AFGHANISTAN
See Country files.
AUSTRALIA (these external links will open in a new window)
Power and pain in old Sydney [HISTORY]
Article in the Sydney Morning Herald (Feb 2005) mentions a case in the early 19th century where a man was awarded £10 damages after having been wrongly flogged by a magistrate.
Sentencing of Federal Offenders [HISTORY]
Paper produced in 1980 by the Australian Law Reform Commission. (This is a long, poorly scanned document, best read by viewing the source code in Notepad or similar text editor with word wrap switched on.)
At paragraphs 63 to 66 the Commission explains why it rejects any suggestion of reintroducing JCP. There is also more general philosophical stuff (paras 39 to 48) about deterrence vs. retribution. "Punishment is a cherished part of the Australian way of life. It is a concept that Australians understand and warm to."
See also at para. 63 a ridiculous story about a birching ordered in South Australia in 1965. No birch rod could be found, and one had to be fetched from England, but it had become rotten on its journey; the law was subsequently altered to provide that JCP be inflicted with a leather strap or cane.
More documentation for judicial CP in Australia
BAHAMAS, THE
See Country files.
BANGLADESH
See Country files.
BARBADOS
See Country files.
BHUTAN
See Country files.
BOLIVIA
See Country files.
BOTSWANA (these external links will open in a new window)
The Flogging of Phineas Mcintosh [HISTORY]
Story about a scandal in the 1930s when a white man was flogged by a local chieftain in what was then Bechuanaland and under British rule.
Convict escapes the cane
Jan 2005 report in the local newspaper Mmegi in which a four-stroke caning was overturned by the appeal court on the grounds that the prisoner was over 40. He was thus "spared the wrath of the cane-man". There is an uncaptioned picture, which one might assume to be of the prisoner, but the man in it seems to be holding the end of a cane -- so perhaps the picture is of the "cane-man"?
More documentation for judicial CP in Botswana
CANADA (these external links will open in a new window)
Prince Edward Island: Whipping [HISTORY]
Public whipping in Prince Edward Island was introduced in 1792 and routinely used as a sentence for petty larceny, according to this article, which, however, cites no sources. The document claims that male offenders continued to receive this punishment until the second half of the 19th century.
The Fur Trade in New France - May 24, 1679 [HISTORY]
On this date, Louis XIV signed a decree prohibiting the sale of alcohol in New France -- mostly now part of Canada -- on pain of "corporal punishment" (details not specified) for a third offence.
Jean Rattier [HISTORY]
Jean Rattier was an official executioner in 17th-century Quebec. His job also included administering floggings.
Bonavista Attractions [HISTORY]
See "The Whipping Post" halfway down the page. Information about an 18th-century whipping post in Newfoundland.
Questioning the Punishment of Young Offenders [PDF]
From the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform and Criminal Justice Policy in Vancouver, a background paper setting out a philosophical approach to basic questions of punishment. It shows how vague and arbitrary are many of the assumptions and definitions in this generally confused and difficult debate. Interestingly, suggests that the present liberal "conventional wisdom" of bodies like the UN on the subject of corporal punishment -- that it is to be condemned out of hand on humanitarian grounds -- doesn't stand up to very rigorous analysis.
More documentation for judicial CP in Canada
CHINA (these external links will open in a new window)
Paul Musgrave Dot Com: May 17, 2004 [HISTORY]
Amateur review of a book (Death of Woman Wang by Jonathan D. Spence) about rural China in the 17th century. In one quote, a murderer is "sentenced to be beaten with the heavy bamboo".
A reformulated approach to the origins of Macau [HISTORY]
Quotes a report by a Portuguese emissary in 1556 describing bare-bottom whippings.
More documentation for judicial CP in China
DOMINICA
See Country files.
EGYPT (these external links will open in a new window)
Law and the Legal System in Ancient Egypt [HISTORY] (Alternative link)
Court documents show that 100 strokes of the cane could be ordered in criminal proceedings.
Hazrat Ali's Famous Epistle To Malik Ashtar, Governor of Egypt [HISTORY]
The Great Khalif of Islam had some quite sensible things to say. Corporal punishment (no details given) seems to have been taken as read.
More documentation for judicial CP in Egypt
EUROPE GENERALLY (Mediaeval) (these external links will open in a new window)
Exordium: The value of unanimity [PDF] [HISTORY] (New URL)
Quotes some rules about flogging for Cistercian monks.
Medieval Sourcebook: The Ecloga on Sexual Crimes (8th Century) [HISTORY]
List of offences such as adultery, fornication, etc. and the penalties, with number of lashes specified.
Robertson v. Baldwin [HISTORY]
Report of a US court case in 1896 about the legal position of sailors. Quotes the laws of the Hanseatic League in 1597, under which seamen could be punished corporally for desertion, neglect of duty, etc.
FIJI
See Country files.
GRENADA
See Country files.
GUYANA (these external links will open in a new window)
Social conditions in British Guiana, 1914-1918 [HISTORY]
Mentions a crime wave during the first world war, as a result of which judicial and institutional CP statistics rose.
HONG KONG
Unofficial Histories of Hong Kong [HISTORY]
References to inhumane floggings of prisoners in the 19th century.
More documentation for judicial CP in Hong Kong
IRAN (these external links will open in a new window)
Mullahs' inhuman regime whipped five prisoners in public
Information about public floggings in Iran in 2008, from a group opposed to the current regime.
Runner's mission: Peace
June 2003 article in the Shawnee News-Star, Oklahoma, about a man doing a round-the-world trek for peace. He says that in his native Iran he was publicly flogged for eating during Ramadan.
More documentation for judicial CP in Iran
IRELAND
See Country files.
ISLE OF MAN (these external links will open in a new window)
Reports of Proceedings of the House of Keys, 9 May 2000 [PDF] [HISTORY]
The Manx birch was last used in 1976, but as recently as 2000 some politicians were still arguing for its return. The question is raised here in the local parliament in two separate debates on the same day - the Human Rights Bill and the Criminal Justice Bill.
Crime Stalker [HISTORY]
Six of the Best [HISTORY]
Alan Corkish is a radical Merseyside poet who was birched as a youth in the Isle of Man in the 1960s. He's been campaigning against CP ever since, and here are shots from some of his UK TV appearances on the subject in the 1980s. And as a teacher in Liverpool he leaked punishment book pages to STOPP -- see this January 1981 news item. In David Leland's TV film Birth of a Nation (1982), the teacher character brilliantly played by Jim Broadbent is closely based on Alan Corkish.
Some accounts of birching on the Isle of Man [HISTORY]
The basic facts here seem to be correct but I don't know where the alleged eyewitness accounts come from -- they may well have been made up. For a reliable account of what we definitely know, see feature article Birching in the Isle of Man 1945 to 1976.
Bunch of Twigs [HISTORY]
Two versions of a poem by John Cooper Clarke about the Isle of Man birch.
More documentation for judicial CP in the Isle of Man
ITALY (these external links will open in a new window)
Tablets tell all: Ancient athletes flogged for sins [HISTORY]
A 2,000-year-old training manual from Ancient Rome has been discovered, according to this, which stipulated that Olympic athletes who performed badly were to be flogged, along with those who drank too much or cavorted with women.
Great Public Spaces: Mercato Nuoco/The Straw Market [HISTORY]
Picture of a mediaeval square in Florence. It was and is a market, but the text asserts that in the 16th century it was also a place for public punishment, where dodgy merchants "received a proper spanking" before being carted off to prison. No source is cited for this claim.
JAMAICA (these external links will open in a new window)
The Life and Times of Sir Anthony Musgrave [HISTORY]
Public flogging in Jamaica was abolished in 1870 but reintroduced in 1877, according to this. Later it was outlawed again, and flogging administered only within prison walls.
More documentation for judicial CP in Jamaica
KENYA
See Country files.
KIRIBATI (these external links will open in a new window)
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2000
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2001
Under traditional law, island councils occasionally order strokes with palm fronds for public drunkenness and petty thievery. The 2000 and 2001 reports merely repeat the same information.
KYRGYZSTAN (these external links will open in a new window)
Amnesty International Report 1997 (Alternative link)
Kyrgyzstan is in what used to be the Soviet Union. Since it became independent, "elders' courts" have sprung up, which inflict floggings (no details given).
LATIN AMERICA GENERALLY (these external links will open in a new window)
Punishment of Slaves in Colonial Latin America and the Caribbean [HISTORY]
Gives examples of floggings in Peru, Chile and Mexico in the 16th and 17th centuries.
LESOTHO (these external links will open in a new window)
Amnesty International Report 1999 (Alternative link)
Mentions the whipping of two women on their buttocks by the police, presumably illicitly.
LIBERIA (these external links will open in a new window)
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998 [HISTORY]
Reports on a number of floggings (no details given), some by the security forces rather than the courts, but one ordered by a magistrate.
LIBYA (these external links will open in a new window)
June 1997: Gross Human Rights Violations Amid Secrecy and Isolation
Amnesty document whose Section 3(c) is headed "Corporal punishments". Sets out the legal provisions under which adulterers may be whipped. However, Amnesty had received no reports of such punishments being carried out.
MALAYSIA (these external links will open in a new window)
Whipping Demonstration
Cameraphone video of a demonstration caning of a dummy, taken on a school trip (Oct 2005) to Johor Baru prison. The text claims that the visiting students were also shown a film of a real 20-stroke whipping, perhaps the same film as the one you can see here.
About Life and Death
Message on a board from, I suppose, a former convict giving what purports to be an eyewitness account of a three-stroke caning. It seems a bit exaggerated if you look at the video clip of the real thing.
More documentation for judicial CP in Malaysia
MALDIVES
See Country files.
MICRONESIA
Federated States of Micronesia (New URL)
From the World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems. In Micronesia "traditional corporal punishments" (no details given) may be administered under customary law.
MOZAMBIQUE
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998
Mentions a case in which vigilante villagers publicly flogged three men accused of sorcery and cannibalism.
NEW ZEALAND
See Country files.
NIGERIA
See Country files.
PAKISTAN
See Country files.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA (these external links will open in a new window)
Remembering the war in New Guinea: Interview with Robin Kombeng [HISTORY]
The interviewee was a boy in New Guinea when the Japanese invaded in World War II. He says that he and his friends were tried before a Japanese officer for disobeying instructions and sentenced to caning. They were whipped under a tree. It is not clear how official or unofficial this was, but it's interesting that he talks of being formally ordered to receive a given number of strokes of the cane, rather than simply being casually beaten by the occupying soldiers, as one might expect in that situation.
PHILIPPINES (these external links will open in a new window)
5 mall guards charged for maltreating minor (Alternative link)
News item (Sep 2000) about security guards whipping a teenager on the buttocks with a plastic pipe. This was clearly illicit, but since it was evidently 'judicial' in intent, I include it here for the sake of completeness.
POLAND (these external links will open in a new window)
Institute for Jewish Policy Research: Poland
This document claims that in 2001 there was a far-right political party calling for the introduction of corporal punishment. It doesn't say what they meant by that, but if they meant flogging or caning it would be a very remarkable idea, since Poland hasn't had any such thing for centuries, as far as I am aware.
QATAR
See Country files.
ROMANIA (these external links will open in a new window)
Amnesty International Report 1998 (Alternative link)
Reports on a case in which police made a boy take his pants off and beat his buttocks with a truncheon -- "unofficial JCP" perhaps.
RUSSIA (these external links will open in a new window)
Languages of the Lash [HISTORY]
Blurb for a book (which unfortunately costs $40) subtitled "Corporal Punishment and Identity in Imperial Russia".
Book reviews: Languages of the Lash [HISTORY]
Academic review of the book referred to in the previous item. Says it is a fine example of cutting-edge social history.
September 1997: Working against laws punishing sexual relations between men
This Amnesty International report stated that Chechnya at the time was imposing caning for homosexual acts.
From Anapa to Adrianopol [HISTORY]
Mentions the abolition of flogging for sailors in the Black Sea Fleet, c.1820.
Amnesty International Report 1999 (Alternative link)
States that the Chechen Sharia Criminal Code was in force in 1998 but cites no reports of corporal punishment being applied.
