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> people in a capacity of authority do the same thing to adults

And let's look at the correlation: countries focused on rehabilitative justice e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_Norway#Histor... tend to have the lowest recidivism.

Meanwhile countries focused on punitive justice (e.g. the US) have high incarceration rates and high recidivism.

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That's true, but not really relevant, as this isn't about punitive prison stay (which makes you a worse criminal and gives you no options), but about a number of lashes or some such form of corporal punishment (which instills some shame in citizens having done some offense, but otherwise lets you go free without prison time).

One can e.g. compare Singapore (which does that) vs USA crime rates (the former's being almost non-existant, the latter's being the worst in the developed world), with most other things (like development and infrastructure level, education, per capita income, etc) being very close.

In some rural areas the local prison is a major employer. Gotta keep the economy humming.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_co...

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