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Comment by firic | Hacker News Reader

Prison sentences really ruins people's lives. They lose their job, their house (can't pay mortgage or rent) and many times their relationship. I wonder how using ancient punishment would work nowadays. When someone commits a crime the judge and a doctor can decide how many time you should get whipped, shocked, or waterboarded and then after a few days of pain and humiliation the criminal can continue on with their life. Obviously for repeat offenders this may not work, but for first timers, it may work.

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I had previously written precisely about this idea:

https://outlookzen.com/2016/06/18/we-need-cruel-and-unusual-...

Let's just say it wasn't well received. Few people presented any logical arguments against the proposal, but the majority found it "unpalatable".

Interesting read. I like the idea. Surely there are some crimes for which such a punishment is not applicable (either too harsh or not harsh enough) but it seems like it would fit the bill for many crimes. I'm thinking especially property/drug crimes.

This is basically how it worked in colonial America. They didn't have prisons (they were considered cruel and inhumane punishment), so instead they had swift sentences: public humiliations, floggings, brands, and executions. After their sentence, if they survived, they could return to life instead of rotting away in a cell for years. They only had gaols for waiting until a trial.

I don't think torture is better than prison. Maybe for first offenders, working with them helps in many cases more than just throwing them in prison. Many minor crimes are a result of addiction or mental health issues. Fixing the cause will prevent future crime.

Sure, working with people is good if you can somehow find a psychologist good enough to get criminals to voluntarily talk with them for however long necessary while getting paid as much as taxpayers want to pay.

I highly doubt that most people who rob cars, burglarise people or commit fraud are simply mentally ill people who need someone to talk to. Some people only respond to punishment. And in the case of those people I think that a short and painful punishment (whipping) is better than a long and life altering punishment (jail).

Rehabilitation is a core part of the system in many European countries and some of them had to close prisons due to the lack of demand (e.g. Netherlands). You're right, some people only respond to punishment and defraud people for the fun of it. But that's the minority. America's outsized prison population is mostly drug related (either selling/possessing drugs, crimes while being high or committing crimes to be able to buy drugs).

I don't say prisons are useless but you could probably cut prison population by 70%+ and have a safer society as a result. And a psychologist isn't expensive compared to a 1 year prison sentence.

How about instead of waterboarding them you get them the help they need to understand why they do these things and stop it in the future.

The point is to simultaneously satiate the public's need for retribution, while also keeping people's lives from falling apart. If the public didn't demand retribution, this wouldn't be an issue.

This is wrong on so many levels...

I think you're under-estimating how disruptive prison is to one's life. I'd definitely choose lashes over prison. Heck, I'd probably take lashes + prison in order to get a felony reduced to a misdemeanor. It would suck less than the effects on my life from losing my job.

Then the problem is with how prisons are. Those should be changed. Introducing some extreme measures and a new way to punish is not the way.

The counter argument here is that long term prison sentences are the more extreme punishment

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