Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/598

 Whipping as a Punishment for Crime.

553

WHIPPING AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME: A REPLY. BY DUANF. MOWRY. A WRITER in THE GREEN BAG for February, 1901, advocates the return, in this country, to the antiquated and bar barous method of whipping as a punishment for crime. He submits no statistics or data to show the restoration of the institution of whipping would lessen the commission of crime; that it makes a better citizen of the criminal who has been subjected to its use; that it begets or promotes a better public opinion; that it is an actual saving to the State in dollars and cents. He believes "that human government exists by the permission of God and in some sort represents divine justice on earth; that for grown men the main object of criminal punishment should be to punish, and that reformation is a secondary matter, and gen erally a hopeless task." He thinks the criminal should be caught and made to smart for his offense; that to punish all cases of serious crime by a number of months or years in jail is to use but a rough yardstick; that "no sentence in a county jail, be it long or short, is greatly dreaded by the hardened criminal"; that whipping is dreaded by everyone, mainly because it hurts; that the degradation which accompanies the infliction of a whipping of a grown man is no more than is deserved. The foregoing is a brief summary of the position taken in this somewhat remarkable article. Of course it is not difficult to enter tain a "belief" upon any subject. To believe, for instance, that the governments of men are allowed to exist by God and represent divine justice, is no more difficult than is the reverse, and it is no more convincing. And there are not a few very reputable, worthy citizens who believe that if some of the justice which is meted out under the forms of human government can be construed to mean "divine justice," the sooner there is

less of it the better will it be for the social order. While there is no argument in what the writer says about criminal punishment being designed, primarily, to punish, let us see if the writer is right in his conclusion as to the purpose of punishment. There is certainly some very respectable authority which takes a postion diametrically opposed to this view. A writer in "The Popular Science Monthly" for April, 1886, says that "punish ment, in its proper acceptation, means the protection of society, as represented by the State, against the inroads of the individual upon its welfare, or, as it is called in criminal law phrase, 'the peace of the State.' It is only when the encroachments of the indi vidual upon the rights of others amount to a public wrong that they are punishable criminally, and then it is only the wrong to society, and not the sin, that is cognizable by the tribunals." William Douglas Morrison, who was for many years in charge of the prison at Wandsworth, England, and is an authority upon crimes and their punishment, says that "punishment ought to be regarded as at once an expiation and a discipline, or, in other words, an expiatory discipline." "The criminal," he asserts, "is an offender against the fundamental order of society in somewhat the same way as a disobedient child is an offender against the center of authority in the home or the school. The punishment inflicted on the child may take the form of revenge, or it may take the form of retribution, or it may take the form of deterrence, but it undoubtedly takes its highest form when it combines expiation with discipline. Punishment of this nature still remains punitive, as it ought to do, but it is at the same time a kind of punishment from which something may be learned. It