Article Summary: Jeff Jacoby Bring Back Flogging

Statistics can be used inappropriately in any field of endeavor, including the health industry. An example is the Veterans Affairs scandal in which appointment dates

Jeff Jacoby’s “Bring Back Flogging” is a very interesting piece of writing. Jacoby clearly states his thesis because it is his title. He uses techniques which are evidence, assumptions and quotes from credible authorities. Jacoby has persuaded me to agree that flogging should be brought back in certain cases.

developed—the first institution in which men were both “confined and set to labor in order to learn the habits of industry” (LeBaron, 2012, p.331). Although prisons had been designed to enforce and promote punishment, retribution and deterrence, they have also fallen into the conceptual belief that they were in many instances, nothing more than a sweat shop for the socially-undesired. At this point in history, there was very little reform and an immense lack of regulation for prisons or for the proper way they should be ran. Finances. In modern-day calculations, prison labor has been rather beneficial to the U.S. government, bringing in an average of 1.6 billion dollars in 1997.

First of all, Las Casas uses statistics as a rhetorical feature. To illustrate, Las Casas uses statistics when describing what occurs on the islands of Puerto Rico and Jamaica. In the letter it says, “fewer than two hundred survive on each of the two islands, all the others perished” (26). Before using statistics, Las Casas states that there were over six hundred thousand natives living on the islands. When individuals read the statistics, they become aware that an amplitude of natives died.

In this way, the reader will understand that McGray is not merely an ordinary citizen, but an expert credible to discuss the topic of American isolationism. Using statistics in the first paragraph is an effective strategy because it has a scientific character that shows how knowledgeable about the subject the author is, encouraging the audience to agree with his

Jacoby supports his thesis by giving the reader various reasons such as: The criminal justice system imprisons us for everything serious or not serious. If they flog us it they will prevent more prisoners in prison, in our prisons,prisoners are released early and continue to make crimes, it’s more costly to keep the prisoners in cages, prisoners learn to be better prisoners from other inmates and prisons are full and overcrowded. The evidence that Jacoby uses to support his reasons is by using facts, statistics and logical examples. For example, when Jacoby states that, “Imprisonment has become our penalty of choice for almost every offense in the criminal code.” He uses this as factual example reinforces it with another logical example like, “ Commit murder; go to prison.

With his hands tied down the pole, the criminal whimpered for help, but no one cared, because all they wanted to see him be punished for the robberies he committed. He became the next to be publicly humiliated and punished with flogging instead of incarceration. Jeff Jacoby’s “Bring Back Flogging” is an intriguing piece of writing that pitches a wild idea that i am unsure is worth catching. Jacoby wrote a thorough essay and presented the idea well but did not have enough evidence to convince his audience.

“The price of keeping criminals in cages is appalling – a common estimate is 30,00 dollars per inmate per year” (197). There are nearly 1.6 million Americans behind bars today, which is approximately forty-eight billion dollars per year. Another of Jacoby’s argument is that those who commit a crime a lot of the times are of the hook because the procedures take a long time. Therefore, allowing these criminals to be freed with any punishment. Allowing flogging in this situation whether they committed the crime or not, it will remind them to go in the correct path.

Prison reform has been an ongoing topic in the history of America, and has gone through many changes in America's past. Mixed feelings have been persevered on the status of implementing these prison reform programs, with little getting done, and whether it is the right thing to do to help those who have committed a crime. Many criminal justice experts have viewed imprisonment as a way to improve oneself and maintain that people in prison come out changed for the better (encyclopedia.com, 2007). In the colonial days, American prisons were utilized to brutally punish individuals, creating a gruesome experience for the prisoners in an attempt to make them rectify their behavior and fear a return to prison (encyclopedia.com, 2007). This practice may have worked 200 years ago, but as the world has grown more complex, time has proven that fear alone does not prevent recidivism.

The major problem with this is he doesn’t use credibility or statistics to back up his

Jeff Jacoby provides a strong argument in “Bring Back Flogging”, suggesting that we should adopt a few of the punishments of the Puritans. This argument is built on logical appeal, emotional appeal, and his own personal credibility as a writer. Providing statistics and information, Jacoby creates the logos, or logical appeal, and ethos, or personal credibility. In Addition, he uses ethos, or emotional appeal to force the reader to think about what they believe is morally worse. In “Bring Back Flogging”, Jacoby says Puritan forefathers punished crimes with flogging, including whipping and branding; however, in current times we tend to put a person in jail, no matter the crime.

Should Public Humiliation Be Used As A Punishment For Crime? In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses public humiliation to shame a puritan women named Hester Prynne for her sin of adultery. To punish her for her sin, the puritan officials of the community force her to wear a scarlet letter “A” upon her chest to publicly shame her and so that everyone in the community can mock her for her sin. Public humiliation is still used by people and by the government in some ways as a punishment.

Jacoby’s point makes sense. Why should we waste money on the living expenses of convicts, especially if the outdated policy could prove more effective? Jacoby uses an excellent approach to drawing his audience

He uses statistics to make his article logical, while projecting given evidence to his point. She gives statistics like when she states “Seventy thousand students eventually took part” (Gladwell, 2010, paragraph 6) and uses scholarly references. Scholarly references are a type of reference written by professionals who are experts on the field. She gives scholarly references such as Stanford Sociologist Doug McAdam (Gladwell, 2010, paragraph 12), sociologist Mark Granovetter (Gladwell, 2010, paragraph 16), he uses these sociologist because he wants to give to her article an objective view even though he does not accomplish this.

In Adam Gopnik 's piece “Caging of America,” he discusses one of the United States biggest moral conflicts: prison. Gopniks central thesis states that prison itself is a cruel and unjust punishment. He states that the life of a prisoner is as bad as it gets- they wake up in a cell and only go outside for an hour to exercise. They live out their sentences in a solid and confined box, where their only interaction is with themselves. Gopnik implies that the general populace is hypocritical to the fact that prison is a cruelty in itself.