Corporal punishment
From Academic Kids
Corporal punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain intended as correction or punishment, ("corporal" means of, relating to, or affecting the body). When used for the punishment of criminals or slaves, it is usually applied using an instrument such as a cane or a whip. Other examples include the 'cat-o-nine-tails', once used in America and by the British, and the Russian knout, consisting of leather thongs with pieces of metal inserted. Ancient Romans used a similar device, the scourge.
Corporal punishment is generally held to differ from torture in that it is applied for disciplinary reasons and is therefore intended to be limited, rather than intended to totally destroy the will of the victim. Severe or prolonged forms of corporal punishment are, however, more or less indistinguishable from torture.
Many parents use a milder form of corporal punishment called "spanking", usually slapping their child's buttocks with the palm of their hand; alternatively, they may administer a single smack on the hand with their own hand. Others punish their children with a switch or a belt, although the use of instruments for beating children is increasingly deprecated, even by proponents of spanking.
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Corporal punishment in history
While some tribal peoples had corporal punishment and others did not, it seems to have existed in all higher civilizations. Corporal and capital punishment were long the main forms of punishment used by civilized societies. Roman society used a number of forms of corporal punishment including beating and mutilation. This continued throughout medieval Europe.
Since the 18th century corporal punishment has tended to be gradually replaced by fines and incarceration, as the emphasis of criminal punishment has shifted from retribution and spectacle to reformation and surveillance. Corporal punishment took longest to die out as a punishment for violation of prison rules, as a military field punishment, and in schools.
It is sometimes thought that the punishment should affect the part of the body that sinned. Extreme examples include the amputation of the hands of a thief, as permitted by Sharia law, or during the Middle Ages in Europe. Other examples include the punishment of adulterous women by the insertion of irritating substances, such as hot pepper, into their vagina. The song Les Radis by Georges Brassens tells of an adulterous woman being punished by the public insertion of a large radish into her rectum. A less extreme example is the American tradition of putting soap into a child's mouth for using inappropriate language (called "washing your mouth out with soap").
Examples of corporal punishment from the Enlightenment onwards have tended to emphasise the administration of a set amount of pain by measurable procedures.
Present day corporal punishment of adults
Several societies retain widespread use of judicial corporal punishment. These include Singapore and Malaysia. The Singaporean practice of caning became much discussed in the U.S. in 1994 when American teenager Michael P. Fay was sentenced to such punishment for an offence of car vandalism. In Singapore, male violent offenders and rapists are typically sentenced to caning in addition to a prison term.
Corporal punishment is also dictated as a punishment in traditional Islamic Sharia law, and applied in countries like Saudi Arabia.
A small minority in the West argue that corporal punishment is a quick and effective method and less cruel than long-term incarceration; they think that it should be considered in the West as an alternative to prison. Some few even want corporal punishment to replace fines.
Corporal punishment of children
Opinions on corporal punishment of children are varied. Whilst practice is accepted and embraced in many countries, it is also illegal in many others. There is pressure in some countries, including the UK, to have any form of corporal punishment of children made illegal and treated as child abuse. Sweden, Finland, Norway, Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Germany, Israel, Iceland, Romania, Ukraine and Hungary have banned the corporal punishment of children entirely.
Although China has made corporal punishment against children illegal in the school system, it is still widely practiced. It is still legal to punish your own child using physical pain in China.
There is resistance, particularly from conservatives, against making illegal the corporal punishment of children by their parents or guardians. In 2004, the United States declined to become a signatory of the U.N.'s "Rights of the Child" because of its sanctions on parental discipline, citing the tradition of parental authority in that country and of privacy in family decision-making.
A number of countries allow corporal punishment as a sanction for use by schools, though the UK has banned ths practice.
Proponents of the corporal punishment of children, whilst accepting that excessive physical punishment amounts to child abuse, argue that corporal punishment, properly administered, can be the most effective form of discipline for unruly children, and even a form of reassuring control for some young adolescents. Polls consistently show that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that corporal punishment is sometimes necessary. There is also the argument that without recourse to the short, sharp smack parents may use forms of emotional violence that are actually more abusive. Opponents argue that any form of violence is by definition abusive.
Recently, Massachusetts has proposed a bill banning all forms of corporal punishment on minors under 18.
Corporal punishment, fetishism, and BDSM
Corporal punishment is often fetishized, and is the basis of a number of paraphilias, most notably erotic spanking. The techniques and rituals of corporal punishment are often included in BDSM activities; see impact play.
