ST HELENA (these external links will open in a new window)
Extracts from the St Helena Records [HISTORY]
Mentions various sentences of whipping in the 1730s on this remote British outpost in the South Atlantic.
ST LUCIA (these external links will open in a new window)
The Week That Was: February 20, 2001
Brief report (about two-thirds of the way down the page) about a senior police officer alleged to have beaten a young man on his buttocks with a cane for stealing his brother's dog, apparently without any trial or authority.
ST VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES (these external links will open in a new window)
NGO Initial Report on Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child [PDF]
Mentions that corporal punishment is sometimes used on juveniles by the criminal courts, but gives no details.
SAUDI ARABIA
See Country files.
SINGAPORE (these external links will open in a new window)
David Marshall on Singapore society
Belated, posthumous publication of a 1994 interview with David Marshall, Singapore's Chief Minister in the middle 1950s during the negotiations with Britain over independence, and long-time political enemy of Lee Kuan Yew, whose People's Action Party captured the reins of power not long afterwards and has managed to hold on to them ever since.
Here, after nearly four decades in the political wilderness, he is magnanimous about Lee's and PAP's extraordinary social and economic achievements but persists in his outspoken opposition to the regime's tough judicial policies, including the ever-increasing use of caning.
Preventive Drug Education DRC Visit Programme
This page by the National Committee on Youth Guidance and Rehabilitation says that visits to drug rehabilitation centres are arranged twice a week for "at-risk" students. The youths "experience the harsh realities of of life behind bars" and are given a mock caning demonstration.
Boon Siwala: The Life of a Thai Migrant Worker in Singapore
Document from 1997 highlighting the plight of illegal immigrants to Singapore who are duped by traffickers into going there to work. In the case described, a Thai worker was given the usual three strokes of the cane, which "made him sick and left scars on his bottom".
Brother Cane: The Exception that Articulates the Norm [PDF] [HISTORY]
This is Chapter 7 of a highbrow academic paper (2003) about censorship, culture and artistic expression, "Performing the Singapore State 1988-1995". "Brother Cane" was a piece of avant-garde performance art put on in Singapore at the beginning of 1994, in protest against caning sentences on six men in November 1993 for homosexual offences. The authorities took exception to the fleeting portrayal of bare buttocks on the stage.
This was also, by coincidence, just after Michael Fay and his friends had been arrested but before Fay and Shiu were sentenced to caning.
In the fuss that ensued, says the author, there was "an uncanny correlation of images and imaginings of buttocks that filled the press during the first five months of 1994: the imagined caned buttocks of the six men; Ng's 'sacrificial' restoration of their transgressions in his performance; the constantly reiterated "white buttocks" of Michael Fay and the buttocks of his schoolmate, Shiu Chi Ho; and the many exemplars of earlier caned buttocks, along with diagrams and descriptions of the caning process and its deleterious effects on buttocks ... Suddenly buttocks were on everyone's mind, and the Singapore state had to contend with the unexpected proliferation of a new reification: Singapore = mall, airport, hotel, escalator, and bleeding buttocks." See pages 221-223 and 234-236.
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.
Myths About Singapore (Alternative link)
In this attempt to correct the "one-dimensional world view" of Singapore, see Myth 2 on caning and Michael Fay. The document is itself full of errors. For instance, it says that Fay "got only one stroke of the cane and served no jail time". Wrong on both counts. For a more accurate account of the whole sorry tale, see this May 1994 magazine article.
Recommended Reading on Singapore (Alternative link)
Mentions a play called The Caning, based on the Michael Fay case.
Life in prison: Open letter from Dr Chee
An opposition politician, imprisoned for five weeks in 2002 for organising a public gathering, writes about his prison experience. He saw "an endless row" of new inmates arriving, all illegal immigrants sentenced to caning and looking terrified, and was told by those who claim to know that the recipients can be heard screaming after each stroke. This seems likely to be an exaggeration.
Singapore's Godfather Makes His Case
Ill-informed review by Bruce Nussbaum in Business Week (2000) of the memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew, founder of modern Singapore. Suggests that his enthusiasm for caning reflects his "British upper-class education" more than his Asian origins. This is a serious misreading. As a boy in the 1930s, Harry Lee - whose father was a failed nouveau-riche playboy, not an aristocrat - was caned for tardiness at Raffles Institution, an English-language boarding school run on British lines, but he didn't set foot in Britain itself until he went to Cambridge University after World War II. Back in Singapore in the 1950s, Lee became a rabble-rousing, street-fighting, populist political organiser against the old regime, for whom the phrase "noblesse oblige", used of him here, could hardly be less appropriate.
The reviewer goes on to say that corporal punishment wasn't originally an Asian thing at all. This is utter nonsense -- judicial flogging existed for centuries in China and Korea, long before Britain had anything to do with the Far East. Chapter 1 of the memoirs themselves, in which Lee describes his school caning, can be read here.
Crime in Singapore: A Statistical Comparison with Major Cities
Singapore government document showing big differences between crime rates per head of various large cities. Singapore is near the bottom of the list. Several US cities are at the top. But Japanese cities are also shown to be relatively crime-free, and Japan doesn't have JCP, so it could be as much an Asian vs. Western cultural thing as much as anything to do with the use of different penalties.
Justice, Singaporean style, 17 April 1994 [HISTORY]
Re: Justice-Singapore style, 17 April 1994
Re: Justice-Singapore style, 17 April 1994
Re: Justice-Singapore style, 17 April 1994
Michael Fay, Victimology and Samoa, 18 April 1994
Michael Faye [sp] and caning, 18 April 1994
Re: law and order, 19 April 1994
Re: Justice, Singaporean style, 20 April 1994
Human Rights, Singapore, 20 April 1994
Justice Singapore style and Something Else, 21 April 1994
Singapore and caning, 14 May 1994
Re: caning, 23 May 1994
Re: caning, 23 May 1994
Re: caning, 24 May 1994
Comments on a message board for academic anthropologists. Much of the debate is about cultural relativism.
Remarks by the President in MTV's "Enough is Enough" forum on crime [HISTORY]
Bill Clinton answers a question (April 1994) about Michael Fay's then imminent caning.
US Department of State Daily Press Briefing Thursday, May 5, 1994 [HISTORY]
State Department spokesman answers questions a few days after Michael Fay's caning on how it would affect relations between the USA and Singapore. Much huffing and puffing here, but with hindsight we can see that it made little or no difference in the short term and none at all in the medium term: see this book review.
Sarcasm, Reality and Justice a la Singapore [HISTORY]
Letter in the New York Times (June 1996) from Christopher Lingle, a US academic who fled Singapore University after being accused of "scandalising the judiciary" in a newspaper article. Here he comments on the stage play, "Six of the Best", which was inspired by the Michael Fay affair but which Lingle says did not address the real issue -- whether Fay received due process and whether the punishment was proportionate to the crime.
Fetching Bums: The Quest for the Callipygian Ideal
Cod academic thesis on the cultural significance of buttocks. For women it is all a question of whether they are beautiful, claims the author, but for men they are noted mainly as the recipient of administered justice, especially if you live in Singapore or attended a paddling school in the US. Refers at some length to the Michael Fay case. (The author is, of course, entirely mistaken in stating that judicial canings in Singapore are carried out in public.)
Conversations with Past Presidents
Journal of the Singapore Medical Association. See "Caning of Michael Fay" about three-quarters of the way down the page. The SMA says it was "bombarded" with letters from medical associations in other countries, attacking Singapore doctors for agreeing to officiate at canings. Quotes from the SMA's reply, with a robust defence of the status quo.
June 1994: Physician Participation in Corporal Punishment (Alternative link)
Amnesty International thinks it unethical for doctors to be present at judicial canings, but the Singapore Medical Association does not agree.
It was Michael Fay in Singapore [HISTORY] (Alternative link)
Comment on a message board from someone who has evidently studied the ins and outs of the Fay saga in detail. She says "it is clear that" the punishment was not a "light" one, contradicting the widespread suspicion that the official administering it was given a nod and wink to go easy on him. We are not told whether this conclusion is based on published accounts or whether the writer has some inside information.
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 is unable to shed any new light on the vexed question of how many caning sentences Singapore imposes per year (see feature article Judicial Caning in Singapore).
Amnesty International Report 1999 (Alternative link)
In 1998 the laws were beefed up, with caning introduced for a wider range of drug and immigration offences.
Have a Good Trip Back to China? [HISTORY] (Alternative link)
Scroll a long way down to find this article. US national living in Singapore defends his adopted home and bemoans the hypocrisy and ignorant insularity of much US comment on the Fay case.
Repression often takes unusual forms in Singapore
Interview with Singapore's former Solicitor-General, who fell out with the regime and fled to the USA. He opposed the extension of caning to vandalism, but was overruled. However, he now says he was wrong and that caning is valuable.
SOMALIA
See Country files.
SOUTH AFRICA
External links that were previously here have been moved to the Country files pages. Others are included in the 12-part illustrated feature article Judicial corporal punishment in South Africa.
SOUTH KOREA (these external links will open in a new window)
The Dawn of Modern Korea (344) Law of the Land [HISTORY]
(Alternative link)
Background to the history of the legal system. Flogging had been used for centuries, and when the Japanese annexed Korea in 1910 they decided to leave that aspect of Korean justice in place. Half a million people were flogged for "trifling offences" between 1910 and 1920, at which point the punishment was finally abolished, according to this.
Korea Journal, 12-20-2000 [HISTORY]
A visitor to Korea describes visiting the "prison" at the Korean Folk Village in Seoul, and viewing the apparatus to which offenders were strapped down for "spanking with wooden paddles". For an illustration of it, see my JCP Pictures page. For its use in real life, see these 100-year-old photographs of judicial floggings.
Korean Trip Page [HISTORY]
A couple more pictures of the above ...
Korea 34 [HISTORY]
... and yet another one.
Description of the Kingdom Korea [HISTORY]
The shipwreck [HISTORY]
From the 17th-century Journal of Hendrick Hamel, translated into English from Dutch. Mentions soldiers being flogged on the bare buttocks for running out of gunpowder. Also, under "Administration of justice", adulterers were publicly caned in the city square. There is a detailed description of the beatings. Men had to take their pants down, but women kept them up "for moral reasons". Under "The Shipwreck" there is a woodcut illustration of several culprits lying on the ground with their bottoms in the air, being caned. The text claims that after receiving 25 strokes on the bare buttocks, they had to stay in bed for a month.
SRI LANKA (these external links will open in a new window)
Human Rights Committee considers reports from four countries
UN press release (November 2003). Says that judicial corporal punishment is still on the Sri Lanka statute book, though not imposed for about 20 years (not true, at any rate for juveniles - see this July 1997 news item). The document adds that CP is still in use for prison disciplinary purposes.
April 1998: Children in South Asia Securing Their Rights
Amnesty International report states (towards the end of Chapter I) that courts in Sri Lanka may order whipping for male juveniles, and that this provision was in use in 1995. (In fact it was in use in 1997 -- see this July 1997 news item.)
SUDAN (these external links will open in a new window)
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.
Human Rights Watch World Report 1999
States that 38 women were flogged by a public order court in December 1997 for taking part in a demonstration.
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2000
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 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 56 Christians arrested during a disturbance in a church.
SWAZILAND
See Country files.
TAIWAN (these external links will open in a new window)
Amnesty International Report 1998 (Alternative link)
Mentions that during 1997 the authorities were considering introducing judicial whipping, but no such measures had been implemented by the end of the year. (For more on this, see The Archive, Flogging mulled to deter crime, China News Agency, 5 July 1997.)
Amnesty International Report 1999 (Alternative link)
In 1998 the Minister of Justice dropped plans to introduce judicial whipping for juveniles (see above).
TANZANIA
See Country files.
THAILAND (these external links will open in a new window)
Thai Papers on August 2, 1999 (Alternative link)
Thailand doesn't have official JCP, but a news item reproduced here from the Bangkok Post refers to a village in the northern hills that is run de facto by a drug gang. There is no crime and no drug addiction, and a sign allegedly tells visitors: "No drugs allowed. If caught you will be caned seven times and handed over to the authorities."
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
See Country files.
TUVALU (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
Local hereditary elders have the right to inflict corporal punishment for infringing customary rules, but this is seldom invoked. The 2000 and 2001 reports just say the same.
UGANDA (these external links will open in a new window)
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2000
This mentions beatings by vigilante mobs, but curiously does not seem to refer to the official canings ordered by the courts, though there is no shortage of press reports of these -- see for instance these January 2000 news items.
Amnesty International Report 1997 (Alternative link)
At least three men were sentenced to caning in 1996 for attempting sexual acts with children.
Amnesty International Report 1998 (Alternative link)
Tells us that courts imposed canings in 1997 - but we knew that already, and it doesn't say how many cases there were.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
See Country files.
UNITED KINGDOM (these external links will open in a new window)
Hidden Lives Revealed: Poverty and Juvenile Crime [HISTORY]
Mentions a case in 1846 in which four boys convicted of theft were sentenced by the Quarter Sessions to a month in prison, plus a birching to be given immediately before they were released. This was described by the court as a "lenient" sentence.
Labour and the Poor [HISTORY]
Writing in 1850, Henry Mayhew expresses concern about rampant juvenile crime in London. He quotes interviews with a boy of 12 and one of 10, both of whom had already been in prison more than once as well as having been sentenced to whippings.
Criminal and destitute London juveniles, or the Ragged School class [HISTORY]
Chapter 1 of The Million-Peopled City, by John Garwood (1853). Cites cases in the 1840s in which boys as young as 8 were sentenced to be whipped for stealing.
The Utilisation of Flogging [HISTORY]
Various illustrated comments in Punch from the 1860s and 1870s about robbery with violence and the use of the cat-o'-nine-tails to try to suppress it.
The Quakers [HISTORY]
Mentions in passing that the Society of Friends (Quakers) were deemed heretical in the 17th century and were jailed and whipped for their beliefs.
Why Labour has the young in its sights (Alternative link)
The Scottish government is getting tough on anti-social behaviour by gangs of youths running riot, now apparently the number one issue of concern to the electorate. At public consultation meetings, corporal punishment, and the re-introduction of compulsory military service, were the most popular responses, according to this Feb 2004 report in the Glasgow Sunday Herald.
Punishing young offenders [HISTORY]
Exhibit from the National Archives. A letter from local magistrates to the Home Office in 1903 asked whether they could order persistent school truants to be birched. The answer was no.
Bring back the birch! (Alternative link)
On a BBC page for North-East Wales, a forum about crime and punishment.
Patentability [PDF] (Alternative link)
Document from the UK Patents Office. One case cited, from 1992 (see paragraph 1.24), is "a scheme under which prisoners could exchange all or part of a prison sentence for corporal punishment". I thought for a moment we were talking about a spanking machine invention here, but I think they just mean an abstract scheme. Anyway, the idea was refused. Apparently it lacked "industrial applicability".
The Glorious Revolution of 1688: Titus Oates [HISTORY]
Brief note about a "ruthless and amoral" agitator who was "sentenced to annual whippings". See this May 1685 news item, which records two immediate whipping sentences, plus an order to stand in the pillory five times a year on specified dates for the rest of his life, but says nothing about being whipped every year.
My prescription for juvenile delinquency
Short essay by "a member of the older generation" who left school at 14. He advocates the return of both school and judicial CP.
"I have changed, genuinely"
Article from the London Guardian about a politician who as a Tory MP formerly advocated the reintroduction of judicial flogging, but had now (Feb 2000) joined New Labour and completely changed his mind. Of course, the fact that the Tory Party had become entirely unelectable, whereas New Labour was at the time carrying all before it, will have had no connection whatever with this remarkable volte face.
Flogged in prison, 1885 [HISTORY]
Extract from a school log book in Wales describes an incident in which one of the pupils was imprisoned and birched for theft.
Punishment by whipping [HISTORY]
Part of an education module on history in Wales. Quotes some examples of whippings ordered by local courts in the 18th century.
Judge law courts for yourself [HISTORY] (Alternative link)
History of the Magistrates Court in Newark, a Midlands town. Whippings were commonplace in the 18th century; the birch was used there "as recently as 1920" when a 13-year-old got 6 strokes (the document fails to note that the birching of juvenile offenders in the UK in fact continued until 1948).
Mr Dykes and the Reform Party
From the journal of the Libertarian Alliance, a review of a 1991 book called "Fed up with Government?" calling for severe measures to restore law and order, including possibly judicial corporal punishment, to be administered not in prison but before any prison sentence begins.
More documentation and links for judicial CP in Britain
UNITED STATES (these external links will open in a new window)
Corporal punishment [HISTORY]
Entry in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. The situation in the USA is mentioned near the bottom of the page: in 1911, judicial flogging was on the statute book not only in Delaware, as is well-known, but also in Maryland (for wife-beating).
The Policy Initiative That Dare Not Speak Its Name (Alternative link)
Entry in an anti-Bush blog (Dec 2004). Nothing that has not been said before, including by me, but it bears repeating (the prison system is in practice more cruel than CP, and costs the taxpayer far more for no obvious result; CP is more certain and precise; etc. etc.).
Pandagon: Spank me
The Ethical Werewolf: The doing/allowing distinction (Alternative link)
More blogs, with various people's comments on the above. "I've always felt that the complete abolition of corporal punishment was a mistake", writes one contributor; "if you knew you weren't going to be able to sit down for a week, wouldn't you think twice about stealing that bag of chips or spraypainting that overpass?"
Raising Cane, by Mark Soppet [DOC]
On his Conservative Corner website, yet another thinker lists the advantages that caning would have over imprisonment. However, he is mistaken in saying that caning "is the standard method of punishment in Singapore". Actually the standard method of punishment in Singapore is very long terms of imprisonment, which is exactly what the writer says he wants less of. Caning in Singapore is always as well as prison, not instead of it.
The Case for Koranic Justice
Scroll down to December 27, 2004. Blogster Bradford Plumer, too, thinks public flogging would make more sense than spending vast amounts of tax dollars on counterproductively locking people up in horrific jails. Clearly, a lot of obviously intelligent and literate people think this, and apparently not only crazed "conservatives", so why doesn't the case get taken more seriously?
Corporal Punishment & Crime: America and the Singapore Solution
Another quick trip over much the same territory. This one is by a Ted Litschauer Jr. and quotes favourably from, among other things, Graeme Newman's Just and Painful: A Case for the Corporal Punishment of Criminals.
Commonwealth Party of America
This extreme-right-wing political party says it supports the application of corporal punishment, possibly in public, for certain crimes, but doesn't specify what sort of corporal punishment it has in mind.
Justifying Imprisonment: On the Optimality of Excessively Costly Punishment
Abstract of an exceptionally abstruse and theoretical economics thesis. I don't even understand the abstract, let alone the paper itself. But it seems to relate in some way to the question whether whipping or caning would be a better punishment than imprisonment.
The Sentencing Boomerang: Drug Prohibition Politics and Reform (Alternative link)
1995 paper in the Villanova Law Review about sentencing in US courts. Part II mentions caning and whipping as theoretically possible judicial penalties, but says this would only be a gimmick aimed at deluding the public into thinking that "severe" punishments were being maintained.
Sample Memorandum
A mock memorandum by a legal student. It considers a hypothetical judicial caning sentence in an imaginary US state and whether this would violate the constitution.
Council Bluffs and Winter Quarters: 1846-47 [HISTORY] (Alternative link)
Part of a history of the Mormons. In the 1840s they were settled in camps in Iowa and Nebraska. They had no jails, so they found it necessary to administer corporal punishment. Indians and whites alike would be whipped if caught stealing.
Handbook of Offender Assessment and Treatment
Review of a book aimed at students of criminal justice. The reviewer wonders why no research has been conducted on the behavioral consequences of caning.
Chronicles of Oklahoma [HISTORY]
Quotes Cherokee Nation laws from the 1830s prescribing "lashes on the bare back" for various offenses.
Delaware [HISTORY]
1911 encyclopaedia entry. Mentions that whipping was still current as a court sentence -- though not, since 1889, for females. In fact, judicial floggings continued in Delaware until 1952 -- see this book review.
Free Your Mind (formerly Adam's incredible webpage) (Alternative link)
Blog by a student at MIT. On August 2, his car is vandalised and he thinks there should be caning, as in Singapore. Despite his anger, he offers some quite rational and interesting thoughts on criminal justice. On August 3 he calms down, discovers from my website that Singapore caning is quite nasty, and changes his mind. This seems to be another example of Singapore giving judicial CP a bad name. It doesn't have to be such an extreme and brutal punishment as that.
Genealogical research: Rickards [HISTORY]
Extracts from 17th-century court records in Virginia including lashes on the bare back for men and women alike.
Crime and Punishment in the Plymouth Colony [HISTORY]
Meanwhile, around the same time in what is now Massachusetts, there were whippings for fornication, stealing and "denying the Scriptures".
Citizens for Effective Justice
This campaign for judicial corporal punishment has grown out of the book Fed Up With The Criminal Justice System. You can download the book, which argues for whippings on the upper back (for women as well as men) using a length of electrical cable. There is much legal and procedural stuff to support the claim that in certain cases, even without changing the law, it is already possible in the USA, by means of waivers and plea-bargaining, for a lawyer to ask a judge for his client to be whipped instead of imprisoned.
Whatever you think of the particular method proposed, and whether or not you go on to read the whole book or the legal details, do read the "Overview" a little way down the first page of the site, which sets out some (in my view) pretty well unanswerable arguments for the principle of judicial corporal punishment.
Judges should give juvenile delinquents a beating [HISTORY]
February 1995 article from the Daily Illini.
Prosecutorial misconduct (if screen is all black, highlight whole page with mouse to read text, or view source code) (Alternative link)
Story of a county attorney in Kansas who had to resign because of unprofessional behaviour. He had a large wooden paddle in his office labelled "Board of Education", and parents were invited to bring their kids in for paddlings. This affair is also mentioned in this report of a court case (see paragraphs 35 and 36).
Mayflower Scandals [HISTORY]
17th-century court records involving whipping sentences.
Crime and Punishment [HISTORY]
Harsh penalties in 17th-century Long Island.
Don't Make Me Get the Belt [HISTORY]
1996 humour from a student newspaper in Ohio inspired by the spate of proposals around the country for vandals to be judicially spanked.
Dr Spock, Call Your Singapore Office [HISTORY] (Alternative link)
1994 article by Conservative Christian commentator Joe Clarke suggesting the US should draw lessons from Singapore's methods.
Curious Punishments of Bygone Days [HISTORY]
Reproduction in full of a book published in 1896. See the chapters headed "The Whipping Post" and "Military Punishments".
History of the New England Colonies [HISTORY]
Article published in the 19th century refers to whippings and floggings imposed by the Puritans in 17th-century Massachusetts.
Savage Thoughts - Our Prisons
A certain Leo Savage brings a slightly new angle to the argument in favour of judicial flogging. Points out that prison is like a paid holiday for serious career criminals, but horrendous for ordinary people. Flogging is cheap and quick.
Oklahoma Farm Bureau Policies for 2002
These people "support the reinstitution of corporal punishment for convicted felons in our penal institutions" but they then go on to refer to chain gang work units, so maybe they are not really talking about "corporal punishment" in the usual meaning of the phrase.
It's time to reconsider corporal punishment
Column in a university newspaper (1994) calling for more domestic spankings and school paddlings and for the introduction of judicial caning.
Oklahoma's Frontier Indian Police [HISTORY]
In the 19th century the Cherokee and other Indian Nations had their own judicial systems, involving corporal punishment, e.g. 50 lashes for rape. There is a Seminole Nation whipping post in a museum in Oklahoma City.
History 256: Primary Sources [HISTORY]
A South Carolina Act of 1712 not only provided for the whipping of absconding slaves but also imposed fines on anyone else who, upon apprehending such a slave, neglected to "punish him by moderate whipping".
Flogging Michael Fay
A writer in something called the "Port Whitman Times" -- an organ which possibly exists only inside his head -- calls for judicial corporal punishment in the USA. A good flogging costs next to nothing, and the present system is an expensive flop, he argues.
The Struggle for Equality by Connecticut Blacks in the 18th and 19th Centuries [HISTORY]
A teachers' information pack. Even in this liberal Northern state there were slaves until 1848, and they were subject to special laws with whipping for various offences.
Red Hannah -- Delaware's Whipping Post [HISTORY]
Brief review of 1947 book on the history of the last redoubt of official judicial corporal punishment in the USA. Whipping in Delaware continued until 1952. There is also a list of the author's other works. See also this website's own review of the same book.
Get Tough on Criminals? Yes
1996 article originally from "Intellectual capital", apparently a conservative magazine, in which a Texas think-tank pundit argues for "shaming sentences" and points out that corporal punishment is constitutional, efficient, effective and egalitarian.
Capital Punishment, A Christian Dilemma
Most of this (arguing that the death penalty is OK because God said so) is off our topic, but it also explains in detail how the Bible calls for corporal punishment.
The King of Beaver Island [HISTORY]
Story in The Detroit News about an early Mormon who in the 1850s ran an island off Michigan as his own kingdom, with strict justice including whipping.
Public paddling beats prison (Alternative link)
Article (October 1996) calling for public paddling for minor crimes - in addition to, not instead of, proper rehabilitative measures. Why should punishment and rehabilitation be seen as mutually exclusive?
Gerald (Gary) Smith's Home Page
A Mormon calls for caning for abusive husbands. Unusual -- I think Mormons are generally against CP.
YEMEN (these external links will open in a new window)
Yemen: Human rights concerns following recent armed conflict (Alternative link)
Amnesty International document from 1994, stating that 865 people were judicially flogged in the capital of Yemen in 1993.
Amnesty International Report 1997 (Alternative link)
Reports that there were numerous floggings in 1996, often with no opportunity for appeal.
March 1997: The State Of Human Rights in Yemen (Alternative link)
Another Amnesty International report. Flogging is a daily occurrence at summary trials.
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1998
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2000
Shari'a law permits flogging for minor crimes, e.g. 80 lashes for drinking alcohol. Also mentions that journalists have been flogged for libel.
Amnesty International Report 1999 (Alternative link)
Mentions that judicial floggings were widely imposed in 1998, and usually carried out immediately after sentence.
Amnesty International Report 2001 (Alternative link)
Flogging sentences continued in 2000. Mostly these were for sex, drink and slander.
Committee Against Torture continues review of report from Yemen
A UN press release from November 2003 stating that the government was considering ways of reducing the number of flogging cases.
ZAMBIA (these external links will open in a new window)
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2000
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2001
The High Court banned corporal punishment in 1999, and in 2000 made efforts with magistrates and prison officials to see that the ban was enforced. The 2001 report adds that some chiefs in Northern Province continued to order CP in local courts, in defiance of the ban.
Govt Advised To Check Powers of Traditional Courts (Alternative link)
The Legal Resources Foundation reports (September 2001) that village "kangaroo courts" are handing out sentences of corporal punishment despite its having been made illegal.
ZIMBABWE (these external links will open in a new window)
Anti-gay rhetoric escalates in Zimbabwe
According to this 1996 document by an international gay rights organisation, one member of parliament called for caning and flogging to be introduced as a punishment for both male and female homosexuality.
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 1999
US State Department Human Rights Practices Report 2000
States that in 1992 the government introduced new legislation to allow the corporal punishment of minors after the Supreme Court had ruled against caning sentences. The report for 2000 adds nothing fresh.
THE WORLD (these external links will open in a new window)
Paul's Crime and Justice Page: Corporal Punishment
Expanded version of an article originally written as an encyclopaedia entry. The author is a criminology academic in the US and this is just a small part of his website, all of which is well worth studying. I love his description of the present prison-based justice system as equivalent to "mopping the floor while the tub overflows". In the CP article, particularly interesting are his comments on Graeme Newman's book Just and Painful, which I have briefly noticed here. I should declare an interest here: the author makes flattering reference to my website.
Bible Gateway: Deuteronomy 25
How different Bible versions have translated the bit about the forty lashes.
Court ordered torture
A note by Amnesty Canada mentions judicial CP in 14 countries.
Hidden scandal, secret shame: Torture and ill-treatment of children
A very large Amnesty International document from 2000, in fact a whole book. The most substantial mention of corporal punishment is in the Introduction.
Certifying fitness for corporal punishment
Correspondence in a medical journal about the moral dilemma faced by a doctor asked by the regime (in an unspecified African country, in the case in point) to certify an offender fit to be caned.
The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society [HISTORY]
Review of a 1995 book. Passing references to flogging and whipping.
Corporal punishment
Entry from the Columbia Encyclopaedia.
