Talk:Judicial corporal punishment

Latest comment: 4 years ago by Alarics in topic Philippines.

Singapore citation edit

(1) He removed the section about Singapore from the introduction, saying "the fact that Singapore has been caning doesn't support any discussion about their reasoning; needs a secondary source discussing it". But this isn't a discussion about their reasoning. It is basically just a statement of fact that Singapore uses JCP (supported by 4 reliable sources) drawing attention to what is almost certainly the best-known example of the phenomenon. Alarics (talk) 07:03, 8 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

The first citation merely discusses caning as a form of punishment and how individual US columnists view about a single incident. That seems to go into problems of putting WP:UNDUE weight on a single incident. The second citation was to a newspaper that simply showed that Signapore conducts caning, in particular one example. That isn't necessary as a link to Michael P. Fay is appropriate just from the first link if you still argue for it. For the third citations, you have noted that Singapore has continued and expanded their caning. You are synthesizing facts that exist and combining those yourself into an argument. What we need is a secondary source (the first one I can live with but a scholar would be much better) that calls caning "savagery", "torture", whatever. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
I put the first cite in simply to show that the subject attracted a lot of attention at that time; true, it was only a single incident, but I would suggest it is more famous throughout the world than all other such cases added together, and because of that one incident, practically everybody is aware that Singapore is the outstanding example. I don't understand why you think I am "synthesizing facts that exist and combining those into an argument". I am certainly not making any argument. I simply cite the US State Department in support of the fact that Singapore is now using caning even more than at the time of the Michael Fay case. And I absolutely don't understand why you think we need a "secondary source that calls caning 'savagery', 'torture', whatever". We're not calling it anything here, we're just documenting known facts. Surely your suggestion would be extraordinarily POV. Alarics (talk) 12:32, 8 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

Flags edit

(2) He took away the country flags, citing WP:MOSFLAG, but that page appears to be talking about the unwisdom of using flags relating to individual people, not questioning their use when we are referring purely to various nation-states as legal jurisdictions. Alarics (talk) 07:03, 8 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

One general idea behind WP:MOSFLAG is to reduce their use for representing nationality without a good reason. While it applies someone to biographical articles, the page itself discusses its use in lists as well. For me, general policy against overuse of images for illustrative purposes is a concern. It doesn't add anything and it overemphases the nations listed. Instead of a "here's a small list of caning", either separate sections for caning in different regions or a prose of historical views would be more productive. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
I don't feel strongly one way or the other about the flags, myself. I just thought that, since somebody (not me) took the time and trouble to put them all there, it seemed a pity to remove them for no very good reason. As for this list, I think it is a fairly comprehensive reply to the question, "which countries still use this penalty?" and, as such, more useful as a list than a slab of prose would be. Alarics (talk) 09:06, 8 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

World Corporal Punishment Research edit

(3) He removed the (it seems to me) rather useful list of countries that currently use JCP on the grounds that World Corporal Punishment Research isn't a reliable source. It is true that W. C. P. R. is not a peer-reviewed scholarly journal but I think its facts are regarded as reliable by people who cover this subject. It's not as though any opinions are being expressed here. Anyway some of the countries can most probably be supported by other sources too, so I will have a look for those. Alarics (talk) 07:03, 8 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

Does it qualify under our reliable source policy? That's my only concern. It looks to be a self-published work ("researching into corporal punishment in his spare time" isn't particular encouraging). If external third-party sources do cite him (exactly who are these "people who cover this subject"), then that's appropriate. Since it's likely that you'll disagree (and I'm not particularly sure about this thing), the next option would be, following dispute resolution methods, to get a third-opinion. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
You're right that W.C.P.R. doesn't quality as WP:RS, strictly applied. But I wonder if it is a bit of a special case: there are 3,000 pages of it, it's apparently been in existence and actively maintained for 13 years, and there is nothing equivalent, as far as I can see, in this subject area that is anything like so comprehensive. It is linked by the American Bar Association and the University of West Georgia and Paul Leighton who teaches Criminal Justice at Eastern Michigan University. If you look at http://www.corpun.com/expl.htm it seems to be taking a serious and careful approach, and clearly doesn't just make stuff up, and generally cites factual sources in detail, so is especially useful when those sources are not otherwise available on line - though quite often they are, in which case naturally we can cite them directly, which is what I am now in the process of doing for this list. But in the other cases I would argue that it is better to cite W.C.P.R. than nothing at all. Alarics (talk) 12:14, 8 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
Special case or not, it's a pretty serious claim what laws in a number of countries are. I don't doubt he's right for the most part and he takes it seriously, but there are standards in place and we have to consider it. Would you mind opening up a discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard so we can get outside review? You could better argue for it than I can, and better now between you and me than six months later someone else comes by with my exact same thoughts. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:49, 9 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
OK but it probably needn't come to that. I am finding other references for each individual country and will then delete the W.C.P.R. citation. Alarics (talk) 12:16, 9 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

Missisipi. edit

Isn't it inact in Missisipi??? 95.26.2.57 (talk) 09:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

No. Alarics (talk) 14:49, 19 April 2010 (UTC)Reply

South Sudan edit

Does South Sudan have JCP? Or did they remove that when they become an independent country? Ameki (talk) 12:12, 20 July 2011 (UTC)Reply

The country has only been existence for a few days. I am sure no such changes have taken place yet. -- Alarics (talk) 15:10, 20 July 2011 (UTC)Reply
South Sudan has had its own penal code since 2009 (The Penal Code Act, 2008). From section 8 you can see that corporal punishment is not a permissible punishment. - htonl (talk) 11:19, 1 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

Use in the past. edit

The article says "Other countries that were neither British nor Islamic that have used JCP in the more distant past include China, Germany, Korea, Sweden and Vietnam."

I'm sure there is no country (or better to say - territory), that has not used it in the past. Especially, distant past.

So is there a need in the singling out of the above states? СЛУЖБА (talk) 23:35, 5 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

"More distant past" here means earlier in the 19th and 20th centuries than the cases mentioned in the preceding paragraphs of the article. The five countries mentioned in that sentence were still using it at the turn of the 20th century.
I am not aware of any evidence that every territory in the world has at some point included formal JCP in its official legal system. -- Alarics (talk) 09:04, 6 November 2011 (UTC)Reply

External links modified edit

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 17 external links on Judicial corporal punishment. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 21:30, 28 April 2017 (UTC)Reply

External links modified edit

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 5 external links on Judicial corporal punishment. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 03:46, 2 December 2017 (UTC)Reply


No mention of Gates v. Collier or Jackson v. Bishop edit

The United states(particularly the south)whipping and flogging in the penal system was common until the late 60s/early 70s after several supreme court cases.Flogging was also used in Canadian prison(including on female prisoners)until 1955. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:407:101:11A0:F916:1224:A838:63A (talk) 11:23, 24 May 2018 (UTC)Reply

Effectiveness edit

Any data on the effectiveness of judicial corporal punishments? i.e. is there any research showing that judicial corporal punishment deters crime or does not deter crime?

Some people may attribute the low crime rate of Singapore to the use of caning, but are any research supporting or refuting this claim?--EPN-001GF IZEN བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས། 04:51, 11 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

It is impossible to prove one way or the other. Singapore does have a low crime rate, but so do some other Asian countries that do not use JCP, such as Japan, suggesting that it could just as well be an Asian (or maybe Confucian) cultural thing.
Another point about Singapore is that judicial caning sentences there are always in addition to imprisonment, not instead of imprisonment, so it not possible to separate out JCP specifically in any statistical attempt to discover if there is a causal relationship.
The Cadogan report in the UK (1938) used reoffending statistics to purport to show that flogging had no special deterrent effect compared with other penalties. It did not necessarily show that JCP had no deterrent effect at all, contrary to how it is sometimes reported.
I believe the modern view is that no kind of punishment is a particularly effective deterrent, and that attempting to prove anything with statistics, especially trying to make international comparisons between different cultures, is far too mechanical and simplistic because there are always so many other factors in play. -- Alarics (talk) 11:35, 11 March 2019 (UTC)Reply

Philippines. edit

What about the Philippines? There are many reports the JCP has been instated in that country at least de facto. --Yomal Sidoroff-Biarmskii (talk) 04:50, 16 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

What reports? Please give examples. -- Alarics (talk) 11:44, 16 September 2019 (UTC)Reply