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Dear Readers: My article entitled The Constitutionality & Effectiveness of Judicial Corporal Punishment Compared to Massive Incarceration has been accepted for publication in The Criminal Law Bulletin , a respected law review.  It will not appear until 2013, so if you have any research, pro or con , please post it on this weblog.  We need to cut the American prison population in half, and judicial corporal punishment -- favored by all four presidents carved into Mt. Rushmore -- is one way to do it.  Thank you.                                                                John Dewar Gleissner

                 Why Was Judicial Corporal Punishment Abolished?    by John Dewar Gleissner, Esq.             Throughout history, the lowest ranks of society provided the majority of criminals.   Punishments often varied by social class or caste, officially or unofficially, and JCP most often was reserved for or primarily given to slaves and those with little status, money or property. [1]   Thus, JCP is generally abolished in advanced societies as a by-product of greater equality or democracy, because it is a relic of lower-class status that newly enfranchised citizens dislike.               JCP is unpleasant to administer, sometimes causes publicized deaths, [2] seems barbaric when incarceration holds out false promises of rehabilitation or humane treat...

"Today's would-be reformers would do well to remember that, and to consider the possibility that the best models for productive change may not come from contemporary legislation or court decisions, but from a past that has largely disappeared from our consciousness.  Sometimes, the best road forward faces back."    -- William J. Stuntz in The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (2011)

In the midst of America's current correctional crisis, a letter written 230 years ago by George Washington has surfaced again. When Washington was building the Continental Army out of untrained soldiers, he found it necessary to increase discipline.   In 1776, Congress approved New Articles of War drafted by John Adams, with the assistance of Thomas Jefferson and the approval of Edward Rutledge and James Wilson, granting American commanders the power to impose 100 lashes, more than the 39 found insufficient by General Washington. The Founders intended to impose corporal punishment judiciously, as an example for all to see, and they knew a little would go a long way. The Founders, descendants of Puritans or slaveholders, transferred their knowledge to young, mostly white soldiers. On Feb. 3, 1781, just a few months before the Battle of Yorktown, Washington requested additional authority to impose corporal punishment:   To the President of Congress Head Quarters, New W...

We face a massive prison crisis in the United States, and some thinking outside the box is necessary. Earlier in American history, incarceration was rare or non-existent. Shouldn't we figure out what they were doing right? Dostoevsky believed the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. Prisons today resemble declining civilizations in that prisoners spend an inordinate amount of time planning, avoiding and participating in violence directed against each other and very little time working productively. Our prisons in many respects might signal national decline. The era of American ascendancy from about 1650 to 1800 saw zero mass incarceration and very little incarceration at all as the ultimate punishment for crime. Back then, communities were more vigilant. Punishments included more judicial corporal punishment, banishment, hard labor, indentured servitude, death and public shaming. We humans like to flatter ourselves that society progresses...