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Judicial corporal punishment is the infliction of corporal punishment as a result of a sentence imposed on an offender by a court of law, including flagellation (also called flogging or whipping), forced amputations, caning, bastinado, birching, or strapping. Legal corporal punishment is forbidden in most countries, but it still is a form of legal punishment practised according to the legislations of Brunei, [1] Iran, [1] Libya, [1] the Maldives, [1] Malaysia, [1] Saudi Arabia, [1] Singapore, [1] the United Arab Emirates, [2] [1] Yemen, [1] and Qatar, [1] as well as parts of Indonesia (Aceh province) [1] and Nigeria (northern states). [1]
Singapore's use of caning as a form of judicial corporal punishment became much discussed around the world in 1994 [4] when a United States citizen, Michael Fay, was caned for vandalism. [5] Two of Singapore's neighbouring countries, Malaysia and Brunei, also use judicial caning.
Other former British colonies which currently have judicial caning on their statute books include Barbados, [6] Botswana, [7] Brunei, [8] Swaziland, [9] Tonga, [10] Trinidad and Tobago, [11] and Zimbabwe. [12]
Many Muslim-majority territories, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, [13] northern Nigeria, [14] Yemen, [15] and Indonesia's Aceh Province, [16] employ judicial whipping, caning and amputations for a range of offences.
A list of countries that use lawful, official judicial corporal punishment today is as follows:
The above list does not include countries where a "blind eye" is sometimes turned to unofficial JCP by local tribes, authorities, etc. including Bangladesh [53] and Colombia. [54]
The Ancient Egyptians practised rhinectomy, punishing some offenders by cutting off their noses. Such criminals were often exiled to locations in Sinai, such as Tjaru and Rhinocorura.
In 1854, all forms of JCP were abolished in the Netherlands with the exception of whipping. Whipping was later abolished in 1870.
In the Wetboek van Strafrecht, article 9, this kind of punishment is not listed as primary or secondary punishment. Mainly because of human rights and/or human dignity, corporal punishment has been abolished.
The Constitutional Court decided in 1995 in the case of S v Williams and Others that caning of juveniles was unconstitutional. Although the ruling in S v Williams was limited to the corporal punishment of males under the age of 21, Justice Langa mentioned in dicta that there was a consensus that corporal punishment of adults was also unconstitutional. [55]
The Abolition of Corporal Punishment Act, 1997 abolished judicial corporal punishment. [56] [57]
In the United Kingdom, judicial corporal punishment generally was abolished in 1948; [58] however, it persisted in prisons as a punishment for prisoners committing serious assaults on prison staff (ordered by visiting justices) until it was abolished by section 65 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967. [59] The last ever prison flogging happened in 1962. [60] [61]
The last birching sentence in Jersey was carried out in 1966. Birching was abandoned as a policy in 1969 but lingered on the statute books. Obsolete references to corporal punishment were removed from remaining statutes by the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) (No. 2) (Jersey) Law 2007. [62]
The last birching sentence in Guernsey was carried out in 1968. The Corporal Punishment (Guernsey) Law, 1957 was finally repealed by the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 2006. [63]
Judicial birching was abolished in the Isle of Man in 1993 following the 1978 judgment in Tyrer v. UK by the European Court of Human Rights. [64] The last birching had taken place in January 1976; the last caning, of a 13-year-old boy convicted of robbing another child of 10p, was the last recorded juvenile case in May 1971. [65]
American colonies judicially punished in a variety of forms, including whipping, stocks, the pillory and the ducking stool. [66] In the 17th and 18th centuries, whipping posts were considered indispensable in American and English towns. [67] Starting in 1776, George Washington strongly advocated and utilised judicial corporal punishment in the Continental Army, with due process protection, obtaining in 1776 authority from the Continental Congress to impose 100 lashes, more than the previous limit of 39. [68] In his 1778 Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments, Thomas Jefferson provided up to 15 lashes for individuals pretending to witchcraft or prophecy, at the jury's discretion; castration for men guilty of rape, polygamy or sodomy, and a minimum half-inch hole bored in the nose cartilage of women convicted of those sex crimes. [69] In 1781, Washington requested legal authority from the Continental Congress to impose up to 500 lashes, as there was still a punishment gap between 100 lashes and the death penalty. [70] The Founders believed whipping and other forms of corporal punishment effectively promoted pro-social and discouraged anti-social behavior. Two later presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, advocated judicial corporal punishment as punishment for wife-beating. [71]
In the United States, judicial flogging was last used in 1952 in Delaware when a wife-beater got 20 lashes. In Delaware, the criminal code permitted floggings until 1972. [72] [73] [74] One of the major objections to judicial corporal punishment in the United States was that it was unpleasant to administer.[ citation needed ]
Judicial corporal punishment was removed from the statute book in Canada in 1972, [75] in India in 1955, [76] in New Zealand in 1941, [77] and in Australia at various times in the 20th century according to state. [78] William John O'Meally was the last person flogged in Australia in Melbourne's Pentridge Prison in 1958.
It has been abolished in recent decades in Hong Kong, [79] Jamaica, [80] Kenya, [81] Sri Lanka,[ citation needed ] and Zambia. [82]
Other countries that were neither former British territories nor Islamic states that have used JCP in the more distant past include China, [83] Germany, [84] South Korea, [85] Sweden [86] and Vietnam. [87]
In February an Indonesian woman convicted of adultery by the Shari'a court in the Emirate of Fujairah, was sentenced to death by stoning after she purportedly insisted on such punishment. The sentence was commuted on appeal to 1 year in prison, followed by deportation. In June 1998, the Shari'a court in Fujairah sentenced three Omani nationals convicted of robbery to have their right hands amputated. The Fujairah prosecutor's office instead commuted the sentence to a term of imprisonment.