Reinstitute corporal punishment as a legal penalty

So Joseph, lets say a Yid does something wrong that is against the law, but maybe not against the torah,

She he get the lashes

Takes2-2tango, are you by any chance a militant atheist who skims the Bible for stuff that looks vaguely incriminating?

Reb yidd. Why dont you tell all the athiests out there How many lashes a rapist gets?

Takes2-2tango, I don’t know what an athiest is. I asked if you were an atheist.
And the halacha here is very complicated and depends on specific details.

Takes2-2Tango, it is more complicated due to issues of consent and the separate issue of assault.

Abolished because it was unpleasant to administer?
Its also unpleasant for a police officer to administer electric shock via a Taser gun , yet they do it anyway. Also who says the lashings has to be done by a human. Connect the whips to a robot and call it a day.

tznius

BTW 200 years ago i england one was not hanged for stealing a loaf of bread. One would have one’s hand cut off, or at some stage one would have been exiled to a remote island.

The primary white [population on australia are offsprings from the exiled convicts.

Consequences for committing a crime need to qualify as one of these:

* Deterrent. When people see what happens to those who get caught, they are more likely to not commit the offense.
* Punishment. It is a fitting payback for someone who violates the law.
* Public safety. Implementing the consequence will prevent the offender from being a risk to others. It is easy to see why incarceration (or death penalty) would prevent the public from being exposed to the risk of the criminal re-offending.

The deterrent factor makes a nice argument, but the two sides cannot be easily resolved. Many criminals do not learn anything from the negative consequences suffered by others. This is a common feature of the career criminals, and is attributed, at least conceptually, to the antisocial part of the individual’s personality. The addict also fares poorly in learning from others’ consequences. They may observe others die of overdose or get arrested, yet they continue their risky and criminal behavior.

Punishment is a tough subject. Who gets to determine what is ultimately the best form of revenge? In practical terms, this is done by legislatures and courts. But if one is looking for the objective, absolute truth, there is no easy answer. Torah consequences are not exactly punishment either, but are rather, as per the Baalei Kabalah, the appropriate tikun for the neshomoh of the offender. That comes from the Divine Wisdom of HKB”H. Our leaders and dayanim can try to mimic that, but it is mimicry. We may need to follow their psak, but that does not mean it is the absolute truth, except that there is a Torah commandment to follow that.

As for public safety, that seems easy. Putting a criminal in prison means that the public is at lower risk. Death penalty accomplishes that with greater permanence, and with the 2 sides of the issue about death penalty.

Joseph, the Torah doesn’t address this issue as a single issue.

With this particular crime, a criminal who does not do research beforehand to select the victim risks the death penalty.

DovidBT:

I omitted the aspect of rehabilitation. That is correct. But I did not include it because it is a fantasy. We would like that to be true and work. But it is the rare exception. For a political opinion, it is noteworthy that prisons employ counselors to perform this miraculous service of reforming and rehabilitating the inmates. Alas, there is a success rate of close to zero. The released prisoner rarely knows how to do anything else except the profession that was mastered before the conviction. Furthermore, little tends to be learned on the inside except how to avoid getting caught. Rehabilitation is a great idea, but it does not exist in reality.

If you want to rehabilitate criminals, don’t send them to prison. Open a rehab facility, and let them go there voluntarily.