Bring back the lash: why flogging is more humane than prison.

• Author: Moskos, Peter
• Position: Essay

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You're about to get whipped. Mentally more than physically. It's going to hurt--but it's supposed to.

I write in defense of flogging, something most people consider too radical for debate and even unworthy of intellectual discussion. But please, don't turn the page, upset I dared to broach the subject.

My defense of flogging--whipping, caning, lashing, call it what you will--is meant to be provocative, but only because something extreme is needed to shatter the status quo. There are 2.3 million Americans in our prisons and jails. That is too many. I want to reduce cruelty, and corporal punishment, once common in America and still practiced in places like Singapore, may be the answer.

So first let me begin with a simple question: Given the choice between five years in prison and ten brutal lashes, which would you choose?

Yes, flogging is a severe and even brutal form of punishment. Under the lash, skin is literally ripped from the body. But prison means losing a part of your life and everything you care for. Compared to this, flogging is just a few very painful strokes on the behind. And it's over in a few minutes.

If you had the choice, if you were given the option of staying out of jail, wouldn't you choose to be flogged and released?

Consider your answer to that question. Then consider the fact that the United States now has more prisoners than any other country in the world. Ever. In sheer numbers and as a percentage of the population. Our rate of incarceration is roughly seven times that of Canada or any Western European country. Despite our "land of the free" rhetoric, we deem it necessary to incarcerate more of our people than the world's most draconian regimes. We have more prisoners than China, and they have a billion more people than we do. We have more prisoners than soldiers; prison guards outnumber Marines.

It wasn't always this way. In 1970, just 338,000 Americans were behind bars. There was even talk of abolishing prison altogether. That didn't happen. Instead, fear of crime led to "tough-on-crime" politics and the war on drugs. Crime has gone up and down since then, but the incarceration rate has only increased, a whopping 500 percent in the past forty years.

In truth, there is very little correlation between incarceration and the crime rate. From 1970 to 1991 crime rose while we locked up a million more people. Since then we've locked up another million and crime has gone down. Is there something so special about that second million? Were they the only ones who were "real criminals"? Did we simply get it wrong with the first 1.3 million people we put behind bars?

Today's prison...