Corporal Punishment for Criminals?

Like I said before, its difficult to procure accurate statistics for that time period, since pre-1950's they werent necessarily as interested in putting together statistics. The one that thats for sure is that crime did go up, and that in general, even the committee's that ultimately abolished corporal punishment recognized it deterred crime, they just didnt feel it was morally correct to continue doing so.

And I'm not trying to claim that had corporal punishment been in place, crime wouldnt have gone up. Chances are that it would have gone up, but at a slower rate.

And I think those are two countries whose experience we can learn from and build upon. How are they administering the punishment? Which crimes get prosecuted corporally and which dont?

Unfortunately, many countries overseas have gross inequities when it comes to administering laws. The wealthy are routinely exempt from the same punishments that the poor get subjected to, which undermines the system. Similarly, people can often buy their way out of punishments. These reasons, among others, makes me skeptical about trusting every statistic I see about overseas countries and their implementation of corporal punishment.

I understand they are more severe than paddling, and like I said in the beginning, the idea is to inflict pain, not some symbolic act of dissatisfaction.

I could just as easily say, "and this is imprisonment" and show pictures of slaves in prison. Highlighting worst-case scenarios isnt a rational argument as much as it is an emotional one, and I think that's one of the problems that we suffer from in that we allow our emotions to supercede what is often logically and rationally correct.

Gang life, for the most part, is not violent on a day-to-day basis. I have a close friend who was a pretty heave gang-banger in DC for most of his life until he turned his life around. He still has tattoos all around his body, and for the average gang banger, your day to day is fairly uneventful. Gang violence is typically strategic, and imposed on vulnerable targets.

No offense, but your martial arts and basketball experience in no way increases your pain tolerance appreciably. I doubt any NBA player would want to get caned or lashed. As for those with low pain tolerances getting into a life of crime, why not? How much pain tolerance does someone have to have to pull a trigger? or to steal money?

Like I noted before, I think you both are allowing your personal prejudices to influence your conclusion about how meaningful a deterrent it would serve. For example, if we look at an extreme implementation of corporal punishment and say every single thief is going to have his hands cut off, is there any question that the number of thefts would go down? Who would risk stealing in that situation unless it was absolutely necessary? I'm definitely not advocating for that, but why wouldnt the same dynamic be true for more moderate (but pain-inflicting) forms of corporal punishment? If, hypothetically, it proved not to be effective, I'd be more than willing to say that it didnt work and that it should be scrapped. My issue is that people arent even willing to consider it, and the grounds for this stance, at least to me, remain nebulous.