INDIA: Judicial CP [HISTORY]

Judicial CP in India was by caning; it was abolished shortly after independence from Britain in 1947. In 1934, according to Benson (1937), there were 6,709 canings ordered by the courts.

    Males under 45 could be given up to 30 strokes with a light rattan at least half an inch in diameter for a number of serious offences, with or without a term of imprisonment. Boys under 16 could be caned for any offence, with a maximum of 15 strokes, in lieu of imprisonment.

    Some confusion may be caused by references in present-day Indian news reports to "caning" by riot police in the streets. This does not refer to JCP. The cane meant is a "lathi", a very long thin stick originally designed for use in martial arts but here deployed to disperse a crowd during disturbances. Police use it to lash out at the unruly mob, not to inflict a formal punishment on individuals.

    However, unofficial, extrajudicial whippings are evidently not unknown, as shown in this Jan 2007 video clip.

Regulations by State under the Penal Code [HISTORY]
Mode of infliction of JCP in the different Indian states in the late 19th century.

INDIA: Prison CP

Prisons Act 1894, Chapter IX [HISTORY]
Rules for prison discipline whipping under British rule (max. 30 strokes). This was to be inflicted on the buttocks, presumably bare, except for boys under 16, who were to be punished "in the way of school discipline", which possibly means over the seat of the trousers. The rules are unusual in specifying, for adult prisoners, not a maximum size for the rattan to be used, but a minimum of half an inch in diameter.

INDIA: School CP

Corporal punishment is gradually being abolished (in theory) on a state-by-state basis. According to press reports, it was banned in Delhi in 2000, Andhra Pradesh in 2002, and Orissa and West Bengal in 2004. The anti-CP website GITEACPOC claims that it has also been banned in Goa, Tamil Nadu and Chandigarh.

YOUR EDITOR'S PERSONAL VIEW ...     I suspect that all of this is a bit theoretical, and that the education authorities don't have the resources actually to enforce these prohibitions, at any rate outside the big cities.     This suspicion seems to be borne out by this Feb 2007 news item, which reports that shops selling punishment canes are still doing good business with schools even within the city of Hyderabad (in Andhra Pradesh), never mind in the rural areas.     I also have to point out, yet again, that the "horror stories" about so-called CP that are routinely quoted in support of these various bans, involving pupils being injured by untrained angry teachers who lash out violently on the spur of the moment, have nothing whatsoever to do with proper corporal punishment.     If you want my own opinion, the problem does not lie in the legislation but in the absence of any machinery for enforcing existing rules. In other words, the laws being passed in state capitals are not worth the paper they are written on. In my personal view, what these school systems actually need is not "gesture politics" about children's rights, but money to train and employ decent teachers and to fund a properly functioning system of regulation and inspection. C.F.

Delhi School Education Rules, 1973 [HISTORY]
Rules for caning in schools in the Delhi area of India: if a cane was used, it was supposed to be applied to the palm of the hand, max. 10 strokes.

Other external links for India/Schools

IRAN: Judicial CP

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran has been run largely by religious fundamentalists for whom the rule of law is at best an elastic concept. There have been regular reports of public floggings imposed by local courts or officials. Many more instances of JCP are said to be administered in prisons or institutions. Women as well as men are liable to this punishment.

    Generally a whip is applied to the bare upper back, the culprit either lying face down flat on a bench or standing upright and tied to a post. See this Aug 2007 illustrated news item showing a 25-year-old man receiving a public flogging in the horizontal position, and this Feb 2001 illustrated report in which a youth is pictured being whipped while tied to a lamppost. Sometimes the whole body is whipped down to the ankles, as in this May 2007 illustrated report.

    JCP is applied for ordinary crimes like murder, rape and theft as well as for "religious" offences to do with adultery and alcohol. In some cases corporal and capital punishment are combined, the offender being first flogged and then hanged, as in this March 2005 case where a serial murderer was executed in public after being given 100 lashes.

    Public floggings were also carried out in earlier periods, when the country was called Persia. See for instance this c.1910 picture.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

Flogging/legal concern  (Alternative link)
Iran: Justice denied to man who died after flogging  (Alternative link)
Two reports from Amnesty International about a 35-year-old man who died after being flogged in Iran in February 2004. Amnesty concedes that his death may not have been caused by the flogging.

Conservatives and Reformists Debate Public Flogging
An overview (Dec 2001) from the Middle East Media Research Institute of the ongoing raging dispute over JCP in Iran.

Photo of the Day
Two photos on an anti-regime website showing the back and legs of a young man who has been flogged with a whip by the authorities.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2000
Flogging is expressly prescribed by the Penal Code for adultery. Women may be flogged for inappropriate dress or behaviour.

Amnesty International Report 1998  (Alternative link)
Sentences of flogging continued to be imposed in 1997 for a wide range of offences.

Amnesty International Report 1999  (Alternative link)
Examples of flogging cases in 1998 are quoted.

Amnesty International Report 2001  (Alternative link)
At least 49 floggings were reported in 2000, but the true number may have been considerably higher.

Other external links for Iran/Judicial

IRELAND: Judicial CP

Judicial CP in Ireland was inherited from the UK (of which Ireland was a part until 1920). The newly independent country proceeded to enact fresh JCP legislation of its own (see external links below). JCP was not formally abolished until the 1997 Criminal Law Act, according to this article in the Journal of Social History (which is not primarily about JCP), but had clearly fallen into disuse long before that. The most recent example to hand is this 1943 juvenile birching case.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

District Court Rules 1942  (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
Scroll down to "Form VI: Conviction of child for indictable offence" for the form of words used by the court in sentencing a juvenile male to birching.

Public Safety (Emergency Powers) Act 1923 Section 5  (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
Text of legislation from around the end of the civil war that accompanied independence from the UK. Surprisingly, it provides for mandatory whipping for male persons convicted of armed robbery and arson - with a birch for offenders under 18, instrument in other cases not specified. Some of the phraseology is clearly inherited from British practice (e.g. "once privately whipped"). The following year, the identical wording reappeared in the Public Safety (Punishment of Offences) Temporary Act 1924  (Alternative link).

Dáil Éireann - Volume 4 - 12 July, 1923 [HISTORY]
Verbatim account of debate in the Dáil (Parliament) on the flogging clauses in the Public Safety (Emergency Powers) Bill 1923 (see previous item).

IRELAND: Reformatory CP

Extracts from Borstal in Ireland [HISTORY]
From a 1975 book comparing the situation north and south of the post-1922 border as regards institutions for older youth offenders. In the Republic CP was officially not used, and mention is made of two 1940s newspaper stories alleging that it was.

IRELAND: School (and also judicial and domestic) CP

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

The European Court of Human Rights and the Abolition of Corporal Punishment
An 1999 overview from Irish Student Law Review. Considers the implications for Ireland of ECHR rulings on mostly UK cases.

Other external links for Ireland/Schools

ISLE OF MAN: Judicial CP

The Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency, with its own laws and parliament, culturally very British but not part of the UK.

    Unlike the mainland, the Isle of Man did not abolish JCP in 1948. In the 1950s and 1960s the island became famous for its courts' increasing use of the birch to punish delinquent boys and young men across their bare posteriors. This was inflicted in private by the local police, either in a police station near the court or in a room in the court building, shortly after the court hearing, with the offender being held down over a table or chair. The last birching was in 1976.

Birching in the Isle of Man 1945-1976 [HISTORY]
Illustrated overview including references to changing legislation and rules over the postwar period.

Birching ... The Facts [HISTORY]
A local legal expert speaks in 1972 about the legal and procedural aspects of the judicial birch.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

European Court of Human Rights: Case of Tyrer v. the United Kingdom [HISTORY]
Enter "Tyrer" in the "Case Title" box and you will get a long document from 1978 - the court's judgment on the punishment in 1972 of Tony Tyrer, then 15, who was sentenced to three strokes of the birch in the Isle of Man. There is a detailed account of the birching, and the document also sets out the relevant legislation - misleadingly, since it includes the absurd "over trousers" requirement only introduced much later (and never implemented). You cannot birch people over their trousers.

    The description of the actual event makes clear that Tony indeed received the strokes on his bare bottom, which, we are told, was sore for a week and a half.

    The court held by six votes to one that the birching was "degrading" within the meaning of the Human Rights Convention. Some will find Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice's dissenting opinion, at the end of the document, a welcome breath of common sense.

    Tony Tyrer himself never wanted this legal action to go ahead, and tried to withdraw it; when he broke his long silence in a newspaper interview many years later, he said he believed the birch was a good thing!

Tyrer v UK [HISTORY]  (Alternative link)
A brief legal comment on the above case.

Other external links for Isle of Man/Judicial

JAMAICA: Judicial CP

Judicial CP in Jamaica was sometimes inflicted with the cat-o'-nine-tails on the upper back, but in more recent times usually with the tamarind switch on the bare buttocks. This latter sentence was quite common as recently as the 1960s.

    It seems to have fallen into disuse around 1970 but was then revived in 1994 -- see Aug 1994 press report of the first court case for 25 years in which it was ordered and this Nov 1994 follow-up -- before being abolished in 1998.

    According to Benson (1937), in 1935 there were 350 whippings in Jamaica by order of the courts, all but one of which were for juveniles. This was an increase from 234 in 1930.

Stills from The Harder They Come - film set in Jamaica in the 1960s [HISTORY]
This of course is a dramatic reconstruction, not the real thing, but it is believed to be a fairly authentic representation of a flogging with the tamarind switch. I am not responsible for the poor picture quality, nor for the inaccurate title "Judicial Caning [sic] in Jamaica". I think we can assume the tamarind switch would be the same as that described in the Prison (Amendment) Rules, from which it is evident that the instrument was very similar to the post-1960 Isle of Man birch.

Legislation on sexual offences against children [HISTORY]
Under section IV "Child prostitution", quotes Article 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act, which provided whipping for procuring. This is out of date, as all JCP in Jamaica was outlawed in 1998.

George Osbourne v Jamaica [HISTORY]
Official report of a UN Human Rights Committee hearing in 2000. The complainant was sentenced in 1994 to 15 years' jail and ten strokes of the tamarind switch for illegal firearms, robbery and wounding with intent. Evidence quoted includes an affidavit from another prisoner, Errol Price, also sentenced to prison and the tamarind switch in 1994, who received his punishment in 1997 in the Penitentiary at Kingston, and who describes the experience thus: he was "seized, blindfolded and ordered to remove clothing from the lower part of his body. When this was done, he was forced to lean forward across a barrel and one of the warders placed his penis into a slot in the barrel. He was then strapped into that position and struck across the buttocks with an instrument that he was unable to see [...] An unnecessary number of prison warders (25) were present at the time of the whipping."
    This description accords exactly with the reconstructed scene in the film The Harder They Come (see above), except that the prisoner in the film is brought to the barrel in his underpants, which are pulled down only after he is strapped to the barrel. In the full uncensored version of the film, the penis slot arrangement is clearly shown, the purpose of which was presumably to protect the genitals from being crushed against the barrel on the impact of the switch.

Higginson v Jamaica [HISTORY]
Another UN Human Rights Committee hearing (2002). Higginson, at age 21 in 1995, was sentenced to jail plus six strokes of the tamarind switch. It's unclear whether or not the whipping had actually been carried out. The Committee found Jamaica to be in breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights just for passing the sentence, whether or not it was inflicted. However, Jamaica resiled from the Optional Protocol (recognising the Committee's right to rule on violations of the Covenant) in 1998, and seems to have refused to have anything more to do with the procedure, so presumably both this case and the one mentioned above are now in limbo.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998 [HISTORY]
The appeal court ruled that flogging may not be imposed, as the legislative authority for it had expired (see this Dec 1998 news item).

A Summary of Concerns: A Briefing for the Human Rights Committee [HISTORY]  (Alternative link)
Amnesty International document from 1997. Errol Price, sentenced in 1994 to the tamarind switch, received his 6 strokes in 1997; the document goes into detail about how they were administered. This was the first judicial CP to be administered in over 20 years.

JAMAICA: Prison CP

Prison (Amendment) Rules, 1965 [HISTORY]
Rules for flogging and whipping in prisons. The dimensions of the cat and of the tamarind switch are given, the former to be inflicted on the back, the latter on the buttocks.

JORDAN: School CP

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

Jordan Human Rights Practices 1993  (Alternative link)
Corporal punishment in Jordan's schools was prohibited, according to this US State Department document. The same information is repeated in subsequent years' reports up to 1998.

Other external links for Jordan/Schools

KENYA: Judicial CP

Judicial canings in Kenya were administered in prison and applied to the bare buttocks. The procedure was inherited from British rule. A Bill to abolish JCP was published in 2000, but caning sentences were still being handed down by the courts in Feb 2003. Abolition finally took effect in July 2003.

    According to Benson (1937), there were 450 floggings in Kenya in 1930. By 1935 this figure had fallen to 264, of which 221 were for juveniles.

    The use of JCP on juveniles in the pre-independence era is illustrated by this Jan 1960 case in which white schoolboys were sentenced to canings for various robberies.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998
Mentions that rapists were normally given several strokes of the cane in addition to a prison sentence.

Amnesty International Report 1998  (Alternative link)
Notes that in 1997 many young men under 18 were caned by order of the courts.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2000
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2001
Caning sentences continued to be given "in cases such as rape", says this -- but in fact for other offences too, such as robbery. See for instance this Dec 1999 news item.

KOREA: Judicial CP

There is no judicial CP in either part of present-day Korea.

Old pictures of judicial canings [HISTORY]
Six photographs from the beginning of the 20th century. The cane was applied to the bare buttocks, with the offender tied down to a specially-constructed bench, lying flat face down. At least sometimes, the penalty was evidently carried out in public, which is probably why so many photographs of it exist.

KOREA: School CP

Present-day Korea remains divided between the affluent, highly developed, western-oriented South and the poor, communist, isolationist North. School caning is commonplace, and fully lawful, in the South but prohibited and allegedly unknown in the North.

    70% of South Korean schools use CP, according to a survey in 2003.

    For a more detailed overview with links and documentation, see this separate page.

LITHUANIA: School CP

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

Amnesty International Report 2002  (Alternative link)
This claims that in 2001 corporal punishment was widespread in schools as well as families. I wonder if this really means proper corporal punishment in the deliberate formal sense that we normally understand. Lithuania used to be part of the Soviet Union, where school CP was officially outlawed; it is now a member state of the European Union.

Anti-CP agitators GITEACPOC state that there is supposed to be no CP in Lithuania, but that it is not explicitly prohibited in schools.

MALAYSIA: Judicial CP

Severe corporal punishment by order of the courts, for males under 50 only, is routine for many serious offences, notably those involving violence or drugs. This is always combined with a prison sentence (at any rate in adult cases), and takes the form of a specified number of powerful strokes with a big rattan cane, or rotan, across the offender's bare seat.

    The punishment is delivered inside prison by specially trained prison officers. It is never administered in public. To the western eye it is a rather brutal affair: where more than a few strokes are involved (the maximum, though relatively rare, is 24), blood is drawn. See these pictures and, if you can bear it, these video clips.

    In these and other respects the procedure largely resembles that in Singapore, though the modus operandi differs in detail. It is a development of what was inherited from British colonial days, and has nothing to do with Islamic law.

    In a milder version (often a token single stroke of the cane), CP is also an almost invariable part of the sentence on the thousands of illegal immigrants who arrive every year, mostly from Indonesia.

    See feature article Judicial caning in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei (illustrated) for full details of history and modus operandi and an overview of the legislative situation.

    In addition to these canings under the criminal law, there are occasional reports of mild caning sentences being ordered (for Muslims only) under Shariah law for things like alcohol consumption. (I believe this only ever happens in remote rural areas.) These are much less severe, and intended to be more or less a token gesture. Even so, when reported in the newspapers they have produced an outcry, as in this June 2005 case.

    One or two Malaysian states in the far north also have other Koranic penalties such as stoning and amputation on their statute books. These laws are purely symbolic and are there only as a political gesture, introduced when the states in question were (thanks to the crude first-past-the-post electoral system inherited from Britain) under the control of the Islamic fundamentalist minority opposition party. GITEACPOC says of these punishments that "implementation has been controversial". This is extremely misleading. In reality, implementation has been absolutely nonexistent. They are contrary to the federal constitution, they are opposed by the national government which is always a multicultural coalition led by moderate Muslims, and they are a 100% dead letter. There have never been such punishments anywhere in Malaysia, and it is inconceivable that there ever could be, not least because 40% of the population are not Muslims. Malaysia is a very different kind of place from Iran or Saudi Arabia.

    In an unexpected development, in March 2007 the Malaysian Bar -- the official organisation of the country's lawyers, with 12,000 members -- unanimously adopted a motion calling for the abolition of JCP on the grounds that it is "cruel and inhumane". The Bar's relationship with the government has been rocky and confrontational for a long time, and there is no sign so far that the politicians are likely to take much notice of the lawyers on this issue, any more than they have of human rights groups. Malaysia is a democracy, and politicians want to get re-elected. The impression given in the media, at least, is that the wider electorate would not favour such a ban; on the contrary, there have been calls for caning to be used for even more offences and also for it to be extended to men over 50.

YOUR EDITOR'S PERSONAL VIEW ...     Few commentators in Malaysia seem to have noted that there is, as so often, a false dichotomy in this debate between the status quo and complete abolition. In my own personal view, a severe caning is justified in certain cases including for instance violent criminals, ruthless professional robbers, and men who rape children. The public clearly are entitled to be satisfied that such people are getting their just deserts. The case for routinely caning thousands of hapless illegal immigrants seems weaker. I also slightly doubt whether it does drug addicts all that much good, though I am no expert in such matters and I might be wrong.     Above all, though, I would reduce the maximum number of strokes to 10 or perhaps 12. It is difficult to see what is gained by sentences of 20 or 24 strokes that cannot be achieved with half that or less. It seems that most prisoners' pain threshold is reached by around the 12th stroke anyway, after which the nerve endings in the buttocks start to go numb. The remaining strokes add nothing except the gruesome mangling of flesh and giving corporal punishment a bad name. Caning doesn't have to be like that.     I also think that one of the strongest arguments for JCP is as a partial or total alternative to prison in those lesser cases where offenders do not actually need to be locked up for many years (at great expense to the taxpayer) in order to protect the public. So, as also in Singapore, one would prefer to see caning used more often "instead of" jail, rather than always "as well as". This might perhaps apply especially to non-violent offences like fraud or vandalism, and also for the younger or less experienced offenders, who could be swiftly given three or four strokes and returned to the community under supervision, rather than being contaminated and corrupted by immersion in the prison system. C.F.

Inside Story
An Australian caught with drugs in Malaysia describes receiving six strokes of the cane in 1982. Illustrated with an official photograph of a Malaysian prisoner prepared for caning.

More photographs relating to Malaysian JCP, from the Pudu Prison exhibition in 1997/8

Stills from a filmed reconstruction of a judicial caning

More pictures from the Pudu exhibition, including stills from a different filmed reconstruction

Newspaper article describes the procedure, 2005

Genuine film of several canings being inflicted

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

Internal Security and Public Order Division
This government department announces that one of its tasks is to determine policies relating to the execution of caning sentences.

Malaysia: Caning should be abolished  (Alternative link)
August 2002 press release in which Amnesty International reiterates its familiar line. Very unusually for Amnesty, there is a major error in the background footnote, which states that 13 people were sentenced to whipping in 2001, a sharp drop from 53 people in 2000. These figures are ridiculous and must be based on some misunderstanding. It's obvious from just the small proportion of cases I have reported on this website (I reproduce perhaps one in five of the press reports that I come across) that the numbers for Malaysia as a whole are far higher than that.

State of Malaysian Human Rights: Civil & Political Rights 2000
This, from the Malaysian domestic human rights organisation SUARAM, turns out to be the source of the above weird figures. It says that from January to October 2000, "53 people had been ordered whippings and jail terms by the courts all over Malaysia for various convicted crimes". That's only about one a week! Don't these people read their own local newspapers?

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1993  (Alternative link)
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1999
Mentions the canings that are routinely added to prison sentences for kidnapping, rape and robbery. Caning, using a half-inch-thick wooden cane, "commonly causes welts" and "sometimes scarring" -- which I think probably rather understates the case. Subsequent years' reports repeat the same information.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2000
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2001
The 2000 Child Act was introduced under which boys may be ordered up to ten strokes of a light cane. The 2001 report, published in March 2002, says that this legislation had not yet entered into force (see next item).

Ambiguities in Malaysia's Child Act
According to this, Malaysia maintains a reservation to certain articles in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child enabling it to continue ordering canings of juveniles. The relevant Minister is quoted as saying that a light cane is used and "average force is used so the child's skin is not cut", in sharp contrast to the judicial canings of adults.

Amnesty International Report 1997  (Alternative link)
Amnesty International Report 1998  (Alternative link)
Court-ordered caning continued throughout 1997 and 1998. The 1997 report cites the first caning case under the new Immigration Act. In the 1998 report, a case is mentioned in which an offender was jailed and caned for possession of cannabis.

Suaram calls the nation to have a heart (10 March 1998)
Malaysia's human rights organisation opposes an alleged call by the Inspector General of Police for illegal immigrants to be flogged in public (his suggestion was not taken up). This item is a long way down the page, with more recent stuff at the top.

Other external links for Malaysia/Judicial

MALAYSIA: School CP

Corporal punishment, usually with an English-style flexible cane, occurs quite frequently in some Malaysian schools but is rare or unknown in others. Reports suggest that it may be more common in the vernacular (Chinese or Tamil medium) schools, which have a reputation for strict discipline, than in the "national" schools run directly by government (Malay medium, but attended by all races).

    It is clear from press reports that detailed practice varies widely from one school to another, largely depending on the views of the head teacher. In this respect, Malaysia perhaps more resembles the pre-1987 UK -- or the present-day USA, in the few areas that still paddle -- than does neighbouring Singapore, where bureaucratic control over schools appears to be more detailed and more centralised.

    In March 2006 the government announced that regulations would shortly be promulgated that would require canings to be carried out privately and not in front of other students, as has been common in some schools hitherto. This March 2007 report confirms this, and adds that CP may now be carried out only by the headmaster, with one witness, and no longer by ordinary teachers -- an issue over which there seems in the past to have been much confusion and controversy.

    According to this Aug 2006 news item, the new rules will also require canings to be decided by a disciplinary committee rather than by the headmaster alone. Another press report (New Straits Times, 3 October 2006, not on line) quotes the federal Deputy Education Minister as saying that the rules lay down a maximum of three strokes; the punishment is to be delivered in a room away from other students and with another teacher as a witness; and the person administering it should not raise his or her arm. As in the previous guidelines, only a cane may be used and it must be applied to the palm or the clothed buttocks of the student.

    Despite all the above "trailers" for a new set of rules, this July 2007 interview with the Deputy Education Minister gave the impression that consultations were still under way and the final shape of any new regulations was not yet decided. He also said that the possibility of allowing the caning of girls was being discussed.

    Matters become still more confused with this Sep 2007 report of yet further remarks by the Minister to the effect that public caning might, after all, be allowed, depending on further unspecified "discussions".

    This June 1996 news item quotes earlier government guidelines for caning in schools. These do not always seem to have been very rigorously enforced. For instance, they say that only boys should receive CP, but in practice there are occasional reports of girls being caned.

    This June 2003 news item gives more detail about the earlier official guidelines, and includes a photograph of a secondary student being caned in the school office while a second miscreant waits his turn. The modus operandi shown, with the boy standing upright facing the wall to receive the punishment across the seat of his trousers, is also seen in this brief video clip of a real one-stroke caning at an unidentified Malaysian school. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that at some other schools the boy has to bend over British-style, as is the norm in neighbouring Singapore.

    Statistics on the incidence of CP are published only sporadically, as far as I am aware. It was reported in March 1997 that 4,835 school students were caned in the state of Negri Sembilan in 1996, and a Nov 2003 report stated that there were 1,881 canings in schools in the state of Johor in the first ten months of 2003.

    Also, in the country as a whole, 9,348 school students were punished for smoking between May and July 1997. It seems reasonable to assume that most of these punishments were canings, since it had been announced earlier that year that CP was being made mandatory for smoking.

    A survey in 2003 found that 52% of a sample of school students said caning was common in their schools.

Other external links for Malaysia/Schools

MALDIVES: Judicial CP

In this small state which consists of a group of atolls off India, courts are empowered to impose floggings for certain offences under Islamic (Sharia) law. In this July 2007 case, a man was sentenced to 19 lashes, in addition to banishment to one of the outer islands, for sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

GITEACPOC notes that JCP may be ordered for apostasy, rebellion, fornication, defamation, drinking, theft and offences relating to homicide. It adds that, if the offender is a juvenile, the lashing is postponed until he or she is 18.

US State Department Human Rights Report 1993
Convicted criminals may be flogged, but the report implies that this is not common. (The 1994 USSD report gives the same wording.)

US State Department Human Rights Report 1995
US State Department Human Rights Report 1996
US State Department Human Rights Report 1997
There were no reported floggings in 1995, 1996 or 1997.

US State Department Human Rights Report 1998
There were no public floggings in 1998 but there were two private floggings for adultery. (The 1999 and 2000 USSD reports merely repeat the same information.)

US State Department Human Rights Report 2001
Public flogging was still allowed but there were no reports of it in practice. (The 2002 USSD report repeats the same information.)

US State Department Human Rights Report 2003
Reports that public floggings under Sharia law had resumed. In October 2002, two women were given 15 lashes each for homosexual activity. In July 2003, five women got 10 lashes each on drug charges.

US State Department Human Rights Report 2004
Mentions that there were several public floggings during the year, particularly for adultery, but gives no details. (The 2005 and 2006 reports make no mention at all of JCP.)

NEW ZEALAND: Judicial CP

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

The Fall and Fall of Corporal Punishment [HISTORY]
According to this, judicial whipping for boys was introduced in 1867, last used in 1935, and abolished in 1941.

NEW ZEALAND: School CP

Corporal punishment was banned from all New Zealand schools in 1990. This must have represented quite an upheaval in a culture famous for being "more English than the English", in which the vigorous caning of schoolboys had been routine, deeply ingrained and extremely widespread. For a glimpse into how this worked in practice at one elite boys' school in the late 1960s, see this book review.

    The celebrated 1981 "caning video" case at Rongotai College shows that this culture was by no means confined to "posh" schools. See also this October 1997 news item for recollections of canings at Nelson College between 1856 and 1983.

    All sources seem to concur that canings were invariably delivered to the seat of the trousers, with the student bending over, either hands on knees or, perhaps less often, touching his toes.

Caning in a mixed-sex city school in the 1960s [HISTORY]
Light-hearted anecdotal descriptions from the autobiography of a teacher. It is taken as read that boys might expect to be caned on a more or less daily basis, while girls were exempt.

External links for New Zealand/School CP

PAKISTAN: Judicial CP

Pakistan inherited judicial caning from British India, but its scope was greatly increased during the regime of General Zia ul Haq (1977-1985). During this period several high-profile public canings were carried out, often in sports stadia with thousands of spectators. The offenders dealt with in this way -- all men under 50, as far as can be ascertained -- were often serious criminals such as rapists.

    The punishment was administered with a very long and thick but whippy cane across the prisoner's buttocks. Often his pants were pulled down, but the target area was then covered with one layer of thin cloth, perhaps out of Islamic modesty -- though the modus operandi owed nothing to Koranic prescriptions and everything to the British CP heritage. The prisoner was usually tied, upright and with feet apart, to a colonial-era A-frame in the Malaysian manner (pictured right upper), but in some cases was held bending over a chair schoolboy-style (pictured right lower). Sometimes a microphone was placed close to the prisoner's head so that his moans and screams could be broadcast to the crowd.

    This March 1978 report (illustrated) on one of the first cases to gain international publicity shows a child-rapist receiving 15 strokes in front of an audience of 100,000 in Rawalpindi. There was a similar case the following month (illustrated) when another rapist was publicly flogged in Karachi.

    Apart from these public exhibitions, many other offenders were caned privately inside prison. This April 1983 news item reports on a mass flogging of 84 people in Karachi prison with canes 5 feet long. If true, this makes the implement even bigger than that used in Singapore.

    Non-religious JCP was abolished in 1996, according to Amnesty (see external links below). A different and more Islamic sort of flogging is carried out by tribal authorities in areas beyond the reach of the central government, as in this Jan 1992 report (illustrated). The most recent such case currently to hand was this one in Oct 2007 in Swat.

Public flogging c.1980 [HISTORY]
A series of still photographs clearly showing the method used for administering the cane during General Zia's regime. See also this video clip giving a brief glimpse of a public caning under way.

More judicial corporal punishment pictures [HISTORY]
Another assorted batch of photographs of public canings during the same period.

Extract from Fifteen Lashes by Anwar Iqbal [HISTORY]
A reporter's eyewitness account of a public flogging.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

The Chronicle of Pakistan 1979: The Hudood Ordinance [HISTORY]
Includes a Pakistan public flogging photo that was new to me, though somewhat similar in style to the bottom picture on this page of miscellaneous Pakistan caning photographs.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1993  (Alternative link)
The 1993 report notes that unofficial courts in remote tribal areas inflicted floggings, and mentions a newspaper photograph (which I have not yet found) of a public flogging in which the accused received five lashes for selling and using heroin.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1994  (Alternative link)
Courts in the tribal council areas continued to impose floggings. Meanwhile, the mainstream judiciary was found not to be independent.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1995  (Alternative link)
Mentions that two soldiers were sentenced to 30 lashes for molesting a female minor, and also two Irishmen to five lashes each for drug smuggling -- reportedly the first foreigners to undergo JCP in Pakistan in the modern era.

Visit by the Special Rapporteur to Pakistan
Document from the UN Commission on Human Rights setting out (at paragraphs 63 to 72) the legal situation in late 1996 on judicial and prison discipline CP. In theory at least, whipping had been done away with for ordinary crimes, but retained for religious ones.

Amnesty International Report 1997  (Alternative link)
Confirms that the punishment of flogging was abolished in 1996, except for Islamic offences.

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 1996
US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 1997
Says that in remote areas outside the federal jurisdiction there were tribal councils which imposed floggings (see The Archive for January 1992 and May 1997).

April 1998: Children in South Asia Securing Their Rights  (Alternative link)
Amnesty International report giving (towards the end of Chapter I) another account of the May 1997 case mentioned above.

Amnesty International Report 1998  (Alternative link)
Reports on public floggings in the Khyber Agency, which has its own legal and judicial system, and also mentions that in 1997 drug offenders were sentenced to be flogged in various parts of the country, in spite of a theoretical ban on flogging for non-Islamic offences.

Amnesty International Report 1999  (Alternative link)
Briefly mentions a flogging under Islamic law reported in 1998.

The Denial of Juvenile Justice in Pakistan
1999 report by Human Rights Watch. This says that juveniles as well as adults are sentenced to whipping, in addition to imprisonment, for sexual offences under Islamic law. In practice these sentences have so far always been overturned on appeal. In some areas there are also tribal courts with their own rules - see Chapter VI, Children in the Criminal Justice System.

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 1999
US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 2000
US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 2001
Gives detail of the offences for which JCP could still be imposed for sex, gambling and alcohol offences under the Hudood ordinances. Also mentions that unofficial courts in remote tribal areas occasionally ordered floggings. The same information is repeated in subsequent years' USSD reports up to 2003.

Amnesty International Report 2001  (Alternative link)
States that the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 prohibited judicial corporal punishment for offenders under 18. (AI reports on Pakistan for subsequent years make no mention of CP.)

GITEACPOC notes, however, that the 2000 Ordinance (see previous item) has been called into question as it does not necessarily override earlier laws, and there is some confusion as to the current legal position for juveniles.

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 2004
Lashes could still be imposed for sex, gambling and alcohol offences under the Hudood ordinances. Flogging by tribal courts in remote areas is no longer mentioned. The 2005 and 2006 reports give substantially the same information.

Chapter 19: Sentences: Part D - Whipping
Chapter 20: Execution of Sentences: Part C - Whipping
Chapter 22: Youthful Offenders: Part A - General
Documents from the Lahore High Court giving detailed rules for caning. The punishment is to be applied to the buttocks with a rattan 4 feet long and half an inch in diameter. It is to be done in private, "either at a jail, or in an enclosure near the court-house". A medical officer must be present, and a thin cloth, soaked in antiseptic, is to be spread over the target area once the offender's trousers have been lowered. Boys under 15 were to be sentenced to whipping in preference to being incarcerated. It is not clear how much of this legislation is still extant.

PALESTINE: Judicial and reformatory CP

According to Benson and Glover (1931), there were 20 judicial floggings in Palestine in 1929. The territory was under the British Mandate at the time.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

Encyclopaedia of the Palestine Problem [HISTORY]
Summary of events in the Palestine emergency of 1946, when Zionist terrorists were attacking the British forces. One of them was sentenced to a whipping for a bank robbery and they kidnapped British soldiers and flogged them in retaliation.

GITEACPOC reports that, in Palestine's current fluid political situation, the present legislative status of JCP is unclear.

On the Legislation Relating To Palestinian Children  (Alternative link)
Big document produced by the Law Centre of Birzeit University (1996) explaining the complicated legal situation inherited from various different jurisdictions and shortly to be replaced (or so it was hoped at the time) with modern legislation by the new Palestinian Authority. See Section 6, "Children as Offenders/Juvenile Justice". Rules made under the British Mandate in 1922 and added to in 1930, not spelled out in detail here, empowered courts to order flogging for those aged under 16 for any offence. This legislation was strengthened in 1937 and 1941 with a statement that no young person should be sent to prison if he could suitably be dealt with in some other way, including corporal punishment. Under Jordanian jurisdiction these provisions were repealed for the West Bank in 1954 but apparently remain in force up to today in the Gaza Strip, at least in theory. Also still applicable in the Gaza Strip are reformatory regulations from 1932 providing for corporal punishment to be used (no details given). The Israeli authorities made various legislative changes after their invasion of 1967 but left these particular provisions unamended. However, it is not clear whether the occupying power has allowed these rules to be invoked in practice.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Prison CP

Prisons Ordinance, 1923-1938 [HISTORY]
Rules for whipping by cane or birch rod. Sentences had to be confirmed by the Administrator only where the offender was "a person other than a native"!

POLAND: School CP

It is always claimed that school CP was abolished in Poland in 1783, but since the country went out of existence as an independent political entity from 1795 to 1918, this may not mean very much. No information has yet come to light about what happened between 1918 and the German invasion in 1939. During the communist period (1945-1989) the official propaganda line, as in all communist states, was that there was no CP.

    Matters are complicated by the fact that Poland's borders have kept moving around over history. It is known that school students were caned in the area of Poland occupied by Prussia in the 19th century and up to World War I -- see these 1901 news items.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

US State Department Human Rights Report 1996
According to this, the Polish teachers' work code guarantees legal immunity from prosecution for the use of corporal punishment in classrooms, which the report clearly regards as "abuse". The identical wording is repeated in the each year's USSD report for Poland up to 2005. It is not mentioned in the 2006 report.

Anti-CP agitators GITEACPOC say that CP was explicitly forbidden by government regulation only as recently as 2001. They add that it is not clear even now whether this applies to private as well as public schools. They also cite a 2001 survey which found that 20% of adult respondents recalled experiencing "corporal punishment" (undefined) by schoolteachers, which might lead one to suspect that the proclaimed ban on CP during the communist era was possibly somewhat theoretical. On the other hand, there could easily be confusion about what is meant by "corporal punishment". No hard evidence is currently to hand one way or the other.

QATAR: Judicial CP

Flogging remains on the statute book as an Islamic punishment in this small Gulf state. It is applied, to women as well as men, for moral offences, particularly to do with sex or alcohol. This recent court case, in which a man and a woman were ordered 100 lashes each for adultery, is probably typical. No details are available as to how the punishment is inflicted. It would appear to be common for the flogging to be combined with a prison sentence.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

GITEACPOC quotes a law to the effect that juveniles under 16 may not be flogged in Qatar.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1995
This report says that an American received 90 lashes on 6 June 1994 for homosexual activity. He had been offered expulsion without prison or caning but opted to take the caning in order to be able to return to Qatar. According to this account, he was "bruised but in good health". It is remarkable how little publicity this got at the time, in comparison with the case of another US citizen, Michael Fay, caned in Singapore one month earlier.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998
This mentions corporal punishment in passing but gives no details. (The 1999 and 2000 reports add no further information.)

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2001
According to this, corporal punishment is not administered in public. (The 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 reports merely repeat the same information.)

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2006
This report mentions the application of lashes (in private) for alcohol consumption, but fails to note that this punishment is also ordered for sexual offences.

ST VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES: Judicial and school CP

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

NGO Initial Report on Saint Vincent and the Grenadines [DOC]
Submission (2002) by the local Human Rights Association to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Part IV(f) quotes the 1959 regulations, involving use of a leather strap, for CP in schools. Part VII(c) mentions the judicial caning of juvenile offenders - up to 12 strokes on the bare buttocks, usually given by a policeman in a police station. The document is also available in PDF format.

Other external links for St Vincent/School CP

SAUDI ARABIA: Judicial CP

Local courts routinely order floggings, often of hundreds of lashes -- or even thousands, inflicted in instalments. Women as well as men may be flogged.

For details, with links to reports and pictures, see this separate page.

SIERRA LEONE: Judicial CP

According to Benson (1937), there had been 57 instances of judicial CP in Sierra Leone in 1930.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

Juvenile Justice in Sierra Leone
Gives details of the canings or birchings that magistrates' courts can impose on juveniles. However, the document says this is very rare. (This chimes in with the fact that I have never come across a single report of it.) More often, cases are dealt with by the village chief under customary law, often involving flogging.

SINGAPORE: Armed Forces CP

Singapore Armed Forces Act 1972 [HISTORY]
Rules allowing subordinate military courts to award up to 12 strokes of the cane. If the offender is in special detention in a disciplinary barrack, the officer in charge may make the caning award, but in any event it has to be confirmed by the Armed Forces Council. The canings, unlike judicial ones, are to be given over clothing, and the cane is a much thinner one. This would suggests that the punishment was meant to be more of a schoolboy-type caning, mainly aimed at young teenage conscripts. (Military service is compulsory for all males.) These provisions are still on the statute book, but it's not at all clear to what extent they are still invoked.

SINGAPORE: Judicial CP

Since independence from Britain in 1959, this island city-state in south-east Asia has developed into an high-tech, first-world country. Its 5 million residents enjoy a standard of living on a par with that of Western Europe or North America. They regularly vote in free elections for a paternalistic and rather authoritarian government with strict laws, harsh punishments, restricted freedom of speech, and no free press. It is one of the world's least corrupt regimes. Singapore is easily the cleanest and most efficient country in Asia. Crime rates are low.

    With thousands of court-ordered canings administered each year, Singapore can reasonably claim to be the JCP capital of the world -- especially pro rata to its population. Only males under 50 may be so punished. Contrary to myth, all these sentences are carried out privately in prison; there have never been public canings here. The punishment is applied with a long, heavy, soaked rattan (not bamboo) across the offender's bare bottom. The number of strokes ordered varies from three to 24, according to the offence.

    Corporal punishment is always combined with a prison sentence; the prisoner generally receives his caning fairly early on in his prison term, once any appeal has been exhausted. Most of the country's several prisons are said to hold a mass caning session once or twice a week, with typically dozens of prisoners waiting in line outside the room for their turn to be punished.

    See our feature article Judicial caning in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei (illustrated) for full details of history and modus operandi and an overview of the legislative situation.

    See also a table of offences for which caning may be ordered by the courts in Singapore.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

CRC Initial Report [PDF]
Singapore is signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As such, it is obliged to report on its progress in implementing the Convention's provisions, and this is its initial report (2000). The document makes no apology for the fact that the High Court may sentence boys under 16 to "caning with a light rattan" for serious offences (and also the fact that "corporal punishment is meted out judiciously to errant male pupils" at school). The implication is that Singapore has no intention of changing its well-established procedures at the whim of a UN Committee.

YOUR EDITOR'S PERSONAL VIEW ...     In my personal view, Singapore is on strong ground in this apparent defiance of the UN. Not enough people are aware that the Convention itself doesn't actually mention corporal punishment. Article 37 refers only to "torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". If the original drafters of the Convention had meant this to include ordinary reasonable corporal punishment, would they not have said so? It is only the unelected and unaccountable UN Committee that has taken it upon itself, without any public debate, to redefine the Convention's language as forbidding CP, on the grounds that CP is "violence". This is a purely speculative definition which, as far as I know, has not been tested anywhere in a properly constituted court of law, still less ratified or endorsed by any democratically elected legislature. Surely it is simply a wanton distortion of the English language to equate a carefully regulated caning with "torture" and to describe it as cruel, inhuman or violent. C.F.

    Of particular interest is that at paragraph 9.2 the document quotes some rare statistics: 20 juveniles were judicially caned in Singapore in 1998, and 39 in the period Jan to Sep 1999. This latter amounts to about one per week, which is a great deal more than I had assumed from the infrequent reports of such sentences in the press, such as this Oct 1999 report of a case in which a boy of 14 was awarded 10 strokes of the light cane (plus five years' jail) for a violent robbery that caused the death of the victim.

Second Reading Speech on Moneylenders (Amendments) Bill 2005
A government minister explains to Parliament why the penalties were being increased for harassment by loan sharks, including caning where damage to property or hurt to persons is caused. (The first such punishments were handed down in March 2006.)


Things Singaporeans do and what they can expect to get
An unofficial list of selected court cases, with links to the relevant official court reports. A few involve caning sentences, but it's also interesting to note how many of them don't. Perhaps we ought to regard extremely long prison terms, rather than caning, as the truly distinctive characteristic of Singapore justice.

Fay v Public Prosecutor [HISTORY]
The official court record of Michael Fay's unsuccessful appeal against his caning sentence in 1994. Goes into more detail about the facts of the case than any of the news reports gave at the time.

Public Prosecutor v Roszaili Bin Safarudin
Official court record of a March 2003 case in which a 15-year-old boy was sentenced to 10 strokes of the cane for sexual offences. At the end of the document it is specified that, as the offender is a juvenile, the caning is to be done "with a light rattan".

Subordinate Courts Research Bulletin, April 1998 [PDF]
See page 9 onwards for statistics and graphs on the subject of convicted youth rioters and their sentences, including the proportion caned (12% of those aged 16 to 21) and average number of strokes.

Singapore caning
Computer-generated visualisation of the successive stages of a judicial caning (ignore the irrelevant Fox News clip on each page). This is evidently partly based on the real photograph of a caning under way. But it is not quite accurate: there ought to be an additional, padded crossbar on the front of the A-frame, adjustable to the level of the culprit's genitalia, over which he bends. For photos of the actual equipment, see these stills from an official Singapore government film showing a dramatised reconstruction of a caning, and a video clip from the film.

Amnesty International Report 1997  (Alternative link)
Reveals that three prison officers were jailed and caned for causing the death of a prisoner. I wonder if any of them had been involved in administering canings themselves and if so what they thought about now being on the receiving end.

Amnesty International Report 1998  (Alternative link)
Caning remained mandatory for some 30 crimes in 1997. The document mentions a case (see this contemporary news report) in which a 16-year-old boy was awarded 24 strokes for trafficking in cannabis.

Amnesty International Report 1999  (Alternative link)
In 1998 Singapore's laws were beefed up, with caning introduced for a wider range of drug and immigration offences.

US State Department Human Rights Report 2001
The existence of caning is mentioned at some points in this document, but it will not tell you anything that you don't already know if you have read the feature article Judicial caning in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei. Reports for other years up to and including 2005 add nothing new.

US State Department Human Rights Report 2006
For the first time since 1993, this report reveals JCP statistics: 5,984 persons were sentenced to the cane, and 95% of these sentences were carried out. It is not clear where these figures came from: I cannot find them on any official Singapore government website and I have not seen them reported in the Singapore or other press.

US State Department Human Rights Report 2007
The number of JCP sentences in Singapore increased to 6,404 in 2007, according to this. This is about 120 canings per week, and roughly double the figure for 1993. By my calculations, this appears to mean that about one-third of all police arrests (of which there were 19,371 in 2007, according to this police website) led to a caning sentence. Once again, it is stated that about 95% of these punishments were actually administered.

Other external links for Singapore/Judicial

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

Speech by Mrs Yu Foo Yee Shoon: Juvenile homes
A government minister replies (March 2006) to questions in Parliament about the rehabilitation of young offenders in juvenile homes (see paragraphs 9 to 14). Residents found to be bullying others may be punished by detention in a segregation room and, for boys, caning.

SINGAPORE: School CP

A 17-year-old at one of Singapore's strict Catholic all-boys secondary schools demonstrates -- from recent personal experience, he says! -- the stance students must adopt (after emptying their back pockets) when being routinely disciplined in the office: hands holding on to the seat of a chair, feet braced wide apart for stability and balance, legs locked straight, posterior pushed a little up and back.       In this position, the trousers should be just slightly taut over the seat but not stretched tight, presenting a safe, steady, well-defined target for the DM to cane as hard as he can, without fear of doing the boy any harm.       Informed sources indicate that such office canings -- often of just a single powerful stroke -- play a big role in this particular school's behaviour management strategy, with the full approval of the Parents Support Group.       These boys-only schools seem to be popular with parents who seek an especially firmly structured setting for their sons' education.

The following summary of the current situation is derived partly from a variety of published materials but mostly from information provided privately by local teachers and students. Because much of this was given in confidence, I cannot quote many sources or identify individual schools.

British-style formal caning (for male students only) is fully lawful in Singapore schools and strongly supported by the government. The great majority of the country's 150+ secondary schools use the cane, and at most of them it is a significant element in the disciplinary system.

    It is important to be clear that this is something different from the (much more severe) judicial canings -- ordered by the courts, and inflicted in prison, mostly on adult men -- for which Singapore is better known.

    Corporal punishment in schools is strictly regulated by the Ministry of Education. Full details of every caning have to be keyed into the Ministry's computer database. At most schools it is seen as a fairly severe consequence for relatively serious offences.

    Under Ministry rules, there is a maximum of six strokes per caning. In practice, the majority of canings are of either one, two or three very hard strokes across the seat of a boy's thin school uniform trousers or shorts, typically delivered by a specially designated and trained "discipline master" ("DM") in a solemn ceremony, using a big flexible rattan cane, with the miscreant bending over a desk or chair.

    No official statistics have been discovered, but without doubt there are many hundreds of canings per year, and on any school day there will be numerous such punishments administered up and down the country.

    Most CP is meted out privately in the school office, usually with the principal or vice-principal in attendance. The aim in these cases is simply to show the boy that bad deeds have unpleasant consequences, and that he must take responsibility for his actions, and to supply him with the pain he needs to induce a change of attitude or behaviour.

    Parents will often have been consulted by phone, or even summoned to the school in person to discuss their son's offence and how to respond to it, but they are not invited to be present at the actual punishment. The final decision to cane rests legally with the Principal; but in practice there may be a collective decision by a School Disciplinary Committee, on which the Principal might be joined by the Vice-Principal and the DM(s) and counsellor(s) and probably one or two of the boy's class teachers.

    One criticism of this kind of consultative decision-making is that it all takes time, meaning that several days, or even a week, might elapse between the offence and the consequence. Some Principals, no doubt taking the view that punishment is most efficacious if it follows on rather swiftly from the wrongdoing, prefer to act more autocratically.

    Sometimes it is decided that the student must receive his punishment, more ceremoniously, in a classroom in front of his classmates, as in this video clip. This adds a sharp dash of embarrassment to the recipe, and also serves pour encourager les autres.

    At many schools the strokes may even, in the most serious or recalcitrant cases, be administered before an assembly of the whole school, girls as well as boys -- an audience in many instances of some 1,500. This is unlikely to happen to a boy who has not already undergone office canings and class canings on previous occasions. It universalises the deterrent effect of the punishment for other students, with a dramatic illustration that there are clear limits to what is behaviourally acceptable. And it maximises retribution for the offender in the form of shame as well as pain. Ideally it also offers him an almost spiritual experience, a sort of ritual catharsis of redemption providing him with the emotional springboard for a fresh start.

    These salutary and humbling "public canings" (so-called -- they are not of course open to the general public), pictured below left, are a regular feature of life at a number of schools, where there might be several such occasions per year, sometimes involving half a dozen or more boys being dealt with in succession at the one ceremony. Often, each offender has to read out a pre-agreed "public apology" from the stage -- in which, at some establishments, he is also required to thank the school for punishing him -- just before taking up his position across the punishment desk.

Scenes from a typical "public caning" session, one of several held at this co-educational neighbourhood school during 2007. A number of 15-year-olds had to undergo two strokes each in front of over 1,000 girls and boys. They had been found smoking in the school toilets.       Here, one of the culprits (in white shirt and dark trousers) has been made to bend at almost 90 degrees over a desk placed specially on the stage. He will have his elbows on the desk, with his head well down, so that his upper back is near horizontal. He will already be suffering at this point, having received his first stroke, and now awaits the second.       At this school, the custom is for the boy being punished to have his bottom pointing at the audience so they are obliged to watch the cane landing. (At many other schools, the offender faces the assembly, as in these video clips -- which may be more embarrassing for him, as the audience will see all his involuntary facial expressions.)       The Discipline Master ("DM"), on the left, takes careful aim. If you look closely (just above the right ear of the audience member partly obscuring the view) you can see that he is positioning the business end of the cane horizontally across the centre of the bending boy's behind, with its tip reaching exactly as far as the right-hand side of the right buttock.       The teacher glimpsed on the right is assisting the operation by preparing each offender in turn for punishment: helping him to bend over properly, checking there are no extra pairs of underwear, smoothing the trouser cloth snugly over the whole target area to ensure that there are no folds or rucks to impede the cane's impact, and fixing a magazine over the small of the back to protect the spine. The Singapore secondary school cane is huge! This one must be well over a metre long. The longer the cane, the sharper the pain, but also the more skill and expertise it takes to control it accurately. DMs get special training from the Ministry of Education, and regular practice. Above, the DM pulls the cane back and up, ready for the next stroke.       This particular DM believes in wasting no time between strokes. Others prefer to give the student time to recover his composure after each one.       One or two DMs (at any rate for office canings - probably not at the more solemn ritual of the public caning) even allow the young man to jump up and down rubbing the affected part before bending over again for the next stroke. The camera captures the cane in mid-descent. The DM has his left arm outstretched for balance, hidden from view in this shot. This DM's acrobatics are quite sedate: some go through all sorts of martial-arts-type moves as they make their approach. The rattan is moving too fast to be caught on camera as it swishes through the last part of its trajectory and crashes with a resounding thwack into the waiting student's backside (the sheer volume of the sound always takes novice onlookers by surprise). The impressive amount of vigour and energy the DM puts into wielding it can be seen from his posture in these successive frames.       Singapore schools generally prefer to administer a small number of strokes at the DM's maximum power, rather than a larger number of milder ones. This reduces the chance of the lad's "tramlines" overlapping, which can cause superficial bleeding. His two strokes duly received, the student will now be in some pain. He has been helped up and is turning to his left to move aside, making way for the next wrongdoer (out of picture on the right) to come forward and go over the punishment desk.       At left, the school's lady Principal watches the proceedings. She will have been the key figure in deciding to hold this disciplinary session in front of the whole school, and will have agreed with the DM how many strokes to give each boy. She will probably make a speech to the assembled company -- in this case, no doubt, about the evils of tobacco use -- once all the day's canings have been inflicted.

    After the strokes have been administered, he may have to remain on stage while the Principal harangues the school about his misdemeanours. Where the school is a Christian one (of which there are perhaps 20, not counting several all-girls ones), there may also be a short blessing of the proceedings by the Chaplain.

    There can be intermediate levels between a "class caning" and a "public caning". Some schools give these special names, such as "a cohort caning" (in front of all classes of the offending pupil's year) and "a consortium caning" (in front of all the lower secondary, or all the upper secondary, or certain streams of classes within certain year levels).

    Singapore has about a dozen boys-only secondary schools, most of them run by Christian denominations. In general these are even stricter than the mainstream mixed-sex schools. Canings at some of them are, with parental support, more or less a daily event (see box above right), routinely imposed for things that in most schools would attract only a detention, like latecoming, forgetting books, or wearing the wrong colour of socks.

    At the more mainstream schools, however, the offences most often punished corporally are smoking, fighting/bullying, truancy and defiance. Other activities likely to result in a caning include vandalism, cheating and stealing.

    Of these, smoking is perhaps the single most common misdemeanour. Most schools seem to cane automatically for it, and this includes smoking anywhere in Singapore in school uniform, as well as at school. (Smoking under the age of 18 is actually a criminal offence, and when the police pick up such a malefactor they will inform his school as a matter of course.)

    Quite a few schools also operate a merit/demerit points system for lesser offences, under which a boy will automatically be invited to drop in at the office to be "spanked" (as students themselves sometimes euphemistically call it) upon reaching a specified number of demerits. These policies are sometimes set out in detail in school handbooks.

    Students undergoing corporal punishment at secondary schools may be aged anything from 12 to 18 inclusive, but the great majority of canings are of boys aged 14, 15 and 16.

    In some cases CP is combined with suspension, typically for a week. If the culprit is lucky, he is allowed to take his caning before going home to start his suspension. If not, he will be caned on the morning of his return to school, so he has all week to "look forward" to his impending ordeal.

    From accounts by students who have been caned, it appears that the recipient typically suffers moderate to acute pain for perhaps two or three minutes, depending above all on the number of strokes received. This soon gives way to a less intense stinging and itching sensation around the points of impact, together with a more generalised aching or soreness which usually lasts for at least several hours, during which time sitting down is likely to be uncomfortable.

    Across the young man's buttocks will appear neat horizontal weals or "tramlines", one set for each stroke received, lasting for some days, and he may also be lightly bruised for a week or more. These effects are only superficial: the "light rattan" will never cut deep into the flesh in the way that the much heavier judicial cane does.

    In the hope of saving face, most boys try not to give vocal expression to their pain when the cane makes contact; but many fail in this endeavour. According to experienced insiders, a wordless, semi-stifled yelp or groan is most often heard, as in the video clip mentioned above. (It is only in comic fiction that schoolboys say "ouch!" or "yaroo!" when being caned.)

    Rapid gasps of breath and watery eyes are also normal during the actual infliction and for a couple of minutes afterwards. Actual weeping is fairly rare, Singapore being very much a "big boys don't cry" kind of society. Especially at a public caning, feigning nonchalance ("act brave", in the local slang) is de rigueur.

    Different schools have different detailed policies. One or two make the offender change into PE kit for his caning. Many DMs take either an elaborate run-up, a "flying leap", or a kind of twirling dance, as they administer each stroke. Some will pull the boy's shirt out of his trousers before bending him over. Some schools designate a muscular young PE teacher as the DM (an echo of some US practice). At one or two schools, the Principal (or Vice-Principal, if the Principal is a lady) takes on the role of DM himself. Conversely, some huge schools have so much discipline business to conduct that they have two full-time DMs, who might share out the caning work between them. Some schools consult parents in detail about the offence and possible punishments, others merely inform parents after their son has been caned (the minimum legal requirement). Some conduct public canings outdoors on the parade square, others inside in the hall.

    Many schools protect the culprit's spine with a cushion, or a book, or a document file, or a slab of cardboard, or a special wide leather belt, placed just above the target area, though this really isn't necessary if a proper position is assumed, and is done primarily, I think, for dramatic effect. Where several strokes have to be administered, some DMs deliver them all in brisk succession, others wait after each one until the boy signals that he feels able to take the next one. At least one school, where a group of students are receiving a number of strokes each, will give one stroke to each boy in turn and then start again with the second stroke for each boy, and so on. Some schools cane in the corridor outside the classroom rather than inside the room. One or two have been known to let boys negotiate on an ad hoc basis for a cane stroke in lieu of multiple detentions, though in general there is absolutely no tradition of "choosing your punishment" as in some US paddling schools. Many schools require the student to have a counselling session before and/or after his caning (this is a Ministry of Education recommendation). And so on and on.

    Broadly speaking, though, the whole process is rather similar to much pre-1998 experience in the UK, especially at English boys' secondary schools up to the 1970s. This is probably because of a strong British input to the education system while Singapore was developing rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s. Also, modern Singapore's founding father, Lee Kwan Yew, has made explicit his enthusiastic approval of corporal punishment -- quite specifically, English-style caning applied vigorously to the backside -- as being much the best way of disciplining errant schoolboys.⁽¹⁾ (He also introduced similar procedures for disobedient teenage military conscripts.)

    Many primary schools in Singapore also sometimes provide CP for boys who need it, but rather less severely and with a much smaller cane.

    Junior Colleges, the equivalent of British 6th-form colleges, at which students are normally aged 16+ to 19, do not appear to feature CP in their schedules of penalties, as far as can be ascertained, though there seems no legal reason why they should not (full adulthood is not reached until age 21 in Singapore), and at least one is on the public record as having used caning in the past.⁽²⁾ Thus, if a boy moves on to Junior College shortly before he is 17, he is free of the risk of a caning, whereas his contemporary who stays on at secondary school for at least one more year in "secondary 5" -- typically to take GCE 'O' levels after being in a slower stream -- remains subject to it.

    This possibility for "senior canings" is by no means a dead letter. For instance, one school caned no fewer than five 17-year-olds at one go in April 2008, according to informed sources. All five had been playing truant, and were required to take turns to bend over for two serious strokes each in front of their mixed-sex secondary 5 class -- highly embarrassing as well as painful. Recent cases at other schools are known to have involved three-stroke office canings of students aged just under 18, for fighting and gambling. The only viable alternative punishment for such serious offences -- suspension -- would be a disaster for students preparing for their crucial last-chance final exams.

    Back to those Ministry rules: no implement other than a cane may be used, and ordinary classroom teachers are not allowed to use CP of any kind: even spanking with the open hand is absolutely forbidden. This helps to ensure that CP is never administered in anger and does not degenerate into a casual, on-the-spot penalty for trifling misbehaviour, but is instead considered by the school's senior management in each case, is delivered safely and accurately by a dispassionate expert, and is -- except at most of the boys-only schools -- generally reserved for relatively major transgressions.

    It is clear, though, that caning is far from being a "last resort", to use the silly phrase that came to bedevil the question of school CP in Britain. At most Singapore schools the cane tends to come after detention, but before suspension, in the hierarchy of penalties -- although, as noted earlier, it is also quite common for caning and suspension, or caning and detention, to be combined. The actual last resort, of course, is expulsion.

    Having said that, there is at least one school, well known for its strictness, where if a boy has to be expelled he is actually publicly caned as well, in most cases deploying the rarely-invoked legal maximum of six strokes -- a severe punishment indeed. One wonders why the student in such a case agrees to turn up and submit to this, since he is being kicked out of the school anyway. But they do. Perhaps it is made a condition of not turning the matter over to the police.

    Occasionally the suggestion is raised in the public prints that CP be extended to girl students, who are seen in some quarters as getting out of hand. The government has firmly resisted this idea, pointing out that serious offences by girls are a small minority of the total. In any case, the idea doesn't ring true with most people at an emotional level, because corporal punishment, and particularly caning on the buttocks, has always been seen throughout the British world as overwhelmingly "a guy thing", as well as being arguably unsuited to the female physiology. And Singapore schoolboys themselves, in my experience, are among the last people to challenge the notion that males and females are different species. It does not seem to strike them as unfair that they might be caned while girls never will be. This is all of a piece with, for instance, the fact that all male Singaporeans, but no women, have to perform military service.

    "Public caning" is noticeably more controversial in local opinion than corporal punishment per se. There is no evidence of any pressure to abolish the cane altogether. The opposition parties say they favour retaining it. It makes a good fit with Singapore's highly "masculine" vision of itself as a brave, tough, resilient, militarised society, much as Britain used to be but is no longer. There seems to be wide acceptance that caning is a fair, just and effective penalty, particularly for wayward schoolboys in the middle teens, and helps to maintain the enviably high levels of school discipline and educational achievement on which visitors to Singapore invariably remark.

(1) See e.g. his autobiography, the relevant section of which you can read here. He describes his own caning at Raffles Institution in the 1930s; it is still, by general consent, the country's top elite school, and its traditions continue.

(2) Anglo-Chinese Junior College (ACJC), in the 1980s. See Chee Keng Lim, in Development of Education in Singapore, National Archives of Singapore No 1425.

See also:

More photographs of Singapore school canings in Picture Parade

Video clips of Singapore school canings

School caning
Regulation No 88 under the Schools Regulation Act 1957
School Principals' Handbook, Section 19.3 - Corporal punishment

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

Speech by the Education Minister, May 2004
The Minister noted (para 14) that school discipline in Singapore was not getting worse, and indeed that fewer serious school offences were being recorded than 15 years earlier. He was confident that discipline was far better in Singapore than in most other countries (this is almost certainly true, on any conceivable measure). And he pointed out rather undiplomatically that, not only in Western countries but even in Japan and Hong Kong (countries where school CP is no longer used), violent bullying was rampant in schools, which was not widely the case in Singapore. Although he did not spell this out in words of one syllable, one can read the intended message: countries that have abolished CP have much worse school discipline. At para 16 he made it clear that the government was committed to maintaining high standards of discipline and that it had no intention whatever of changing the present rules that allow school principals discretion to use the cane.

See also: Current Singapore school handbooks

See also: Other external links for Singapore/School CP

See also: Video clips of real Singapore school canings

SOMALIA: Judicial CP

Civil war has been going on for many years. There is no established rule of law or stable central government. Local ad hoc Islamic courts in some areas order floggings.

    In 2006 the Union of Islamic Courts took control (temporarily as it turned out) of the capital, Mogadishu, and instituted a series of high-profile public floggings, as reported in these Aug 2006 illustrated news items.

    Benson (1937) recorded that there had been 96 floggings in Somaliland in 1930; the total for 1935 was not available, but it included 85 corporal punishments of juveniles.

EXTERNAL LINKS: (these will open in a new window)

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for 1997
Shari'a courts regularly sentenced convicted thieves to public lashings.

Amnesty International Report 1998  (Alternative link)
Civil war continued; no central government or criminal justice system was in operation. However, ad hoc Islamic courts handed out many floggings (no details given).

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999
According to this, there were no reports of public whippings in 1998.

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for 2000
Cites "occasional reports" of public whippings by clan-based Shari'a courts in Mogadishu, including one of a journalist for writing an anti-Islamic article. Elsewhere in the country, chaos reigned.

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for 2001
Says that, unlike in the previous year, reports of public whippings were rare. (The 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005 reports make no explicit mention of JCP.)