Defined Terms

Noble Ambitions for Desisting Corporal Punishment in South Australia

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA - A Memorandum by the South Australian Branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform dated Oct 1961 sets out Noble Arguments for Desisting Corporal Punishment in South Australia.

14.  Modern Penal Methods. Corporal punishment is quite out of line with modern methods of protecting society from its criminals. It has become increasingly recognised over the past two hundred years that brutality of punishment alone, far from suppressing crime, increases it. The pillory, stocks, whipping post, bridle, gag, chains, shackles, together with mutilation, amputation and branding have disappeared from civilized countries, although all of these horrors were at one time thought to inspire such fear that potential criminals would be deterred by their threat. Flogging falls into the same class. The only fear which seems to be effective is the fear of detection. Once the police have played their part by detecting the crime and apprehending the criminal, it is the experience of every country which has adopted modern penal methods that subsequent brutality is useless and harmful.  The benefits of probation, of education, of humane prison conditions, of dedicated social and prison workers, go for nothing if society in effect treats the prisoner no better, and often much worse, than he treated his own victim. Revenge, not reform, is the fruit of such a policy.

Alas, 60 years later the Baker's Dozen Unsustainable Problems Within Australian Prison System evidence that the dignified and righteous virtues of the South Australian Branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform ".... education, of humane prison conditions, of dedicated social and prison workers..." have not materialised, partially due to the subsequent illicit drug scourge and overcrowding due to Tough on Crime proponents.