Moskos - In Defense of Flogging

Table of Contents

To my father, Charles Moskos, who always loved a crazy idea

Youre about to get whipped. Mentally more than physically. Its going to hurtbut its supposed to. Flogging is a series of hard, cracking lashes intended to cause jolting pain. Once the experience is over, youll never be the same.

I write in defense of flogging, something most people consider too radical for debate, not worthy of intellectual discussion. But please, dont put down this book and move on, upset that I even broached the subject. If thats your temptation, bear with me for just a bit longer. My defense of floggingwhipping, caning, lashing, call it what you willis meant to be provocative but only because something extreme is needed to shatter the status quo. And that, ultimately, is my goal. There are 2.3 million Americans in prison. That is too many. I want to reduce cruelty, and flogging may be the answer. My opening gambit is simple: Given the choice between five years in prison and ten brutal lashes, which would you choose?

I wont dispute that flogging is a severe and even brutal form of punishment. Under the lash, skin is literally ripped from the body. But very little could be worse than years in prisonremoved from society and all you love. Going to prison means losing a part of your life and everything you care for. Compared to this, flogging is just a few very painful strokes on the behind. And its over in a few minutes. If you had the choice, if you were given the option of staying out of jail, wouldnt you choose to be flogged and released? Think about it: five years hard time or ten lashes on the behind? Youd probably choose flogging. Wouldnt we all?

Having to make this choice isnt as abstract as you may think. After all, who hasnt committed a crime? Perhaps youve taken illegal drugs. Maybe you once got into a fight with a friend, stranger, or lover. Or you drove back from a bar drunk. Or you clicked on an online picture of somebody who turned out to be a bit young. Maybe youre outdoorsy and were caught hunting without a permit. Or maybe youre a boss who knowingly hired illegal immigrants. Perhaps you accepted a gift from a family member and told the IRS it was a loan. Or did you go for the white-collar big leagues and embezzle millions of dollars? In truth, you may be committing some crimes you dont even know about. If your luck runs out, you can end up in jail for almost anything, big or small. And even if youre convinced that youre the most straitlaced, law-abiding person in the world, imagine that through some horrific twist of fate, you were accused of a crime. Its not inconceivable; it happens all the time.

We send thousands of people to jail and prison every day, and each one experiences something similar to this. Imagine youre in court, even though you never expected to be in this position. Maybe things got out of hand and one thing led to another, or maybe youre even innocent. No matter, because now youre standing in court, behind the defense table, looking up to the judge. He (because this isnt a TV show, the judge will probably be a white man) looks at you tiredly, says guilty, sentences you to five years in prison, says a few more words, and bangs his gavel. Youre in shock. Your lawyer shrugs, trying to look sympathetic. But he doesnt seem nearly as bothered as you are. You try to ignore the sobs of your family as a court officer cuffs your hands behind your back.

Youre guilty as charged. So whether you did it or notit strangely doesnt matter anymoreyoure officially a criminal. Five years in prison is a long time. Where were you five years ago? Perhaps youve accomplished a lot in the past half-decade. Perhaps you had ambitious plans for the next five years. Whatever your plans were, theyre not going to happen now. Before they lead you out the back of the courtroom to a holding room, you seriously ponder many things about prison youve tried hard to avoid. Your lover or spouse may leave you (or at least have an affair). Whatever youre needed for, youre not going to be there. If you have kids, theyre going to miss you, and be missed by you. Over the coming years, will your friends visit? And if they dont, what can you do? Theres a very good chance that, when you emerge after your time is up, youre going to be alone and unemployed.

Taking away a large portion of somebodys life through incarceration is a strange concept, especially if its rooted not in actual punishment but rather in some hogwash about making you a better person (more on that later). But what about prison itself? Prison is first and foremost a home of involuntary confinement, a total institution of complete dominance and regulation. Its a very strange home indeed that holds 2.3 million people against their will. But what is it like? Will you have to learn prison lingo? Will you be forced to wear funny striped pants and make friends with characters like the Birdman of Alcatraz? No, of course not. That was years ago, and a movie. But whats it like today? Are there drugs, gangs, and long times in solitary? Will you come out strongeror broken? Will you be raped? Hopefully its not like the brutal TV show Oz? God, you hope not. But you dont know. And thats the rub. Prison is a mystery to all but the millions of people forced to live and work in this gigantic government-run detention system. And as long as we dont look at what happens on the inside, as long as we refuse to consider alternatives, nothing will change.

Is flogging still too cruel to contemplate? If so, given the hypothetical choice between prison and flogging, why did you choose flogging? Perhaps its not as crazy as you thought. And even if youre adamant that flogging is a barbaric, inhuman form of punishment, how can offering the choice be so bad? If flogging were really worse than prison, nobody would choose it. So whats the harm in offering corporal punishment as an alternative to incarceration? But of course most people would choose to be caned over being sent to prison. And thats my point. Faced with the choice between hard time and the lash, the lash is better. What does that say about prison?

If you think the choice between flogging and prison is a false choice, that there should be a third option, go right ahead and propose it. Perhaps there is another wayneither incarceration nor floggingthat punishes the guilty, provides the convicted with a halfway decent chance of a future, expresses societys disapproval, and satisfies a victims sense of justice. Its possible, but I doubt it. Do not let eternal optimism damn the future.

Prisons dont work, but unfortunately neither does traditional opposition to them. Without more radical debate, preachers for prison reform will never be heard beyond the choir. There is no shortage of ideas on such things as rehab, job training, indeterminate sentencing, restorative justice, prison survival, and reentry. A search for prison books on Amazon.com yields 23,000 results (and almost none are pro-penitentiary). By contrast, a similar search for flogging reveals 247 books (and most are about sex). There are many, many books out there about the evils of prisonand to what end? Over the past decades reformers have preached with rational passion and barely controlled anger about the horrors of prison growth; all the while, the government has not so quietly built the largest prison system the world has ever seen.