The poll options confuse me.

As a rule, I am against it. Once you start using physical punishment, if doesn't work, the only way to move further is to escalate violence and you really don't want to go down that road. It should always be the last resort.

It definitely has no place in schools. I don't think being spanked by your parents will leave you with emotional scars for life or whatever, but in the long term it isn't a very effective way of teaching good behavior. It works for quickly getting the child to obey, but obedience out of fear shouldn't be the objective. Besides, there are other methods of discipline. I'm sure exceptions exist, people who just don't learn any other way, but they're rare.

Didn't you read my OP? I'm totally okay with thieves, rapists, and other undesirables being punished with physical punishment.

Ah, I admit I didn't read all of it.

That's fine.

Seriously though, I don't entirely know if chopping off hands is the most effective. I'm fine with hangings and beheadings for killers and castration for rapists, I just can't see either as something to casually forgive compared to a thief caught trying to steal a loaf of bread. But a good caning is what I think more than a few (and some here) need.

It would certainly hinder their ability to commit those crimes again, but history has shown they are not effective deterrents and probably too extreme. Prison works for now but I'm sure we'll come up with something in the future, provided it is not too expensive. Although it will probably be very intrusive and take away our privacy.

Ya, no. I don't know what outcome or evidence is there that a "good caning" can come up with.

I've always been of the mindset that those who break the law give up any privacy granted by laws and constitution.

I mean for everyone. The future will probably be a place of no crime but your whole life will be easily viewed by any law enforcement/security organisation. Criminals basically already do when they go to prison.

There is no true way to end crime, only deter it. The government and leaders shouldn't care what people do behind closed doors unless it's detrimental to society. Thieving, meth/crack and other drug users, unregulated prostitution, violence and so on are problematic and the best that can be done is to try and curb them.

Yes, but the question is how?

There really isn't an effective way, not even capital punishment. Most criminals don't do something expecting to be caught, so any punishment is irrelevant.

The mindset now is to nip all crimes before they can happen, hence why I think in the future there will be no privacy.

And that'll do jack diddly squat.

Punishment doesn't correct behavior. It can stop behaviors from forming in the first-place (which I guess you could say is an argument for smacking your kid on the bum if done early enough), but it's extremely bad for correcting already-formed behaviors. This is also the reason why prisoner relapse rates in the US is like over half, as prison is mostly a punishment and very few get actual correctional help.

Castration wouldn't do anything to stop rapists. Look up the various acts that can fall under [censored] and you'll understand why. Chopping off someone's hand would be highly detrimental to that persons contribution to national GDP. Just willy-nilly killing killers is pure hypocrisy.

First in regards to parents and children. While I am glad we have moved past the severe lashing and beatings that we hear about from previous generations, I think things went just a scootch too far in the other direction. I have no problem with a parent spanking o smacking a child in a "controlled" manner. You cannot do it out of anger, or other emotion, it has to be a last resort in negative reinforcement to change behavior before it becomes completely ingrained. If you let a child get away with something long enough that it gets instilled, trying to beat it out of them turns into abuse. I guess I would rather see it eliminated completely, rather than go back to the way things were in the "old days", but used judiciously, and without malice it can be a very important tool.

I don't remember my parents ever hitting me (I am 43), but I knew it was an option (mostly because they did it to my younger brother). With my own kids, I know I gave them each some smacks to the hands if they insisted on grabbing or touching something they could no; though my youngest finally getting to touch the hot burner was a bigger lesson to both of them than the smacks, to bad it cost an emergency room visit. I also know that I would very occasionally give them each quick smacks on the butt, but I don't remember any specific details.

The key is is that the parent has to establish themselves as the Alpha in the pack or there will be dire consequences later on. Sometime that can be done without any corporal punishment, sometimes it cannot.

Now to go even more controversial: I am from the US and I believe there should be more corporal punishment in the justice system, and a very large reduction in the inhumane warehousing of humans. I would much prefer to see non-violent and "victimless" crimes punished by a caning and letting them go on their way, rather than just shoving more people into overcrowded storage facilities where they learn nothing more than how to become better criminals. I don't see how this can go much further here, without getting political, so I will stop there.

Personally, I find that a healthy dose of skepticism is always a good thing, but I'm still inclined to give more weight to professional researchers who have studied the matter over someone's gut reaction on an internet forum.

My son turns 3 this month. There have been days where I've wanted to fling him against the wall. So far I've never even smacked him, though. I agree there's a (blurry) line between spanking and physical abuse, and I'm not going to imply that someone who spanks their kids is a bad parent.

In my own experience, just walking away (or picking him up and carrying him off - depends on how much shopping I have left) creates just as much of a spectacle and leads to just as much crying as if I were to spank him when he acts up in public. His go-to bad behavior for a time was deciding he wanted to play hide-and-seek in the supermarket. I could have ran after him, grabbed him, and spanked him (and I really wanted to.) Instead I gave him a chance to come with me, and then I kept shopping - once he thought I was going to leave him there he panicked and started crying. But he's been a lot better at staying with me in crowded stores since then. Either way led to a lot of crying and caused a scene in public, but generally I try to find a solution other than violence.

I personally consider that an ideal to live up to, and hopefully that's something I'm teaching my child too.

No, it means it's a magical disciplining system.

I thought it was a pokemon

I advocate placing obedience runes on unruly children than +1 belt of whooping.

The thing that occurs to me is that there's a huge groundswell of opinion against physical means of discipline, something that has an immediate but short-lived shock value, and virtually nothing about psychological abuse, something that's far more severe, insidious and which has long-reaching consequences. I was subjected to both as a child. If I had to choose which one I could live with, it'd be the physical one, without even having to pause to consider. Corporal punishment is nothing (unless it transgresses into abuse, in which case it's abuse) but psychological punishment can totally screw somebody up for life. Unfortunately, nobody cares about the scars that can't be seen.

Only one meaning. It can also mean understood by only a few or an obscure thing. I guess I should have used a more easily understood word.

Depends on the kid.

Withholding privileges, items, and etc worked well for my sister and I. To my brother, no so much.

And teachers need to have the ability to punish kids. Too many snot nosed brats know they can get away with a lot of crap, while the teach will get in trouble.

I think they go hand-in-hand. I have family members who suffered neglect and sixual abuse from their own family members, and it takes time for some for people to be comfortable with disclosure. I know that I'm being trained to look at those signs: greenstick fractures, inconsistent stories, changes in behavior in the presence of a significant other. But, some people simply slip through the cracks when screening. I know some public elementary schools are vigilant when a kid acts "differently" in that he's not social, doesn't engage in play, or seems to be "forgetting his lunch" consistently. Other communities ignore those behaviors. I wish people were more sensitive to these issues.

Nah, I was just making a joke.

I agree with it. When I was a kid, I acted out a hand full of times when I was young, and I was punished by being spanked and whipped with a belt and smacked in the face. All were justifiable and afterwards I never acted out again because I didn't want to get punished again, I was essentially a golden child.

Now, my dad and stepmom have 3 kids 8, 7, and 3 and they are little [censored] because they don't punish them the way my dad and mom punished me. I tell them, leave the kids with me for a week and they will be completely different kids when you come back. I would not take any of their [censored] and would not hesitate to punish them when they deserve it. That is the problem with most parents they don't punish or discipline them in any way, and it annoys me because in my brothers case now I have to deal with their disobedient behavior.

Unfortunately, with that checklist, most will slip through the cracks. I've lost count of the number of times I've been told I've "slipped through the cracks". Lessons have been learnt, reviews have been conducted, and nothing has changed.