|
| USA Today ran an interesting “snapshot” chart on their front page on May 7, 2002. It was called, “Louisiana has highest prison rate.” The article went on to list the seven states with the highest rates of incarceration, all of which were significantly above the national average of 472 inmates with at least a one-year sentence per 100,000 residents in mid-2001, according to the Justice Department. The seven states with the highest incarceration rates were: Louisiana 795, Texas 731, Mississippi 689, Oklahoma 669, Alabama 592, Georgia 540, and South Carolina 526. | | Does paddling keep people out of prison, as proponents constantly tout? “Better to bust their asses….” The problem with that “logic” is that it flies directly in the face of the facts. Not just one or two, but every single one of the seven highest incarceration states was also a paddling state. | | Every so often a debate erupts over whether spanking “keeps people out of jail” or not. We hear the rhetoric nationally whenever there is a school shooting in the news, and we hear it individually whenever a teen commits even a minor crime. That is, in fact, a primary reason some people “spank” adolescents, and is often used as a reason to have teens “bend over for the paddle,” even in schools where smaller children are not subjected to it. | | This mindset is, not surprisingly, especially prevalent in the high paddling regions of the South, where the “answer” to nearly any kind of adolescent misdeed is too often some brutal and sexually violating assault. If a non-biological father is at home, the abuse is likely to be meted out there, and otherwise the teens might be sent to unregulated, unmonitored, sex abuse and torture “youth ranches” where they are stripped naked, beaten, and videotaped, either as “residents” or “outpatients.” | | The parents, often single mothers who are confused by society’s drone that what their kids are missing is “a man’s firm hand,” are often afraid and confused when their teens gets into trouble. Many times the entire society around them seems to drone out the same message, from the paddling schools, to local preachers, to “interested men” who want to “help with the discipline,” and even extending to the local “Whackerville police” who, instead of investigating abuse and child pornography, are instead themselves in on the scam. They might provide the confused and distraught mother with a card for the discipline ranch that can keep their sexy young teen out of jail (and into child-spanking porno movies). “Better to have their asses beaten raw than…” is again the rather abusive and mixed up “logic.” | | Maybe if high doses of physical and sexual abuse could keep people out of prison, then it would be a good trade-off. You can see how the confused parents could be manipulated with that idea. The prison stats, however, bear out what psychologists already know: beating and sexually abusing children and adolescents does nothing good, but it does do a lot of harm. It definitely does not keep people out of prison, with the possible exception of the spy camera, naked beating, child pornographers themselves, who would likely wind up in jail in more enlightened locales. | | Some studies over the years have shown that 100% of prisoners were spanked, or nearly that number, compared to a smaller but still very high number in the general population. I believe the overall trend of nearly all studies on that matter is the same. The rates differ, perhaps depending on the time and place they were made, but the results are quite consistent. A lot of spanked people never end up in jail, of course, just as the vast majority of non-spanked people likewise do not end up in jail. Spanking and paddling, however, clearly do not keep people out of jail and, if anything, instead exacerbate the problem. |
|
|
|
