Corporal punishment

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Corporal punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain intended to discipline or reform a wrongdoer or change a person's behavior. The term usually refers to striking the offender with an implement, whether in judicial, domestic, or educational settings.

Corporal punishment may be divided into three main types:

• parental or domestic corporal punishment, i.e. the spanking of children within the family;
• school corporal punishment, i.e. of school students by teachers or other school officials;
• judicial corporal punishment, involving the official caning or whipping of convicted offenders (whether adult or juvenile) by order of a court of law.

The corporal punishment of minors within the home is lawful in all 50 of the United States and according to a 2000 survey widely approved by parents.^[1] It has been officially outlawed in 24 countries around the world.^[2]

Corporal punishment in school is still legal in some parts of the world, including about half the States of the U.S., but has been outlawed in others, including Canada, Japan and all of Europe with the exception of the Czech Republic.^[3]

Judicial corporal punishment has virtually disappeared from the western world but remains in force in many parts of Africa and Asia.

Contents 1 Modern use 1.1 Corporal punishment in the home 1.2 Corporal punishment in schools 1.3 Judicial or quasi-judicial punishment 1.4 Pros and cons of corporal punishment 2 Anatomical target 3 Ritual and punishment 3.1 Corporal punishment, fetishism, and BDSM 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Modern use

[edit] Corporal punishment in the home

Domestic corporal punishment, i.e. of children and adolescents by their parents, is usually referred to colloquially as "spanking", "smacking" or "slapping".

In some parts of the world, it is increasingly controversial. See Corporal punishment in the home for arguments for and against.

In an increasing number of countries it has been outlawed, starting with Sweden in 1979.^[2] In some other countries, such as Canada, corporal punishment is legal, but restricted (blows to a certain part of the body, such as the head, are outlawed, implements may not be used, and only children of a certain age may be spanked). See Corporal punishment in the home for more information about the legal situation in individual countries.

Spanking by parents is legal in all 50 of the United States. Recent attempts to ban it in Massachusetts and California were defeated.

[edit] Corporal punishment in schools

Corporal punishment of school students for misbehaviour involves striking the student on the buttocks or the palm of the hand in a premeditated ceremony with an implement specially kept for the purpose such as a paddle, or with the open hand.

It is not to be confused with cases where a teacher lashes out on the spur of the moment, which is not "corporal punishment" but violence or brutality, and is illegal almost everywhere.

Corporal punishment used to be prevalent in schools in many parts of the world, but in recent decades it has been outlawed in nearly all of Europe, and in Japan, Canada, South Africa and other countries. It remains commonplace and lawful in many Asian and African countries. For details of individual countries see School corporal punishment.

In the United States, the Supreme Court ruled in Ingraham v. Wright (1977) that school corporal punishment is exempt from the Eight Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. Paddling is used in schools in a number of Southern states, though it is on the decline.

In the UK, corporal punishment was outlawed in state schools in 1986 and in all private schools by 2003.

Corporal punishment of male students has, in most cultures, generally been more prevalent and more severe than that of female students.^[4] In Queensland, Australia, school corporal punishment of girls was banned in 1934 but corporal punishment of boys in private schools is still legal as of 2007.^[5] In Singapore, schoolboys are routinely caned for misbehaviour while the caning of girls at school is forbidden by law. In the U.S., statistics consistently show that about 80% of paddlings are of boys.

[edit] Judicial or quasi-judicial punishment

Some societies retain widespread use of judicial corporal punishment, including Malaysia and Singapore. In both those countries, for certain specified offences, males are typically sentenced to caning in addition to a prison term. The Singaporean practice of caning became much discussed around the world in 1994 when American teenager Michael P. Fay was sentenced to be caned for vandalism.

A number of countries with an Islamic legal system, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and northern Nigeria employ judicial whipping for a range of offences. As of 2009, some regions of Pakistan are experiencing a breakdown of law and government, leading to corporal punishment by ad hoc courts.^[6] As well as more conventional floggings, Saudi Arabia uses amputations as a method of punishment.^[7]. Such penalties are highly controversial.^[8][9] However, the term "corporal punishment" usually means caning or flogging and has not traditionally been used to embrace other kinds of physical penalties such as amputation.

[edit] Pros and cons of corporal punishment

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page.

Corporal punishment offers several advantages, such as that it is quick and cheap. In the case of parental spanking, it can be an instant corrective to misbehaviour by the child, though it might well be more effective if preceded and followed by a calm discussion. See Corporal punishment in the home#Pros and cons.

Where school corporal punishment is concerned, those who support its use point to the fact that as soon as the student has been punished he can go back to his class and continue learning. This contrasts with most other kinds of school punishment, which waste a lot of staff time on e.g. supervising detention classes or in-school suspension.

Where corporal punishment is offered as an alternative to out-of-school suspension, the student is able to continue in education instead of sitting at home or loitering in the streets, which is an arrangement likely to be regarded by the student as having a free holiday.

The American Psychological Association opposes the use of corporal punishment in schools, juvenile facilities, child care nurseries, and all other institutions, public or private, where children are cared for or educated (Conger, 1975). They claim that corporal punishment is violent and unnecessary, may lower self-esteem, is likely to train children to use physical violence, and is liable to instil hostility and rage without reducing the undesired behavior.^[10]

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has consistently recommended States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child to prohibit corporal punishment and other forms of violence against children in institutions, in schools, and in the home ... "To discipline or punish through physical harm is clearly a violation of the most basic of human rights. Research on corporal punishment has found it to be counterproductive and relatively ineffective, as well as dangerous and harmful to physical, psychological and social well being. While many States have developed child protection laws and systems, violence still continues to be inflicted upon children".^[11]

However, this interpretation by the Committee, in which it is taken as a given that even moderate corporal punishment constitutes "a form of violence", is not supported by the text of the Convention itself, which nowhere mentions the words corporal punishment, spanking, smacking, slapping, paddling or caning.^[12] The Committee was set up to monitor implementation of the Convention.^[13]

The Committee is a body of experts (in the specialised UN sense of that word; they are mostly academics or bureaucrats) whose members come from certain UN member states ("States Parties") such as Algeria, Bangladesh, Paraguay and Qatar.^[14] Although the UN describes these members as "elected", they are not accountable to anybody: the only democratic input to their appointment is by a secret ballot at a meeting of unelected representatives of UN member states.^[15]

Although half its members are not lawyers, and only three of the present members appear to have any experience as jurists,^[16] the Committee of its own volition decided some time after the Convention had been signed by member states and come into force in 1990, and without any public consultation or democratic input, to interpret the text as meaning that parental spanking should be made a criminal offence. It is not stated on the UN website whether or not this interpretation has anywhere been tested in an actual court of law, either at an international level or in any country governed by the rule of law.

The Committee thus arguably lays itself open to the charge of practising judicial activism without even being part of the judiciary.

In the United States, which is not signatory to the Convention, corporal punishment of children by their parents is lawful in all 50 states, and in schools it remains legal in 21 states. Opinion remains sharply divided and there can be no conclusive evidence for or against.

[edit] Anatomical target

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Different parts of the anatomy may be targeted:

• The buttocks, whether clothed or bare, are often targeted for punishment, indeed some languages have a specific word for their chastisement: spanking or smacking in English, fessée in French, nalgada in Spanish (both Romanesque words directly derived from the word for buttock). The advantage is that these fleshy body parts are robust and can be chastised accurately, without endangering any bodily functions; they heal well and relatively quickly; in some cultures punishment applied to the buttocks entails a degree of humiliation, which may or may not be intended as part of the punishment.
• Chastising the back of the thighs and calves, as sometimes in South Korean schools, is at least as painful if not more so, but this can cause more damage in terms of scars and bruising.
• The upper back and the shoulders have been a common target for the cat-o'-nine-tails, e.g. historically in the Royal Navy.
• The head is a very dangerous place to hit, especially "boxing the ears".
• The hand is very sensitive and delicate, and use of an implement could cause excessive damage.
• The soles of the feet are extremely sensitive, and flogging them (falaka), as has been sometimes done in the Middle East, is excruciating and cruel.

[edit] Ritual and punishment

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Corporal punishment in formal settings, such as schools and prisons, is often highly ritualised, sometimes even staged in a highly theatrical manner. To a great extent the spectacle of punishment is intended to act as a deterrent to others and a theatrical approach is one result of this.

One consequence of the ritualized nature of much punishment has been the development of a wide variety of equipment used. Formal punishment often begins with the victim stripped of some or all of their clothing and secured to a piece of furniture, such as a trestle, frame[1] (X-cross), punishment horse or falaka. Oftentimes, the nature of the offense is then read out and the sentence (consisting of a predetermined number of blows) is formally imposed. A variety of implements are then used to inflict blows on the victim. The terms used to describe these are not fixed, varying by country and by context. There are, however, a number of common types which are frequently encountered when reading about corporal punishment. These are:

• The bastinado.
• The rod. A thin, flexible rod is often called a switch.
• The birch, a number of strong, flexible branches, bound together in their natural state.
• The bamboo canes. A durable rattan cane is often called a rattan.
• The paddle, a flat wooden board or leather pad with a handle, with or without holes, spikes, or knobs.
• The strap. A strap with a number of tails at one end is called a tawse in Scotland and northern England.
• The whip. Varieties include the Russian knout and South African sjambok, in addition to the scourge and martinet.
• The cat o' nine tails was a popular implement used in naval discipline.
• The hairbrush and belt are traditionally used in the United States and Great Britain as an implement for domestic spanking.
• The wooden spoon, commonly used in Australia.
• The wired clothes hanger, a common and easily available substitute for a bamboo canes in Hong Kong.
• The plimsoll gym shoe in British and Commonwealth^{[citation needed]} schools.
• The ferula, in Jesuit schools, as vividly described in a scene in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

In some instances the victim of punishment is required to prepare the implement which will be used upon them. For instance, sailors were employed in preparing the cat o' nine tails which would be used upon their own back, whilst children were sent to cut a switch or rod.

In contrast, informal punishments, particularly in domestic settings, tend to lack this ritual nature and are often administered with whatever object comes to hand. It is common, for instance, for belts, wooden spoons, slippers or hairbrushes to be used in domestic punishment, whilst rulers and other classroom equipment have been used in schools.

In parts of England, boys were formerly beaten under the old tradition of "Beating the Bounds" when a boy was paraded around the boundary of an area of a city or district and would often ask^{[citation needed]} to be beaten on the buttocks. One famous "Beating the Bounds" happened around the boundary of St Giles and the area where Tottenham Court Road now stands in London. The actual stone that separated the boundary is now under the Centerpoint office block. See "London" by Peter Ackroyd for more information on this subject.This method is still used.

[edit] Corporal punishment, fetishism, and BDSM

Corporal punishment is sometimes fetishized, and is the basis of a number of paraphilias, most notably erotic spanking. This phenomenon was first noted by the German psychologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who suggested that sadism and masochism often developed out of the experience of children receiving corporal punishment at school.^[17] While this has been a popular interpretation, it was disputed by Sigmund Freud, who suggested that a sexual interest in corporal punishment developed in early childhood and rarely related to actual experiences of punishment.^[18]

[edit] See also

• Birching
• Caning
• Caning in Malaysia
• Caning in Singapore
• Capital punishment
• Child discipline
• Corporal punishment in Taiwan
• Corporal punishment in the home
• Domestic violence
• Flagellation
• Hotsaucing
• Judicial corporal punishment
• List of deaths by corporal punishment
• Paddle (spanking)
• School corporal punishment
• Spanking
• Tawse
• Washing out mouth with soap

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance spanking page
• List of worldwide bans on Corporal Punishment at Center for Effective Discipline (includes inaccuracies; for instance, it is not true that school corporal punishment has been banned in Zimbabwe)
• World Corporal Punishment Research