Spanky I don't know what you are on about I said or know nothing about corporal punishment in SA. I only mentioned a couple of experiments with hardened criminals that had nothing to do with corporal punishment.
Don't worry about the stirring Aime I am used to right ring ratbag ridicule. They learn from their fathers its called the 4arse.

The Isle of Mann was the last place in Britain to have corporal punishment. It used to be done in the privacy of the jail yard with a doctor in attendance.
Someone who got a dose of it complained to the European Court that it was a 'cruel and unusual' punishment.
It was stopped and the crime rate went up.

There is something very strange in the minds of those who administer corporal punishment. I worry about having those sorts of people in our midst at all, let alone giving them the 'authority' to dispense 'justice' of this sort. Never mind the 'baddies'! What sort of 'goodies' will we have?

Not meaning to sound facetious Waterboy, but I wasn't aware there were in fact any exponents of corporal punishment "in our midst."

Now, suppose you're walking down the street and see a person run up behind an old woman, grab her shoulder bag, knocking her down in the process and breaking her hip. The police catch him quite quickly (despite bad press, the police are actually very good at what they do), but the courts let him off with a community order. The woman involved is not only traumatised and will forever be too scared to step outside her door alone, but will also spend many weeks in hospital, much of it spent in pain. My question to you Waterboy is this (and with the greatest respect).......

What do you propose would be a better deterrent for such behavior? How would you treat the perp? Oh, I forgot to mention, this was his seventh offense for similar anti-social behavior.

I very much doubt that a 7th offence wouldn't draw a goal term.

However bad it is, pain fades, unless you're inflicting permanent damage.

Yes people could grit their teeth and get through it, especially hardened criminals. I'd never consider anything like robbing a store, but I know if I did, corporal punishment wouldn't be nearly as much of a deterrent as jail time. It would be too easy to say, "even if I'm caught it'll all be over in a day" and go ahead with the crime.

And as bad as the pain may be, memory fades when temptation arises.

Besides, when you legalise this kind of cruelty you are going down a path I don't want to see us tread.
Sooner or later you have to redefine your limits of what is acceptable punishment. You drop your standards a little, what's to stop you dropping them some more?

We could legalise stoning... that'd make for a public spectacle as well. After all, how different is a few lashes of the whip to a few well placed stones?
Heck, why not just take a thief's hand like they do in some of the more repressive regimes. That'll certainly dissuade him from doing it again...