madanthonywayne:
Within three years of their release, 67% of former prisoners are rearrested and 52% are re-incarcerated, a recidivism rate that calls into question the effectiveness of America's corrections system, which costs taxpayers $60 billion a year.
Yes. And you think that beating up the prisoners a bit will improve things, do you? It couldn't be more complicated than that, could it? Obviously, prisoners just need to be taught a lesson using violence. Simple solutions for complex problems.
Well Singapore, which practices corporal punishment to this day has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.
Singapore's society in general is hardly permissive - not for the locals. Do you advocate making the US a police state, too?
Why should criminals be given free food, lodging, and healthcare? Cane them and sentence them to home arrest with electronic monitoring.
You want to release violent criminals into general society? The rapists, murderers, skinheads? Or are you thinking of people on minor drug possession charges? If the latter, then you might well be onto something.
A 2 year old probably doesn't even realise why what he or she has done is wrong. The message he or she takes away from your smack on the head is that the people he trusts most in life are liable to abuse that trust by lashing out at him at random to inflict physical pain on him. He learns not to trust you quite as much as he did before, but instead to become wary of you in case you lose your temper again and lash out at somebody weaker than yourself - just because you can and because it makes you feel good to exert your power.
Complete bullshit. You should never subject your child to corporal punishment out of anger. If you're mad, you need to wait until you cool down. Punishment is like medicine and is given for the benefit of the child, not for the parent. Hitting a child for the reasons you give would be abuse.
When I see parents hitting their children, they sure look angry to me. And I'd worry about any parent who gives no sign of emotion at all while hitting a child.
If physical punishment is so effective, why don't we punish adults the same way? Oh wait - you'd
like to see adults punished that way, wouldn't you?
Maybe we ought to introduce caning in the US for offences such as driving over the speed limit. What do you think? Effective deterent? Would it teach people to respect the law? How do you think you'd react to being caned for 8 mph over the limit, say? I'm sure you'll say "I'd love it. It would certainly teach me never to do that again. I would have learned my lesson and developed real respect for the police and the legal system as a result." Right?
You might hope that, but violent people are everywhere.
Maybe they were all bashed up as kids. (Seriously, there is good evidence that having a violent upbringing increases your chance of becoming a violent criminal yourself. Check it out.)
See my post to Anti-flag above regarding taking cold showers where there is no choice. I would have thought that you also would be capable of seeing the difference between taking a cold shower by choice for cleanliness and being forced to take a cold shower by somebody else as punishment.
The sensation is still the same. Mildly unpleasant.
Go back to the video that is the subject of this thread. How do you think the child found the whole discipline experience in this case? Just "mildly unpleasant", you think? If so, you're badly out of touch with normal human emotion.
Frankly, I'd much rather endure a cold shower than be grounded for a week.
Then maybe you'd be able to negotiate that with your parents. In that case you would have
chosen what you consider to be a fair punishment, which again is very different from being manhandled into a "mildly unpleasant" physical assault against your will.
Which punishment is the most effective will vary according to the person being punished.
Once again, you use the word "effective". Effective at what? Punishing? Well, if all you want to do is punish somebody (i.e. take revenge on them), then the more violent the better. You can hurt them very "effectively" if you try.
If you want to earn their respect, then corporal punishment is unlikely to do the trick. They'll resent you, and maybe fear you, but they won't respect you.
If you have children, it might be eye opening for you to sit down with them (assuming they are old enough) and actually talk through their experience of any physical punishment you meted out to them in the past. Do they think they deserved
that punishment, rather than some non-violent punishment? What did they think of you for punishing them that way? Do they think that punishment built respect and trust, or did it damage it? Were they afraid of you? Were they afraid that the punishment would be administered again in the future? Don't take it from me; take it from them.
If your only concern is to change behaviour, no matter what the cost, then physical punishment is surely one way to achieve that. If that's all you ultimately care about, then we probably have nothing futher to discuss. But if you're concerned about not causing long-term damage to your kids, then you really need to rethink physical punishment.
Why it is that you are so determined to remove even minor forms of physical discipline from the tool kit of parents? Why is physical punishment so different in your mind from other forms of punishment? The point is to associate some unpleasant outcome with bad behavior. That punishment could be physical, mental, or both.
I abhor the double standard that says that it is fine to beat up some little kid who can't hit back, if you don't condone such behaviour for adult prisoners who have committed real crimes. And if you do, by chance, advocate it for real criminals, then I abhor the assumption that one's own children are worth no more than common criminals and ought to be treated equivalently when they do wrong.
You might as well ask why being punched in a bar is so different in my mind to being verbally insulted in the same setting. Which would you prefer, if you had to choose one?
Washing out the mouth with soap is violence now too?
Being physically handled by another person against your will, especially in a manner designed to inflict pain or discomfort, is the definition of physical violence. Can you really not see that?
Hell, I'd rather have soap in my mouth than cabbage. For one thing, I wasn't forced to swallow the soap. And just the smell of cabbage is enough to make me want to vomit. Yuck. Even worse, I was forced to put cabbage in my mouth even when I hadn't done anything wrong!
Nobody force fed you cabbage. I think you're lying.