In Jeff Jacoby’s essay “Bring Back Flogging,” he states why he thinks that flogging should be brought back in our society today. He backs his ideas up very well as to why he thinks them. He catches the attention of the readers very well by introducing his essay with examples. The example he gives also defines what flogging means also. In his title, bring back flogging, he tells his readers his thesis. This is a clear title that describes his point in writing his essay.
He tells us that the bigger the crime the harder the punishment was back in the old days. However what he leaves out of his essay is how far should we take these punishments. What exactly is the right procedure to convict one of these criminals? What he does state is that now all we do is lock them up in a cage and what good does that do? Jacoby gives many reasons to why he thinks we should bring back flogging. One being that he believes that imprisoning criminals is our solution to every crime today. He states “commit murder; go to prison. Sell cocaine; go to prison.
Kite checks; go to prison. It is an all-purpose punishment(Jacoby 120).” His point is that most people who go on trial the odds of being arrested or anything is reassuringly long. And yet many do not result in prison term. Some crimes go on a “three strike” program. This is true, yet, actually our government goes upon different situations require different punishments. And who is to say what flogging procedure would be best for a person who committed adultery opposed to a person who committed murder.
The Essay on Corporal Punishment Jacoby Prison Flogging
Jeff Jacoby's, "Bring Back the Flogging", argues that flogging should be a method of corporal punishment that should be reconsidered by our criminal justice system. Within his opening argument, Jacoby uses two methods to sustain the readers' attention: sex and violence. Jacoby describes Richard Hopkins sentence, in 1963, for selling arms and gunpowder to the Indians as being "'whipt, & branded ...
What would the punishments call for? Jacoby’s second major argument is the cost to cage criminals. The common cost to imprison an inmate is $30,000 per year. He says these prisons are like graduate school for criminal studies. And to many offenders there is a certain pride to take from going or having been in prison. Some would say it was a sign of manhood and a status symbol. In our society today, this is very true.
Jacoby says that there is no such “cachet in chaining a criminal to an outdoor post and flogging him.” It costs to put these criminals in jail, but is it better to pay for them to be there or throw rocks at them and let them go? Is this a bit extreme? This is a view that he doesn’t look into completely. Jacoby does, however, look at the other side of this. During the Puritan’s time, their crimes were not the same as our crimes. But he believes that the idea of it being too degrading is not written in any book. What’s the difference in these degrades of being caged or whipped? He says that inmates every year are being rapped in prisons. Is this more degrading than just flogging them in public? Jacoby arises a lot of questions on our punishment system today.
We do have loopholes in our system, but do we need to result to public humiliation? In our society today, it’s a little too degrading, but if we just gradually got back into this old act then people would soon see an affect on society. Jacoby raises some good questions and good aspects of this. We would be saving money and space in our jails, instead of having to build more every time someone causes a crime. There is no book or statement in our government that says what is degrading and what is not degrading. So what would be the harm in flogging? It just may cut down on life long criminals. After their first offense of burglary maybe they won’t have the guts to try it with one hand.
So Jeff Jacoby’s essay gives good reasons and assumptions to flogging. He backs his arguments with good statements and organization. Should we adopt the ways of the Puritans? According to Jeff Jacoby, we should.
