Description: This book ignites debates about the history and persistence of judicial corporal punishment in criminal justice systems and examines if corporal punishment is a less cruel alternative to spending years behind bars in primitive and punitive jails and prisons.
Brief description: Dr. Mitchel P. Roth is Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Sam Houston State University. His many books include Murder by Mail: A Global History of the Letter Bomb (2024), Man With the Killer Smile: The Life and Crimes of a Serial Mass Murderer (2022), Power on the Inside: A Global History of Prison Gangs (2020), Fire in the Big House: The Worst Prison Disaster in American History (2019), The Illicit Economy in Turkey (with Mahmut Cengiz) (2019), An Eye for An Eye: A Global History of Crime and Punishment (2015), and Convict Cowboys: The Untold History of the Texas Prison Rodeo (2016).
Review Quotes:
Sanaz Alasti provides a vigorous overview contrasting the persistence of the lash in some Islamic criminal justice systems with centuries of corporal punishment in Western societies and its eventual decline. She uncovers a small brigade of dissident legal scholars eager to revive corporal punishment in the mass-incarceration USA, while opinion polls reveal occasional bursts of public zeal for inflicting painful retribution on convicts. When courts in the multi-religious city-state of Singapore sentenced teenage vandal Michael Fay to a harsh caning in 1994, a survey by the Los Angeles Times of U.S. opinion revealed that men favored this punishment by a margin of 61 percent to 36 percent, while women disapproved by totals of 58 percent to 39 percent. This book provides the wider historical context and legal rationales for corporal punishment, while also revealing the human rights traditions that have sought its abolition.