Many say that the Law of Moses, an eye for an eye, and the lash for serious offenses, is cruel. But is it not more cruel to confine people away from emotional support, and to destroy the family, by confinement of one party in prison or a juvenile detention centre.
Furthermore, corporal punishment can be therapeutic. Solomon says: the blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil: so do stripes the inward parts of the belly. (Proverbs 20:30) Confinement, and the associated perversions, only make a person worse. Confinement does serve as a deterrent, but surely better forms of deterrence should be sought.
Elsewhere I wrote on the general law. My purpose here is to reach for a higher law, one that cleanses as well as deters, and one that leaves no emotional scars.
Youths are prone to showing off, shoplifting, vandalism, graffiti spraying, and even fighting. By the age of high school, they are too old to be beaten by their parents, because the beating would need to be too hard, and so destroy the loving relationship between father and son.
But some lads cannot be spoken to. Todays answer is juvenile detention centres, but surely this is a terrible thing to do, to take children away from their parents. A simple solution would be for the local policewoman to give them the cane, as hard as a school caning. When they reach a certain age, it could be by the policeman rather than the policewoman. Thus young lads could be kept in check, not separated from their families, and without fear of their parents.
Parents should not report their children, because the parent is supposed to be on the child's side, and if this rule is not always followed, it does not matter. Generally speaking, it is not good for a youth to think that if he sprays graffitti he is certain to be caught and punished; conscience and free will must play a part. But he should know that he may be caught and punished.
While I do not wish to comment on some cultures where men spank women on the bottom if they are naughty, to punch a woman for any reason is completely unacceptable. If a woman has committed adultery, the man might slap her on the face, but to punch her is unacceptable.
Unfortunately the courts only remedy is to prescribe jail, and for a woman, sending her husband to jail, means losing her means of support, and often even her house. (Courts should take more into account the guilty party, so that batterred wives are not left destitute.)
But she may also want a remedy or cure rather than a dissolution of the marriage, and maybe even some revenge. In this case, a flogging seems a better answer. The man is most probably less likely to reoffend, and the family home can be kept. Even if the marriage dissolves, the man can pay maintenance.
But there is a problem with a public flogging, and that is the humiliation of the man. If he feels he is being forced to care for his wife by others, and by other men in particular, he will lose self repect. Therefore I reach for a solution of natural justice: a gang of women.
Women can take the woman and children out of the house and look after them, and tell the man, you do not get to sleep with your wife again until you receive the punishment we prescribe and do the penance we prescribe. This may be a time in the stocks or some lashes adminitered in the presence of the women only, with no men or children present. Penance may be to take his wife to the botanic gardens and romance with her, and/or to take her on other outings. If all of this is done by the women, the man will not feel so humiliated, especially as he has submitted to the punishment himself. If men join in to mock, the women can give the mockers some of the same treatment as the man got.
I believe that with this form of punishment, shame and sorrow with contrition, and solution, would be found. The Law of Moses limits punishment to forty lashes for any offence, but with natural justice a lesser penalty could be applied than by the law of the land. Part of the healing process could be that a more merciful solution was found.