R: Reinstate Corporal Punishment

Corporal Punishment was widely utilized in early American society. According to Thomas Jefferson's 1778 Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, witchcraft would earn an offender 15 lashes, sexual crimes could lead to castration, and those convicted of robbery were subject to 4 years of hard labor. Almost 250 years later, America's use of corporal punishment has greatly diminished. With the last flogging taking place in Delaware in 1952, the major use of corporal punishment today is for disciplinary action in schools in several states and reprimanding children in a home environment.

Many of the Founding Fathers of this country believed that corporal punishment was an effective way to promote a just and moral society and to discourage undesirable societal behavior, but is there still a place for this form of harsh punishment in the western world today? Can physical punishment be useful in dissuading the common types of crime or bad behavior prevalent in today's society? Or does such punishment only harden the offenders rather than encourage corrective action? Does whipping in the square more quickly and effectively deter crime than years behind bars? In children, can the use of physical punishment at a young age promote better future members of adult society? Or are such punishments unnecessarily harsh and degrading for our youth?