1. Acute corporal punishment should be introduced to fill the gap between the severe punishment of prison and the nonpunishment of probation.
2. For the majority of property crimes, the preferred corporal punishment is that of electric shock because it can be scientifically controlled and calibrated, and is less violent in its application when compared with other corporal punishments such as whipping.
3. For violent crimes in which the victim was terrified and humiliated, and for which a local community does not wish to incarcerate, a violent corporal punishment should be considered, such as whipping. In these cases, humiliation of the offender is seen as j ustif iably deserved.
4. Every effort should be made to develop a split system of criminal justice: one system for the punishment of crimes, and one for the punishment of criminals.
5. After an offender has committed a number of repeated offenses, or when the combined injury and damage of his crimes reach a certain amount, he will be treated as a criminal deserving of incarceration.
6. Only criminals should receive prison as a punishment, and only two prison sentences should be allowed: 15 years for the first incarceration, and life if the individual recommits after his release. The 15 year term is the "warning" that the offender is close to the point of no return. There is no more getting off lightly with corporal punishment.
7. The decision to incarcerate will depend on many factors, but should especially depend on how much money the community is prepared to spend on incarcerating repeat offenders.
8. Before pronouncing either a 15 year or a life sentence, the judge should be required to seek a budgetary assessment of the cost of keeping this offender for the respective period. If such money is not approved beforehand by the Division of Budget, the sentence should be disallowed, and corporal punishment substituted.
9. A life sentence means life. It we truly believe that treatment or rehabilitation no longer works, then there is no sense at all, especially from the point of view of incapacitation, in ever letting the "dangerous" criminal out.
10. The measure of the effectiveness of prison as a punishment should not be whether the offender recommits after release. Rather, the notion of prison as retributive considers it entirely possible that a truly terrible offender may not have sufficient time in one life to work through the guilt of his crimes. Furthermore, even if he does work off his guilt, there is no expectation at all, according to the retributive philosophy, that the offender should have learned not to repeat his crime. What he has learned is that his crimes have a reciprocal cost to him in suffering. Thus, we do not speak of rehabilitation" of the criminal, but of " redemption. "
11. When corporal punishment is used, offenders should receive the same punishment for the same crime, whether it is their first offense or not. The only time an offender's entire record should be taken into account is when we decide to incarcerate. At that point an assessment of the dollar cost of the criminal's offenses may be considered, along with other individual background factors.
12. Because corporal punishment does not discriminate according to the offender's background, no distinction should be made according to age, sex, race or any other social or psychological characteristic when deciding on the amount of deserved corporal punishment. Of course a medical examination will be required to establish the offender's fitness to receive punishment.
13. The scaling of corporal punishment will be tied to (1) the comparative seriousness of offense categories, and (2) the amount of injury and damage of the offense.
14. Corporal punishment may be applied according to intensity, frequency and time, but should never exceed an eight hour period.
15. Corporal punishment should be immediate: applied as soon as possible after the sentence (and preferably upon the finding of guilt).
16. All punishment should be public: corporal punishment should be conducted in the presence of community representatives, including the press, and a description of the offender's crime or crimes should be graphically portrayed to the public at the time of the punishment. Prisons should also be opened to public tours.
17. Corporal punishment should never be used either in combination with prison or in order to "correct" the offender, because in these uses it comes too close to torture, which is barbaric and destructive.
18. Judges must be given more discretion not less. Corporal punishment, along with a "guidelines" model, is merely a first transitional step towards breaking down sentencing practices which at present are rigid and narrow. By using creative punishments judges will help free the higher courts to break with the purely quantitative notion of crime and punishment, and to begin thinking in terms of appropriateness.
19. Fines should be eliminated from the range of punishment alternatives unless they are part of a punishment that tries to reflect a particular offense.
20. When prisons are used as a chronic punishment we must take full responsibility for their harshness and put them to a clear retributive purpose. This means getting rid of the watered down versions of prisons, and making those few prisons that will exist extremely harsh places, reserved only for the terrible few.
21. A prison intensive system will de-emphasize prison as a form of punishment. The advantages of this strategy are obvious: a decrease in the number of people in prison, and a great savings in cost.
But by far the greatest consequence of this de-emphasis in prisons is that fewer persons will come under the direct control of the State (which is what we mean by prisons), and that the major portion of criminal punishment (that is, corporal punishment) will be conducted with the view that it is not criminals per se who are being punished at all, but free citizens who have exercised their right to break the law.
In this way the most basic of all freedoms in a society is preserved: the freedom to break the law.