Bring Back Flogging Essay

In Jeff Jacoby’s essay, Bring Back Flogging, he discusses the modern day justice system, and the ways in which he believes it should change. Jacoby’s stance on the topic is that United States of America should bring back flogging as an alternate to jailing felons. Jacoby never actually states this view in a thesis, but it is implied through the evidence given and the general attitude of the essay. Jacoby begins the essay with an anecdote from the 17 th century. Jacoby says that Bostonian Puritans would often use flogging as a form of punishment for various different crimes as oppose to other forms of punishment. He also notes that the Puritans would do other things such as branding with hot irons so that the felon is known. This anecdote is

To begin, Moskos summarizes America’s shifts from a punitive model of justice to a therapeutic model. He writes how the British criticize us for having corporal punishment and penitentiaries starting in Pennsylvania 1790 and ending in Delaware 1952. This result shows in overpopulation in the stunning number of prisons we have today.

Jacoby claims that America uses too many crimes for someone to go to prison, “Commit murder; go to prison. Sell cocaine; go to prison. Kite checks; go to prison.” (Jacoby, 1997, P. 1) There is a lot more people, with misdemeanor cases, that does not need to be in prison and that it cost a lot of money for prisons to tend for an inmate. In 1997 Jacoby states that, “the price of keeping criminals in cages is appalling -- a common estimate is $30,000 per inmate per year.”

Prominent among them is the reduction of the prison sentences for nonviolent and low-level drug crimes. However, this is not enough. “Even if we released everyone imprisoned for drugs tomorrow, the united states would still have 1.7 million people behind bars.” That massive statistic comes as a great shock to readers, as they only now realize the true urgency of the issue. The authors acknowledge that “half the people in state prisons are there for a violent crime.” However, “not all individuals convicted for a violent crime are alike.” They are convicted for different levels of violence: some are mass murderers or serial killers, while others are “battered spouses who struck back at their abusers.” Mauer and Cole also refer to studies that found that longer sentences are not better deterrents, as most serious offenses were committed under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The authors call for acknowledgement that excessively long sentences are merely a waste of money and totally

In Jeff Jacoby’s essay Bring Flogging Back, he discusses whether flogging is the more humane punishment compared to prison. Jacoby uses clear and compelling evidence to describe why prisons are a terrible punishment, but he lacks detail and information on why flogging is better. In the essay he explains how crime has gotten out of hand over the past few decades, which has lead to the government building more prisons to lock up more criminals. His effort to prove that current criminal punishment is not perfect or even effective is nicely done, but he struggled with discussing ways that flogging could lower the crime rates and provide a safer environment for America.

Jacoby’s argument of flogging attempts to show how it can be more productive over the conventional method of punishment seemingly the only way, imprisonment. His beliefs are that public whippings will prevent youths and first time offenders from becoming lifelong felons. The benefits deduced from his argument for flogging assuming it proves to be conclusive would be such. Lowering the rate of felons in jail, freeing up space for the more violent offenders. The appalling estimated amount of thirty thousand a year per inmate would be saved. A public whipping would not be associated with respect and sign of manhood or status symbol that prison serves for many offenders. Flogging he believes would deter many of the first time offenders and youth along with preventing them from being repeat and long time offenders. The pain, scars, and embarrassment of public whippings would far exceed the value or risk reward benefit of doing a petty crime thus forcing people to think about their actions before they did it. Jacoby contends that he is unsure whether being whipped is more degrading that being caged. At the end of his essay he draws attention to the point of the terrible risk of being raped in prison as an argument in favor of replacing imprisonment with flogging.

     Jeff Jacoby seems accustomed with using words as tools for undermining that which he opposes. By using the word “cage” frequently, he ascribes a negative connotation to the act of imprisoning people. He successfully taunts us with images of defenseless animals locked within inhospitable quarters, and hopes that the image will fuel the readers’ probable fear of human rights violations. Another statement within the fourth paragraph, which I see as an attempt to fool people, is when he says, “ Crime is out of control, despite the deluded happy talk by some politicians.” This sentence come out sounding as if it were a fact, when in actuality it is his opinion based on feelings rather than data. I also see an attempt to discount the authority of politicians by calling them deluded. Again there is an absence of support available for either of these two opinions.

The United States currently has the highest number of prisoners in the world. According to Glaze and Herrmann (2013), approximately 6.9 million adults are under some form of correctional supervision in the United States. Crime in the United States is relatively equal to that of any other industrialized nation, so why does the United States house so many inmates irrespective of the fact that the nation cannot successfully manage a budget for the institution as well as manage the inmates? An inmate, Victor Hassine, provides insight as to what prisoners physically and mentally experience during incarceration as well as his ideas on the effects of prisons on inmates in his book, Life without Parole.

To begin with, at the start of his article Jeff Jacoby mentions old tactics of punishment pursued by Puritans. At the same time, the author is giving ideas of how to take justice into our own hands. For example, in paragraph 13 Jacoby mentions, “Their sanctions (Puritan's actions) were humiliating and painful, but quick and cheap. Maybe we should readopt a few,” basically the author is suggesting we should punish criminals with our own hands. Consequently, Jacoby declares on paragraph 6, “…a stint in prison becomes a sign of manhood, a status of the symbol,” now the author is claiming that the prisons are unworthy and incarcerate people is not the solution because according to him there are better ways.

Without the use of these statistics, Jacoby would not be able to suggest such a solution and effectively convey his point. As a result, Jacoby proves that through his research, he is qualified to make his arguments against prisons.

Going to jail, i.e. being “caged,” is viewed as one of the most horrible events of a person’s life. Further, only the scum of the Earth go to jail and no person in their right mind would be happy to be labeled as a former inmate. Furthermore, Jacoby presumes that “for many offenders, there is even a certain cachet to doing time -- a stint in prison becomes a sign of manhood, a status symbol” (Jacoby 2). Where is the writer getting this fact? One could argue that going to jail is viewed as degradation in a person’s manhood. As well as this, Jacoby assumes that flogging will “prove a lot more educational than 10 years' worth of prison meals and lockdowns” (Jacoby 2). Truth be told, a public whipping may trigger rage within the individual. Contrary to this, jail time may cause the person to settle down and realize what they have done wrong. In addition, the individual would recognize that “10 years worth of prison meals and lockdowns” is 10 years of their life wasted. Also, Jacoby presupposes that flogging can be utilized as the new general form of punishment for all crimes. For instance, when directing a question to his readers, Jacoby states: “Instead of a prison term, why not sentence at least some criminals -- say, thieves and drunk drivers -- to a public whipping?” (Jacoby 2). At this juncture, Jacoby is in the wrong yet again. He assumes that thieves and drunk drivers have committed the same crime when in reality they have not. Ultimately,

Whenever you imagine prison, you think up ideas and violent images that you have seen in the movies or on TV.   Outdated clichés consisting of men eating stale bread and drinking dirty water are only a small fraction of the number of horrible, yet “just” occurrences which are stereotypical of everyday life in prison.   Perhaps it could be a combination of your upbringing, horrific ideas about the punishment which our nation inflicts on those who violate its’ more serious laws that keeps people frightened just enough to lead a law-abiding life. Despite it’s success in keeping dangerous offenders off the streets, the American prison system fails in fulfilling its original design of restoring criminals to being productive members of society, it is also extremely expensive and wastes our precious tax dollars.

When we do research on daily prison life, we come across two typical but less than ideal situations: either social imaginaries cloud our judgment or information provided by the prisons themselves hide certain weak or bad aspects that they do not want to make public. We can also find information on TV, but most of the time it either exaggerates or minimizes the facts. In order to obtain more reliable information, we have to have access to people who are working or have worked in this institution, and such will be the sources of this essay. We will be describing and giving examples of prison violence according to three types of violence: sexual, physical and psychological violence.

Within this paper, you will find a comprehensive review of the United States prison system, and why it needs to analyzed to better support and reform the people of this country. I plan to persuade the other side (politicians and society) into seeing that the way the prison system is now, is not ethical nor economical and it must change. We have one of the world’s largest prison population, but also a very high rate of recidivism. Recidivism is when the prisoners continuously return to prison without being reformed. They return for the same things that they were doing before. So, this leads us to ask what exactly are we doing wrong? When this happens, we as a nation must continuously pay to house and feed these inmates. The purpose of a prison needs to be examined so we can decide if we really are reforming our inmates, or just continuing a vicious cycle. What is the true purpose of prison besides just holding them in a cell? There must be more we can do for these hopeless members of society.

However, Jeff Jacoby says something true, the criminal justice system has a problem, but violence is not the solution. As a result, Jacoby made a great use of logos on paragraph 6 where he points out the consequences of incarceration, “…the price of keeping criminals in cages is appalling – a common estimate is $30,000 per inmate per year,” also, he supports that statement on paragraph 12, “The Globe reported in 1994 that more than two hundred thousand prison inmates are raped each year…” he says, on that same fact, Jacoby is using ethos suggesting that the information reported by The Globe, the newspaper for which he works, is truthful. With these two statements he almost got the reader, but again he contradicts himself saying that is not the inmates fault, “…usually to the indifference of the guards,” he adds. So, why should prisoners be punished if it is not their fault?