Cruelty Vs. Lawfulness

Cruelty vs. Lawfulness

Jeff Jacoby presents the argument of bringing back physical punishment, flogging, in replace of “caging” criminals in his article “Bring Back Flogging”. Jacoby uses a satirical tone as well as many facts and statistics to support his argument, which is that criminals should be punished with the use of flogging, physical torture or public humiliation, because it is a quick, cheap and easy way of punishment. Jacoby fails to use sources, except for one instance, and this makes his statistics and facts not valid which leads to an unsound argument. He opens up his argument with a very bold statement about Puritan’s ideals with miscreants, which set the mood that it will be a very serious argument.

Throughout the piece Jacoby becomes very passionate about the subject by using rhetorical questions and metaphors. He refers to the prison system as making criminals seem like animals by saying that “we cage criminals at a rate unsurpassed”, but criminals act as though they are animals, by killing, stealing and so on, these actions are not civilized behavior. Most people today are all about the “now” factor and wish to improve current issues such as overcrowding in prisons, instead of backtracking to the days of flogging in the Puritan society.

Every problem has a solution, and the solution to the problems in prisons as well as trying to decrease crime is not flogging, it comes with many loopholes.

Jacoby states that nearly all criminals who are convicted are released early. He says that this has become a large issue because the criminals are then sent back out onto the street and continue to commit crimes. The solution in his argument is that if flogging were to be used on these criminals at an early age, or after their first conviction they would not go back to criminal behavior because the public humiliation would serve them well, as it did in the Puritan ages.