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Twenty reasons to revert to Corporal Punishment for adults with a Swift, Frightening and Painful Flogging at less than half the punishment strokes Sentenced in the final 30 years (until the mid-1940s) of Judicial Corporal Punishment in Australia for Non-Murderous Crimes for Suitable Male Criminals to replace approx. half of current Jail Sentences

1.      Prisons will then be Rehabilitation centres adopting Practices in Scandinavia and Texas to Improve Outcomes Due to Economic Necessity:  

           *     Restorative Justice Model Successfully Adopted in Scandinavia since the late 20th Century; and

           *     Texas Justice Reinvestment, in particular Improving Responses to People with Mental Illnesses with Specialist Drug & Alcohol Treatment

         Incorporating Education and Vocational Training to instil self-belief and optimism due to the opportunity of a paid job for most "longer-Sentence inmates"; and

         To expedite 'custodial release' of traditional "longer term inmates" (utilising an Electronic Monitoring Device) into an employed job for a minimum of three months offered by Supportive ASX 200 Companies, with such inmates securing stable accommodation prior to release.

2.    Baker's Dozen Unsustainable Problems within the Australian Prison System

1. Many Prisons Are At Breaking Point With Associated Problems

2. Overcrowding Exacerbates Prisoner Violence And Assaulting Prison Staff Evidencing Prison Lockdowns  -  Assaults against prison staff

3. Material Public Purse Prison Costs

4. Jail Is The University Of Crime

5. A Negative Mindset due to facing a lengthy prison sentence whilst associating with other criminals.  'Ipso facto' Some inmates acquire further criminal techniques that some apply after release

6. Australia's whacko recidivism/re-offending rates

7. Self-harm  -  Prisoner suicides

8. Drug taking - Needle sharing - Hepatitis - Mental Health - Social Costs Of Imprisonment

9. Assaults against other inmates

10. Prison staff numbers have declined

11. 'Lifers' deemed never to be released are dying a thousand deaths; experiencing a manic depressive QOL

12. Some prison officers are corrupt 'inter alia' supplying drugs to inmates and bashing others 

13. Goulburn's Supermax prison is a breeding ground for Muslim extremists that, upon their eventual release, will perpetrate terrorism for their custodial confinement, possibly on a mass scale

3.     Crimes committed will reduce by 20% within 10 years (recorded by the ABS), as more and more prospective Floggings are Sentenced and administered, because Floggings are an infinitely more cogent Deterrent than jail incarceration.

4.   The number of inmates in Australia's prisons will materially reduce

There were 43,028 adult prisoners in jails across Australia as at 30 June 2019.  At 30 June 2012, there were 29,383 inmates in Australian prisons.  That is an increase of 13,645 (46.43%) inmates in a mere seven years ostensibly due to Penal Populism.

Life Sentence (What is a life sentence?) notes inter alia that as at 30 June 2019 there were 2,088 inmates in Australian prisons serving a sentence of '20 years and over' or a 'Life Sentence' or 'Other'.

Casual empiricism of 35 Never to be Released Inmates in Australian Prisons and other URL threads in Australia's Most Heinous Criminals Condemned To A Life Sentence Marked Never To Be Released, in particular The Marshall Project  "Lifers deemed never to be released are dying a thousand deaths; experiencing a manic depressive QOL", suggests that approx. 50 Lifers would request 'assisted dying' within 12 months of legislation, and another 5 inmates request it each year thereafter.

Taking into account Two recommended changes to Sentencing and 'assisted dying', and by replacing approx. half of future Sentences with a Swift, Frightening and Painful Dose of Corporal Punishment for Suitable Male Criminals for most Criminal Activities (a far more effective/potent Deterrent), the number of inmates in Australian State and Territory jails would reduce by -

•   >25% circa within 10 years; and

•   >30% circa within 15 years. 

5.    Reduced expenditure on the Criminal Justice System

Refer Productivity Commission 8 Corrective services interpretative material, in particular table 8A.1 - Real recurrent expenditure and table 8A.2 - Real net operating expenditure, 2018-19 dollars.  Nationally in 2018-19, expenditure (net of revenues) on Corrective Services was $3.643 billion for prisons and $0.712 billion for community corrections 2 (table 8A) = $4.356 billion.
Expenditure plus depreciation (matching expenditure reporting by other justice sector agencies) was almost $4.768 billion  – a real increase of 5.83 per cent from 2017-18 cost of $4.505 billion (table 8A.2 - cell U38).

Based on annual costs listed in Table CA.1 of Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services 2020 - PART C Justice, the Discussion Paper forecasts the $ expenditure reductions within the three components of the Justice Sector, namely Police services, Courts and Corrective services, for the 2nd year, 5th year, 10th year and 15th year, by embellishing Table CA.1. to  ForecastReductionInJusticeSectorExpenditure.xlsx.

ForecastReductionInJusticeSectorExpenditure_SummaryData.xlsx provides key data from the larger ForecastReductionInJusticeSectorExpenditure.xlsx.  Column Y of the SummaryData.xlsx evidences that if expenditure across the three components on Australia's Justice Sector increase at the same rate over the next 10 years, that those annual costs have increased over the previous 5 years, the Criminal Justice System annual expenditure in 10 years, namely 2028-29, would be $25.3b ($25,273,680,000).  Cell V9 aggregates the Total Criminal Justice Sector cost for 2018-'19 at $18.431 billion.

6.   The noble virtues and aspirations that caused Capital Punishment and Corporal Punishment to be removed from Sentencing options failed to materialise, ostensibly due to the illicit drug use

       CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA - A Memorandum by the South Australian Branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform dated Oct 1961 set out the Noble Ambitions for Desisting Corporal Punishment in South Australia.  Alas, 60 years later the Baker's Dozen Unsustainable Problems Within Australian Prison System has evidence that the dignified, righteous virtues and aspirations of the South Australian Branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform in the middle of the last century have not materialised, in some measure due to the subsequent illicit drug scourge which could not have been envisaged in the mid-20th century. Western society has jumped ahead along the punishment/deterrent curve ostensibly due to the illicit drug scourge.

7.    COVID-19 has reduced the capacity (inmate numbers) and materially increased the administrative costs of Australia's 92 government operated and 10 privately operated prisons due to excessively deployed 'solitary confinement'.  COVID has also significantly hindered Rehabilitation programmes; vital to mitigating Recidivism.  A significant change in the primary form of Punishment, is necessary to reduce the incidence of crime and the strains on our prisons.

8.   The same Deterrent effect on children misbehaving after a few straps to the hand also resonate with adults if Floggings are applied with maximum force, as they were 80 years ago, albeit less than half the punishment strokes

        Below is an extract from Is Corporal Punishment an Effective Means of Discipline? - American Psychological Association - June 26, 2002: