Corporal Punishment… Optional!

It is well known that Singapore’s Penal Code provides for corporal punishment, in particular brutal caning. I recall reading that such a sentence (though I do not remember how many strokes) was imposed on a young man who had defaced the façade of a house.

For Westerners, this form of justice immediately evokes the Middle Ages. In that period and during the Renaissance, punishments were often inflicted arbitrarily, with confessions extracted through torture. However, the principle that different crimes should be punished in different ways was perhaps stronger than we think today. With the advent of modern, predominantly carceral justice, proportionality has been standardized: theft, rape, and murder are punished with the same type of sanction — imprisonment — differing only in duration, without taking much into account the individual serving the sentence.

It occurs to me that an advanced judicial system might consider personalized sentencing. It is evident that a year in prison weighs differently on individuals of different ages, physical conditions, and economic situations. Having or not having a family also profoundly affects how a sentence is experienced. In this sense, prison is far from neutral or uniform. Scholars like Michael Tonry argue that punishment should be calibrated not only to the crime but also to the individual, in order to ensure accountability without causing disproportionate or irreversible harm.

Returning to Singapore and corporal punishment, one could imagine that certain forms of it might be optional, benefiting both the convicted person and society. Let us imagine, for example, a young person employed full-time who commits an offense and is sentenced to six months in prison. At that point in his life, the conviction could have serious consequences, such as the loss of employment. Suppose he is offered the option not to serve six months in prison but to expiate the sentence with ten strokes of the cane. For an elderly person, this would be unthinkable: ten strokes could prove fatal. But a young, strong, and healthy individual might find this option advantageous. In a single day, followed by a few days of recovery, he would have settled his debt to society (and the community would be spared the cost of imprisonment).

The idea is not merely medieval or cruel. By introducing the element of choice and calibrating punishment according to individual conditions, it approaches the logic of restorative justice and the “educational effectiveness” of punishment: the goal is not only to punish but to make the offender aware of the harm caused, in a proportionate and responsible manner. Naturally, this proposal raises complex ethical questions and would require precise regulations and strict oversight, but it encourages - I think - a reconsideration of the meaning of justice in contemporary society.