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.

    See also this Dec 2008 report that 15 senior schoolboys in Manipur were publicly caned for beating up their school bus driver. One might have expected such a caning to be carried out by the school itself, making it school CP rather than JCP, but this punishment is described as having been administered by members of KYKL-UNLF, a rebel military force in the state.

DOCUMENTS:

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

DOCUMENTS:

Prisons Act 1894, Chapter IX
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.

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

Corporal Punishment in India's Jails
Report (May 2006) from the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre makes the surprising claim that the whipping provisions of the 1894 Prisons Act (see above) are still in force and "actively used", especially in Jammu and Kashmir, despite a recommendation of abolition by an official committee in the 1980s. There is no mention of statistics or individual cases.

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. GITEACPOC claims that it has also been banned in Goa, Tamil Nadu and Chandigarh.

    There is anecdotal evidence that these theoretical state bans are not being enforced. For instance, this Feb 2007 news item 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.

    It should be noted that the phrase "corporal punishment" is being used particularly loosely in the Indian subcontinent. 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 to do with proper formal corporal punishment.

DOCUMENTS:

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.

External links for India/Schools

INDONESIA: Judicial CP

Official judicial corporal punishment in Indonesia exists only in Aceh province, on Sumatra, where the local government has been allowed to introduce it as a concession to strongly conservative Islamic feeling in the area (Indonesia, pop. 220 million, is the biggest Muslim country in the world, but in most other parts of the country, people generally follow a much more moderate form of Islam).

    Islamic law was introduced in Aceh in 2002, and proposals for caning errant Muslims first emerged in September of that year. The first reported canings took place in June 2005.

    The punishment, which does not apply to the province's Christian minority, is administered in public (generally outside a mosque) to the clothed upper back; men and women alike may be caned, but not juveniles. Most of the reported cases have been for alcohol or gambling. The authorities maintain that the way the caning is administered is much more humane than in Singapore and Malaysia. Nevertheless, recipients have complained of severe pain and been photographed with bruises and welts.

    These video clips show the caning process in action. Reports of cases have tailed off since 2007, and there is some hearsay evidence that enthusiasm for caning on the part of the authorities may have waned, possibly as a result of changes in political control or possibly because the general public has become increasingly resentful that Islamic punishments appeared to be unfairly directed at the poor and powerless in society.

IRAN: Judicial CP

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, floggings have been commonplace in Iran.

MAIN ARTICLE: For full details, with links to reports and pictures, see this separate page.

IRELAND: Judicial CP [HISTORY]

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 CP

Corporal punishment was widespread in Irish schools. In the Republic it was abolished by administrative regulation in 1982, though there have been occasional anecdotal suggestions that some teachers managed to ignore this for several years. In 1996 it was outlawed by legislation.

    A politician's call for the return of CP in 2002, in the light of "growing lawlessness" in schools, was rejected by teachers' unions.

    CP appears to have been a more rough-and-ready affair than in Britain, with either less official regulation of it or, where rules existed, a greater inclination to disregard them. The cane was widely used, but so was the strap, especially in the hands of the Roman Catholic priests who ran many of the schools. Anecdotal accounts suggest that some of the latter, especially perhaps the notorious "Christian Brothers", were prone to angry, spur-of-the-moment casual brutality rather than proper formal CP.

    It was reported in 1968 that two years earlier there had been a change in government regulations so that canings could thenceforth be delivered to the student's buttocks and not only to the hands, as previously.

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

The European Court of Human Rights and the Abolition of Corporal Punishment  (Alternative link)
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 [HISTORY]

JAMAICA: Judicial, prison and school CP

JAPAN: School CP

Corporal punishment in Japanese schools has been prohibited since 1947. However, there have been reports of its illicit use, especially in private schools such as the Juku or "exam-crammers" -- evening or weekend establishments for extra tuition, which many students attend on top of their ordinary schooling. A well-known example of a Juku near Tokyo was the subject of this 1970s American magazine article, illustrated with several photographs.

    These show students (apparently all boys) being caned across the buttocks with a bamboo martial-arts "sword" in front of their classmates while bending over a low desk. It is not known how typical this system is or was of other schools in Japan, or whether such things still go on now. Another photo from the same series, not previously on line, is given below:

    In 2007 a BBC report "Japan schools to rethink beating" gave the impression that, amidst wide concern about bullying in schools, the ban on CP might be rescinded. The headline turned out to be misleading: this later news item clarified that the government's aim was to maintain a prohibition on corporal punishment as we would understand it, but to stress that such penalties as detention, and removing disruptive students from the classroom, do not constitute CP and are permissible.

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

GITEACPOC states that CP was first prohibited in school in 1879, reinstated in 1885, banned again in 1890, unbanned in 1900, and theoretically abolished again in 1941. After the war, it was finally made illegal by the School Education Law of 1947. Official figures suggest that about 2% of all schools were suspected of breaking this rule between 1990 and 1995, but it is not clear what is meant by "corporal punishment" in this context. It may well be that most of these infractions would have involved angry spur-of-the-moment hitting rather than proper formal CP.

Corporal punishment in the schools and homes of Japan
This academic paper (1997) gives the history of the law relating to corporal punishment in schools. There are still 1,000 cases of illegal "corporal punishment" a year (probably general brutality rather than proper CP.) The article discusses why it is so difficult to get rid of this phenomenon in practice. There are a couple of statistical charts.

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.

GITEACPOC says that school CP has been banned in Jordan by government regulation since 1981.

Other external links for Jordan/Schools

KENYA: Judicial CP [HISTORY]

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.

    A Kenya magistrate from 1926 to 1936, Sir Bernard Shaw, has been quoted as saying that he "frequently" had to impose sentences of up to 24 strokes of the cane, and was present when they were carried out. He said the strokes left "little weals" which would have "become inconspicuous in time and probably would have eventually disappeared altogether" (Anthony Babington, The Power to Silence: A History of Punishment in Britain, Maxwell, Oxford, 1968).

    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.

    Allott (1970) stated that magistrates' courts, including district magistrates, were at the time still empowered to order CP of not exceeding 24 strokes.

    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. Courts also ordered adult offenders to be caned in this period.

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

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1995
This, the first extant USSD report to refer to formal CP, mentions a case in which alleged robbers (in fact, political dissidents; it was widely seen as a frame-up) were sentenced to prison plus three strokes of the cane. The document also states that rapists were in a number of instances ordered several strokes of the cane in addition to jail terms. (The USSD report for 1996 adds nothing new.)

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1997
Here it is stated that men convicted of rape normally received several strokes of the cane as well as prison sentences. (The USSD reports for 1998 to 2003 inclusive merely repeat the same information. From the 2004 report onwards there is no reference to JCP.) Not mentioned is the fact that throughout this period JCP was imposed for other offences too, such as robbery. See for instance this Dec 1999 news item.

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

KENYA: School CP

Corporal punishment in Kenyan schools was originally banned by administrative decree in 1996, but this was never enforced. It was announced in 2000 that the ban was now to be taken seriously. The legal provisions under which caning had been permitted were formally repealed in 2001.

    However, this immediately proved highly controversial, with even university professors warning that it would lead to chaos in schools.

    Meanwhile, reports in 2002 and in 2004 and 2007 made it clear that many schools were ignoring the new law and that CP continued to be applied widely.

    Demands for the reintroduction of the cane have been persistent, and continue in 2008 and 2009 amidst claims of a widespread collapse in student discipline.

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

Spare the Child: Corporal Punishment in Kenyan Schools
A long report (1999) by Human Rights Watch, claiming that the official regulations were routinely ignored and that pupils were caned for trivial reasons. There is also a brief summary of the report.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2000
Section 5 notes that corporal punishment of students, including caning, was widespread in Kenyan schools.

Other external links for Kenya/Schools

KOREA: Judicial CP

There is no judicial CP in either part of present-day Korea. Flogging with a cane or paddle appears to have been common until 1920.

DOCUMENTS:

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.

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

Colonial-style Democracy
Article in the Korea Times (Nov 2008) describes the situation after Korea was taken over by Japan as a colony in 1910. It says that "until 1920 Koreans could be subject to corporal punishment, a practice that had been long outlawed in Japan proper". However, this was only a continuation of what had already long applied before the Japanese arrived. It is claimed that floggings were ordered for "trifling offences" instead of imprisonment or fines.

KOREA: School CP

LITHUANIA: School CP

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.

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

Amnesty International Report 2002  (Alternative link)
This makes the perhaps surprising claim 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.

GITEACPOC states that there is supposed to be no CP in Lithuania, but that it is not explicitly prohibited in schools.

MALAYSIA: Judicial and school CP

Caning is widespread and frequent. See this separate page.

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.

    Following the death of the man whose job it was to administer the punishment, there was over a year's pause, according to this June 2008 news item. A new operator began work on 15 May 2008 by publicly flogging two women and three men who had been sentenced during the hiatus. The report claims that the penalty is intended to be symbolic, causing humiliation rather than pain.

    A July 2009 report stated that 150 women and 50 men were to be flogged for adultery. Most of these sentences had been handed down in 2006 but still not been carried out.

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  (Alternative link)
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.

US State Department Human Rights Report 2005
This states that the punishment for homosexual behaviour is "whipping 10 to 30 times", but does not say whether the penalty was implemented, either for this or for any other offence. (The reports for 2006, 2007 and 2008 merely repeat the same information.)

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.

DOCUMENTS:

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

NIGERIA: Judicial CP

This 36-state federation, a member of the Commonwealth, is Africa's biggest country, with 140 million residents. It has for all practical purposes two legal systems, one in the mainly Moslem north, the other covering the mainly Christian south.

    This north-south divide dates back into history: there were two separate British colonial territories, Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria, until they were merged in 1914.

    Benson and Glover (1931) state that there were 1,385 judicial CP cases in Nigeria in 1929. This figure rose to 1,722 as a court sentence in 1935, plus another 298 for prison offences, according to Benson (1937).

    Allott (1970) records that, in the northern states, in addition to ordinary canings imposed by magistrates' courts, "native courts" had power under the law to order "symbolic or Haddi lashing".

    Anderson (1970) noted that such punishments had to be confirmed by the Emir or district officer before being carried out. He added that it was "important [...] to distinguish the lashes imposed under the Shari'a from any form of corporal punishment permitted under the Criminal Code. The former must be inflicted with a cowhide whip held only between certain fingers of the hand, while the one who inflicts it must also hold some object under his arm throughout. It is clear, therefore, that this punishment at least in modern Nigeria is to be regarded as a disgrace [...] rather than a very severe physical ordeal".

    The emergence since 1999 of explicitly Islamic regimes in many of the northern states has brought the distinction between north and south into sharper focus, following a long period of centralised military rule.

    Flogging sentences by local courts under Sharia law -- often for fairly minor offences -- have become commonplace in the northern states. These are usually, or possibly always, administered in public. See this 2007 BBC report, which includes two video clips showing public whippings being ordered and inflicted in Zamfara. These particular punishments are seen to be applied to the clothed buttocks, but photographs from other states, such as in this 2002 report from Katsina, show whippings on the bare upper back.

    For more serious offences, CP is combined with a prison sentence, as in this June 2008 case in which a rapist was sentenced to 10 years' jail plus 41 strokes of the cane.

    Judicial caning also still exists, along more "British" lines, in the mainly Christian south, but cases are rarely reported, and the frequency of its use is unknown. One case was, however, recently reported in Kwara State, which does not use Shari'a law: a young man was ordered to receive 12 strokes of the cane, without imprisonment, for stealing a mobile phone, which sentence was carried out immediately at the court premises "by security agents".

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

GITEACPOC tries to unpick some of the complexities of the several parallel legal systems, as they apply to youngsters. In the country as a whole, under the Children and Young Persons Act, courts may order juveniles aged 7 to 17 (it is not clear whether this applies to girls as well as boys) to be whipped, and the law states that this is preferable to imprisoning them. The Criminal Code (South) provides that boys under 17 may be ordered to be caned for any offence. Under Sharia law in the North, children as young as 10 are reported to have been sentenced to JCP.

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 1996
This is the first extant USSD report to mention formal CP in Nigeria, and states that caning was used as a punishment for "minor infractions or public disturbances".

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 1997
This says that caning continued as a form of punishment, in many cases not as a formal court sentence so much as by the security forces taking the law into their own hands. However, in the year under review, four men publicly received 100 strokes of the cane each as a formal court sentence for adultery. (The 1998 and 1999 USSD reports do not mention official JCP.)

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 2000
Some detail is given about the various provisions under which formal judicial CP may be inflicted, under the national common law (though no cases of this are cited) and the Northern Nigerian Penal Code as well as by Shari'a courts in the north. The recent extension of the latter in certain states is noted, and the question is raised whether such punishments constitute "torture or [...] inhuman or degrading treatment" as forbidden by the Constitution.

Time for justice and accountability
Amnesty International document (2000) with more detail of some Islamic floggings in Zamfara and Katsina states.

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 2001
Notes that, by the end of 2001, 12 northern states had adopted versions of criminal Islamic shari'a law. Cites a few cases, including one in Zamfara in which a 17-year-old girl was given 100 strokes of the cane for fornication and slander. See this Jan 2001 news report, which says that she received the strokes on her buttocks, unlike many shari'a floggings. (The USSD report for 2002 adds nothing of substance.)

Nigeria: Teenage Mother Whipped
Human Rights Watch reaction to the Islamic flogging of a girl in Zamfara (see previous item), which provoked an international outcry.

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices 2003
The number of northern states using shari'a law remained at 12. There had been no constitutional challenge to JCP. The report noted that in some cases convicted persons were offered a choice between paying a fine and being caned. Caning sentences were usually carried out immediately. Also mentions a Zamfara case in which a woman was ordered 30 strokes plus a fine for arson, and given the option of five years' jail instead. (The USSD reports for 2004 to 2007 inclusive add nothing new.)

PAKISTAN: Judicial CP

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

DOCUMENTS:

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"!

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: School CP

Corporal punishment remains lawful in PNG schools but is believed to have fallen into disuse.

DOCUMENTS:

Call for corporal punishment
Australian news item (Feb 2006) reporting that the PNG Prime Minister had called for the "reintroduction" of caning in secondary schools and for its use also in universities and technical colleges, complaining of a lack of discipline in educational institutions.

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

GITEACPOC confirms that CP has not been outlawed, but says that the government in the 1970s asked schools not to use it.

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.

    We do not know much about what happened between 1918 and the German invasion in 1939 but some anecdotal evidence suggests that CP was not unknown in classrooms. 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 US Government report, the Polish teachers' work code guarantees legal immunity from prosecution for the use of corporal punishment in classrooms, which the report clearly deems to be "abuse" (rather oddly, since it is not legally so regarded in the USA itself). 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.

GITEACPOC says 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. It would appear to be common for the flogging to be combined with a prison sentence.

    A British man who was flogged in Qatar in 1994 (or 1993 -- accounts vary) has recently described the experience. From this description it appears that the strokes are applied indiscriminately from the shoulder blades to the calves, with clothes kept on.

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  (Alternative link)
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

SIERRA LEONE: Judicial CP

The Corporal Punishment Act 1960 allows up to 36 lashes (up to 12 lashes for boys under 17). No details are to hand of the instrument to be used or the modus operandi.

    It was reported in 2008 that a magistrates' court had ordered a 19-year-old thief to receive 24 lashes for petty theft in lieu of imprisonment. The punishment was administered "in public view inside the courtroom".

    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. More often, cases are dealt with by the village chief under customary law, often involving flogging.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2004
In its first extant mention of JCP in Sierra Leone, the USSD says that in 2004 there were reports of Councils of Chiefs administering floggings as part of a traditional code of justice outwith the official penal system.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2005
A magistrate sentenced an 11-year-old boy to 6 lashes for stealing a phone, according to this. (The report for 2006 adds nothing new.)

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2007
Local chiefs continued to administer harsh punishments. Meanwhile, the official Corporal Punishment Act was still in force, though no actual cases are cited. (The report for 2008 merely repeats the same information.)

SINGAPORE: Armed Forces CP

SINGAPORE: Judicial CP

According to informed sources, teenage residents receive formal, vigorous canings across the seat at such institutions as the Singapore Boys' Home and Boys Town, on the same basis and for the same kinds of offences as at ordinary secondary schools (see separate article), though there is some hearsay evidence that the canings tend to be more severe in terms of the number of strokes administered.

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

Brothers of St Gabriel
Information about Boys Town. Scroll down to "A caring disciplinarian".

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 too 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 substantial 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 15/16-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 smacks resoundingly into the waiting student's rear end (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. Office 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, in or out of uniform, is actually a criminal offence, and when the police pick up such a malefactor they will inform his school as a matter of course. Students in these cases are also reported to the Health Sciences Authority, which can require them to enrol on a compulsory stop-smoking course or else pay a large fine, as well as being caned at school if they were in uniform at the time.

    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 a few 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 bruised for a week or more. These effects are only superficial: the "light rattan" will not 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 approval of corporal punishment -- 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.

    Government-supported 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 is 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⁾ (and there is at least one post-secondary institution in the private sector that still does). Thus, if a boy moves on to Junior College shortly before he is 17, he is probably 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 -- with a few exceptions, notably some 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 some 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. In particular, in some quarters there is a concern that it can be upsetting for younger girls to have to witness it. One or two schools do allow girls to leave the hall before the caning begins, if they wish.

    But 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 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.

DOCUMENTS:

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:

More photographs of Singapore school canings in Picture Parade

Video clips of Singapore school canings

Current Singapore school handbooks

Other external links for Singapore/School CP

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.

    Further public floggings by Islamic courts took place in Mogadishu in 2009.

    The public flogging of two boys in March 2009, partly shown in this video clip, was carried out in a lackadaisical and incompetent manner. It seems rather likely that these were two of the four boys referred to in this news report, which stated that in addition to being whipped for rape they were sentenced to internal exile a different part of the country.

    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.)

US State Department Report on Human Rights Practices for 2006
Notes that the Islamic Courts controlled the area around Mogadishu for part of 2006, and carried out public floggings under Shari'a law.

SOUTH AFRICA: Judicial CP [HISTORY]

SOUTH AFRICA: Prison CP

DOCUMENTS:

Prisons Act No 8 of 1959 [HISTORY]
This law provided for up to 10 strokes of the cane for certain prison offences. It is no longer in force.

SOUTH AFRICA: School CP

Corporal punishment, mostly by cane, was very widespread in schools under the Afrikaner nationalist regime. This had nothing to do with apartheid: boys at white schools, whether Afrikaner or English, were just as likely to receive "cuts" or "jacks" as black and "coloured" students.

    Anecdotal accounts generally recall canings delivered in the British style, across the seat of a bending boy's trousers. The use of a strap has also been mentioned as an alternative at some schools.

    School CP was outlawed in 1996 in private as well as state schools. However, persistent reports of its illegal use continue to the present day.

    A survey in the Western Cape published in 2009 found that 63% of citizens wanted to bring back caning in schools.

    This 1999 press article includes a photograph of what appears to be a real caning under way in an elementary school classroom.

DOCUMENTS:

Regulation 1143 under the Education and Training Act, 1979 [HISTORY]
Former rules governing CP at state schools (Afrikaans/English bilingual). It was to be awarded only to boys, and administered only to the student's buttocks, either with a cane or a leather strap (the dimensions of both of which are specified). A maximum of four strokes in any one day was laid down; however, anecdotal evidence suggests that many schools ignored these rules in practice.

External links for South Africa/Schools

SUDAN: Judicial CP

JCP in present-day Sudan reportedly takes the form of lashes on the back with a leather whip. This punishment is often ordered for "Islamic" offences such as adultery and drinking alcohol, and there is conflict over whether it should also apply to non-Moslems, as in this Oct 2005 court case. Women as well as men may be flogged, as in this July 2009 report about 10 women being given lashes for wearing trousers.

    It seems clear from US State Department reports (see external links below) that flogging sentences are routine in Sudan, particularly in the mainly Moslem north of the country. However, few such cases reach the attention of the western media.

DOCUMENTS:

Wote Timamu, Effendi [HISTORY]
Amusing eyewitness account of juvenile judicial caning in 1950s Sudan under British colonial rule.

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

GITEACPOC states that judicial flogging is lawful in Sudan for any offender over 10 years of age under the 1991 Criminal Code. For certain offences (though evidently not those in the court cases mentioned below) there is a maximum of 20 lashes.

1994: Human rights violations enshrined in law  (Alternative link)
Amnesty International report stating that hundreds of floggings had been imposed since the 1991 Penal Code was introduced.

Amnesty International Report 1997  (Alternative link)
Reports that numerous school and university students were whipped in Khartoum immediately after being convicted of instigating demonstrations.

Amnesty International Report 1998  (Alternative link)
Floggings were a common judicial penalty in 1997 for women as well as men, according to this report.

Situation of human rights in the Sudan
UN Commission of Human Rights document from 1998. Section VII "The Rights of Women" quotes various legislation about such seemingly piffling things as men not being allowed to enter ladies' hairdressing salons, and the punishments laid down for violating these rules, including flogging (no details given).

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1999
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2001
The 1991 Criminal Act provides for flogging (no details given). The minimum punishment for rape is 100 lashes. The 1999 report mentions a case in which 25 students from Ahlia University were sentenced to be flogged for disturbances and obscene acts. (The report for 2000 adds nothing fresh.) The 2001 report mentions the case in which 53 Christian demonstrators were flogged, reported in slightly more detail in this April 2001 news item.

Church shootings and arrests must be investigated  (Alternative link)
April 2001 Amnesty International document on the flogging of over 50 Christians arrested during a disturbance in a church.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2002
According to this, the Sudanese government exempted the 10 (largely non-Moslem) southern states from applying the "physical punishment" parts of Sharia law if they do not wish to. Despite this, there were apparently reports of lashings in at least some of those states, as well as in the Moslem majority ones, in the year under review. The report also mentions a sentence of stoning on a woman for adultery that was reduced on appeal to a flogging of 75 lashes. In another case, 17 women received 100 lashes each, also for adultery.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2003
Mentions a case in which a girl of 13 was sentenced to 30 lashes for not wearing socks. The sentence was carried out the same day.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2004
This report says that there were flogging sentences in the year under review, but few of them were carried out. However, one Christian woman was lashed for not wearing a headscarf. A 16-year-old girl sentenced to 100 lashes for adultery in 2003 had her sentence suspended.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2005
Following riots in Khartoum, hundreds of persons, primarily in the south, were flogged, according to this. The report also states that there were no reports of physical punishment of non-Moslems in the north, possibly implying that there were cases in which Moslems were flogged.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2006
According to this report, courts in the mainly Moslem north routinely imposed floggings, especially for the production of alcohol. Some judges in the mainly Christian south also still reportedly observed Sharia law, possibly including flogging. Also, a policeman was sentenced to 100 lashes and 3 years' jail for raping a child. On the other hand, a woman received 30 lashes for defamation after complaining of police abuse. (The 2007 report adds nothing fresh.)

SWAZILAND: Judicial CP

Courts in Swaziland may order male juveniles under 18 to be caned (Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act 1938, amended 2005). As far as can be ascertained, this punishment may be awarded for any offence, generally in lieu of imprisonment. It is delivered to the boy's buttocks in private with a light cane, after a medical examination by a doctor. The parent or guardian may be present if desired. It is not clear whether or not the offender gets to keep his pants on.

    Typical would appear to be these July 1999 cases (four strokes each for theft).

    Less common was this February 2005 case in which a 16-year-old was ordered six strokes for stabbing a bus conductor, who later died. This seems a very lenient penalty for manslaughter, and the press report notes that the boy was lucky not to be jailed.

    One case which attracted international attention was that of three baboons who conducted a year-long reign of terror against women. Suspicions were aroused when it was observed that the baboons were speaking English. When caught, they turned out to be teenage boys in baboon suits. As noted in this July 2001 news report, two of them received caning sentences -- a singularly appropriate outcome, one might think, given that baboons are famous for their bright red rear ends.

    An apparent oddity is this Jan 2000 case, in which a 20-year-old youth was sentenced to six strokes of the cane for assaulting his mother, presumably under some legislation other than the juvenile provisions mentioned above.

    Allott (1970) records that 1st- and 2nd-class subordinate courts were empowered to order a maximum of 8 strokes of the cane.

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

GITEACPOC cites some statistics: 388 boys were judicially caned in 2003, 233 in 2004, and 235 in 2005. They also claim that a High Court decision has placed a moratorium on JCP and the courts are no longer applying it. (But see next item.)

Amnesty International Report 2007
However, Amnesty says in this report on Swaziland covering 2006, "the courts continued to impose corporal punishment on under-18-year-old boys".

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1993  (Alternative link)
Claims that in 1993 the use of juvenile judicial caning had declined compared with earlier years. (The 1994 and 1995 USSD reports make no mention of JCP.)

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1996
Mentions, but gives no details of, a May 1996 case in which two 10-year-olds were caned for housebreaking.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1997
Mentions that "children" (in fact boys up to 18) convicted of crimes are sometimes caned as a punishment. The reports for subsequent years up to and including 2004 merely repeat this information.

US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2005
Cites a case in June 2005 where a 14-year-old boy was sentenced to four strokes of the cane for shoplifting. (The 2006 USSD report for Swaziland does not mention JCP.)

SWAZILAND: School CP

Corporal punishment is lawful in Swaziland schools. The Education Act 1982, read together with the Education Rules 1977, lays down that a cane of max. half an inch thick and 2ft 6in long must be used, to be applied strictly to the buttocks only, max. four strokes for students under 16 and six strokes for those over 16: see this Sep 2005 news item, which, however, also suggests that in practice the rules are not always properly enforced, a claim borne out by this Oct 2005 news report about senior students caned on their hands and not on their buttocks. Another rule is that only female teachers are supposed to cane girls.

    There has been some pressure to abolish the cane, based partly on a disinformation campaign seeking to convey the false impression that CP is contrary to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. (In fact, the words "corporal punishment" appear nowhere in the Convention.) This pressure has so far been resisted by local politicians, as reported in this June 2006 news item.

SWEDEN: Judicial and Prison CP [HISTORY]

According to Benson and Glover (1931), JCP in Sweden had by then been abolished; but prisoners could still be whipped for offences against prison discipline, to a maximum of 40 strokes, with a "stick" for adults and with a birch for juveniles. There had been three cases in the latest year for which statistics were available.

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

The Early History of Data Networks: Penal Code 1809  (Alternative link) [HISTORY]
Telegraphists in Sweden who neglected their watch were to be flogged.