Corrections.com presents itself as a “Comprehensive news site dealing with prison and parole issues, including jobs available across the country”. For those, like me, of a non North American persuasion “the country” in question is the US. In their About page, this is what they have to say:
The Corrections Connection Network News [CCNN], known as Corrections.com, first appeared online in February 1996. Today, Corrections.com is the single most recognizable brand online for the global community of corrections. Award-winning daily news is at the core of our business, with the most comprehensive database of vendor intelligence in corrections.
Together Corrections.com‘s staff and audience members work as a team to improve communication, notification and collaboration among professionals worldwide.
Well, I just came across this gem on their site that, had it been published a few days earlier, would have made me laugh at a well executed April Fool’s joke. Alas, it seems to be real and published on April 4th. Why Judicial Corporal Punishment Is Better Than Incarceration:
Today, we naturally think of incarceration as more modern and advanced than judicial corporal punishment, but it’s not true incarceration is always better. The facts clearly show prison does not rehabilitate or deter much crime and merely keeps criminals out of circulation while they are in prison. While the execution of judicial corporal punishment is horrendous and usually bloody, the effects of incarceration are worse. Prison takes offenders away from their families, marriages, jobs, friends, communities and churches and puts them in an extremely bad moral environment for years at a time. Incarceration does not provide the benefit of example, because it is hidden behind prison walls. In prison, convicts learn crime skills, join or re-join gangs, fight, go crazy or get depressed, suffer in solitary confinement, and adopt sick prison values and ways. Most of the time, prisoners do not learn the job and life skills they need to succeed on the outside. After their release, well over half wind up right back in prison.[…]
When executed in public, corporal punishment provides a much better example than prison time. It deters crime effectively. Intense pain fills the offender with a desire to avoid pain in the future. The boredom of prison does not impart the same message. Physical punishment provides offenders with an immediate opportunity to change their behavior and join law-abiding society. Before incarcerated convicts can reform, they must first endure a clean version of hell that discourages their improvement and fails to impart the skills they will need when released.
Judicial corporal punishment is far less expensive and time-consuming than incarceration. Incarceration saddles taxpayers with expenses for food, clothing, shelter, medical care, security, personnel costs, building expenses and other burdens. America’s 2.3 million inmates are essentially a huge mass of full-ride welfare recipients. Incarceration removes people from the productive economy, cages them, and prevents most of them from working productively or efficiently in the private sector. Prison industries are state businesses and usually only make products for use by the state. There are not nearly enough prison jobs to go around.
Flogging does not preclude incarceration. Like prison time, it can be held over the parolee’s or probationer’s head. But corporal punishment is faster and more flexible. Several doses of flogging might be administered in the time it takes to serve a one-year prison sentence. Some offenders will want to “get it over with” and plead guilty, accepting responsibility sooner.
Judicial corporal punishment will not break up families, marriages, communities and careers like incarceration does, nor will it increase welfare costs as much as mass incarceration.
The author of this progressive and humanitarian view on criminal justice presents himself on the site:
Corrections.com author John Dewar Gleissner, Esq. graduated from Auburn University (B.A. with Honor, 1973) and Vanderbilt University School of Law (1977), where he won the Editor’s Award and participated in the Men’s Penitentiary Project. In addition to practicing law in Alabama for the last 33 years, Mr. Gleissner is the author of the new book “Prison and Slavery – A Surprising Comparison”
I just have to wonder how many use this site as a “source of inspiration” when dealing with inmates and how pervasive these views might be. And also, I truly hope this guy is not a public defender. I can only imagine what someone’s fate would be if left in the hands of this person.
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