, and with consequent injury. (4) Corporal punishment is easily subject to abuse in the hands of the sadistic and the unscrupulous. ”

“ At present, however, there is but a dim and very confined sense, even amongst enlightened men (as we may see by the debates of Parliament) , of the injury which is done to human nature by giving legal sanction to such brutalizing acts; and therefore most men, in seeking to escape it, would be merely shrinking from a personal dishonor. Corporal punishment is usually argued with a single reference to the case of him who suffers it ”

“ Among the reforms which are indispensable preliminaries to the complete abolition of corporal punishment, is one giving a greater power to expel insolent and undisciplined boys. Not until such a power is granted can corporal punishments be abolished from our schools. For a flogging is oftentimes the only punishment of which a rough and ill-conditioned boy is afraid. ”

“ Rules made under section forty-seven of this Act may authorise the infliction of corporal punishment for mutiny, incitement to mutiny, or gross personal violence to an officer of a prison when committed by a male person serving a sentence of imprisonment, corrective training or preventive detention. ”

“ We think it is fair to say, however, as this court said in Talley, " * * * corporal punishment has not been viewed historically as a constitutionally forbidden cruel and unusual punishment." Neither are we willing to say that the use of the strap in and of itself is contrary to the Eighth Amendment's prohibitions.
[*815]
"Every punishment in a sense involves cruelty since it imposes by force conditions at odds with the concept of the freedom of the person from all forms of trespass, and freedom of action. ”

“ Thirdly, that common decency be no longer outraged by any girl above fifteen receiving corporal punishment. [BZ] Fourthly, that by State enactment—as it now sometimes is by municipal regulation—no master in any town be permitted to inflict corporal punishment on a slave above fifteen; those who have passed that age to be sent to the jail, or some authorized place, to receive their punishment, a faithful record whereof, including slave and owner's names, to be kept. ”

“ Subtal or other corporal punishment — which ex- mit not to any decree or other act of power, pose a man to personal hazard in the service of the justice of which you are not yourself of the military power against foreign enemies, perfectly convinced. ”

“ No such sentence by a regimental, detachment, or brigade court martial was to be carried into effect till confirmed by the general officer commanding the division. When flogged the soldier was invariably to be discharged from the service.
A circular letter from the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Combermere, on the 16th of June, 1827, directs that sentence to corporal punishment is not to be restricted to the three crimes of theft, marauding, or gross insubordination ”

“ The drill will never get on so well as it used to do, unless the rattan be called into use again; but we apprehend no evil from the abolition of corporal punishment afterwards. People are apt to attribute to this abolition offences that have nothing to do with it; and for which ample punishments are still provided. If a man fires at his officer, people are apt to say it is because flogging has been done away with; but a man who deliberately fires at his officer is prepared to undergo worse punishment than flogging. ”

“ For, if it be painful and unpleasant to a body of gentlemen to have a coarse and ill-mannered man thrust upon them, it is certainly not less so to the intruder, if he possess one spark of feeling, to find himself shunned [Pg 141] and looked coldly upon by his new associates. The total abolition of corporal punishment is, we consider, a necessary preliminary to promotion from the ranks on an extensive scale. We were told four years ago, in the House of Commons, during a debate on the Mutiny bill, that there were then in the British army four colonels who were flogged men. ”

“ If ever corporal punishment is wise it is in such a case. He who inflicts pain simply because he can deserves to endure pain inflicted by someone stronger. But one must be careful not to confirm him in the coward's code. ”

“ Except the momentary bodily pain, however, these appear in most cases to make little impression on a people who have been accustomed to corporal punishment from their youth upwards. Their acquaintances stand round the sufferers, while the blows are being inflicted, and mockingly ask them how it tastes. ”

“ Insubordination and other offences are not infrequent, and there is a long gradation of punishments, beginning with formal reproof, either alone or in presence of other detainees, and rising by many steps to cell imprisonment for twelve hours in a cage which allows only of standing and sitting, and finally to corporal punishment, a punishment which has practically fallen into desuetude and which in no case is awarded to women or men over sixty years. The majority of offences are of a minor character and are punished by some curtailment of diet. ”

“ The benefit of corporal punishments, when they are of a short duration, depends in part upon their being connected, by time and place, with the crimes for which they are inflicted. Quick as the thunder follows the lightning, if it were possible, should punishments follow the crimes, and the advantage of association would be more certain, if the spot where they were committed, were made the theatre of their expiation. ”