To flog or not to flog

Nov 13, 2010 Editorial

The ongoing debate about corporal punishment is heightening. Many people, closely associated with what happens in the United States and other developed countries, are insisting that corporal punishment is for the barbaric.
With equal vehemence, proponent of the idea feel that to do away with corporal punishment is to allow children to run rough shod over anyone in authority and to encourage anti-social behaviour. There is no hard evidence that either is wrong especially since one can conduct studies that would incorporate false premises that would lead to equally skewed results.
It is the same with the debate about the death penalty. Many countries, particularly those in Europe, have abolished the death penalty after listening to arguments that it is inhumane, degrading and the ultimate disregard of human rights.
Supporters, however, claim that it is the ultimate sanction for one who actually deprived another of his life. They also say that once executed, a person will never commit that crime again and they point to noted American writer, Truman Capote who actually secured the release of a killer and had the killer in his care with the firm view that the man was reformed. He killed again.
Opponents of corporal punishment say that the violence scars the child and in turn fashions him into believing that the solution to his problems rests in violence. Supporters say that the fear of corporal punishment is enough to make those tending to errant behaviour, to shun such behaviour.
Older people are firm in the belief that corporal punishment kept them along the straight and narrow. They point to the level of crime committed then when serious crimes attracted the cat o’nine tails and the whip. Those who have seen the recipients of the cat would appreciate the horror because the victim is never again whole. Many die at an early age, looking like people twenty years older.
Perhaps it was the barbarity that caused the state to ban the cat but the whip remained. This was in the face of increasing calls for an abolition of corporal punishment. Recently, by way of an act of Parliament, the state removed whipping from the books of penal institutions. Is this a move toward the abolition of corporal punishment? Officials in the administration say that such a conclusion would be farther from the truth.
But it has not escaped notice that increasing numbers, parents who apply corporal punishment to their children are being hauled before the courts. Just last week, a father who found that his pre-teen daughters had left his home to view pornographic movies, ended up in court and placed on bail because he took a whip to them to the extent that there were welts on their nether regions.
This is a far cry from the days when parents took the cane or the whip to their errant children. At the same time, the Ministry of Education allows schools to inflict corporal punishment on children but under supervised conditions. One of the supervisors is the head teacher.
On Monday, a mother was overheard telling the media that these days with teachers reluctant to apply corporal punishment children are becoming brazen and there are those who would take their parents to school to accost teachers who seek to discipline them.
It has not escaped notice that even in the United States where all views are taken seriously there is a reintroduction of corporal punishment in some places. AND THE LAW SUPPORTS IT. In Guyana where we seem to be keen to emulate the actions of the developed world (and that may not be a bad thing) we remain silent when the very society seeks to promote violence.
Some of the very people who profess to abhor scream for blood when their community catches a thief. They resort to violence if they are provoked and they support condign action if one of their own is wronged.
There have been numerous letters both in support of and against corporal punishment and we are certain that we are far from seeing the end of this debate. We know of double standards, of people who would publicly denounce corporal punishment but would have no hesitation in administering such punishment,
Will there be a new round of debates? We await the next bit of flogging or beating of a thief by so-called public spirited citizens.

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