Query from a reader in Asia:
There has been so much vandalism and disorder in our universities and cities – spray-painting and pulling down statues and so forth. Perhaps you have seen some of this in your own country, at your own university. Many worried commentators have considered possible solutions, and so have I. However, I am concerned by the approval which some smart people express for corporal punishment of the kind handed out to Michael Fay in Singapore, who was caned on his bare buttocks.
I am impressed by the remark of the famous Catholic moralist, Fr Brian Harrison, who once wrote of this kind of punishment, "that role or function will tend to attract in practice, as the only persons in society willing to carry out such a function, those sorry types of individuals who already have at least latent sadistic tendencies, and so will actually enjoy their grisly task. But precisely in that situation, another type of grave sin (or at least the near occasion thereof) will be involved: that of cruelly delighting in the infliction of intense pain, often accompanied by perverse sexual satisfaction."
It also occurs to me that in our digital age, if we allowed flogging the bare bottom, perverted persons would try to make videos of the punishments, or bribe the guards to do so, and such videos would probably go viral.
Even apart from other considerations, this seems to me a compelling argument against the use of such punishments. What do you think?
Reply:
As always, my friend Edward Feser, to whose fine blog you link, makes excellent points: Among them, that not all forms of corporal punishment are intrinsically evil (as torture would be), and that although caning is humiliating, punishments ought to be humiliating. So far, I agree with him. I also agree that many people in our society have become averse to the infliction of any punishment at all (except, of course, upon those who disagree with them). It has become difficult even to convince people that rioting and setting fire to buildings isn’t “mostly peaceful,” that seizing public places isn’t a suitable means of “expressing one’s feelings,” or that defacing monuments isn’t an appropriate mode of “self-expression.”
But I agree with you too. The temptation to follow Singapore’s example is strong, because nothing much happens to louts and delinquents in my country. But I would strongly oppose such punishments as caning the bare buttocks, not because they are disproportionate to the wrongs these louts commit (they aren’t), but because they would produce greater evil than they would quench.
Not only would they encourage cruelty and sadistic voyeurism, as you suggest, but in a society like ours they would be less likely to humiliate the offenders than to arouse waves of sympathy for them. That poor, poor vandal! (Say, can you get the camera in closer? I can’t see!)
Moreover, I think we could expect the mobs of those who do sympathize to retaliate by taking up the caning of hapless citizens who aren’t on their side. This would be called protest.
For the immediate future, the question of caning is moot because I cannot imagine the courts in my country approving it. But we don’t need such punishments anyway. As I see it, the problem is not that we need new institutional and statutory punishments, but that we need to use the ones we already have, which include expulsion, fines, imprisonment, compulsory labor, and yes, humiliation (though not every means of humiliation!)
What would I consider suitable punishments for the sorts of hooliganism you mention? It would depend on the offense. Consider just the various forms of disruption in universities, bearing in mind that they sully the very idea of a community of people sharing in the rational pursuit of knowledge.
For refusing blocking classrooms, disrupting ceremonies, and preventing speakers from speaking: Expulsion from school and revocation of any scholastic honors which might previously have been conferred. Not just suspension or probation, which mean nothing. For foreign students, of course, instant revocation of guest privileges.
For occupying buildings: All that, plus referral to the civil authorities for breaking and entering.
For toppling statues, painting on buildings, and other forms of vandalism: All that, plus referral to the civil authorities for defacement of property.
Shouldn’t that be enough? Yes, if only we would follow through and do it.