A Blog for Flogging

Title - Jeff Jacoby's Essay; "Bring Back Flogging" grabs the readers attention right away with some very visual descriptions of Puritan flogging. Jeff Jacoby's title; Bring Back Flogging, right away lets the reader know what the topic of his essay is and gives the reader some insight as to what his thesis is.

Thesis - By the end of the second paragraph, readers should be aware that Jeff Jacoby's thesis is; flogging is just as humane as prison and more effective; both mentally and fiscaly. Jacoby makes this distiniction clear wih the last sentence in his second paragraph; "Now we practice a more enlightened, more humane way of discipling wrongdoers: We lock them up in cages."

Purpose - Jacoby's purpose is very clear in that he wants readers to realize that our system of imprisioning first-time non violent criminals could be better dealt with by corproal punishment; more specifically public corpoal punishment. Jacoby while making an argument, does not prsent his writing with the typical verbage that you might expect from a stright forward argument. Jacoby manages to blend enough verbage and statistics to make you really think about his argument; regardless of your political position.

Method - Jacoby uses quite a few diffrent statistics and quotes from a least one expert to present his argument. Jacoby does this with great pose and profesionallism. A good example of this is in paragraph 6 and 7 where Jacoby states the cost of housing one inmate is $30,000 a year and a painful and humiliating paddling is far less expensive and probably more effective. Jacoby also points out that Prison has become a "status symbol" for many people and going to prison is considered a right of passage so to speak for some people. Jacoby does take note to make sure and make the distinction that in modern society we would not punish people for blasphemy or adultry. Nor would we use hot irons to pierce people's tounges as a form of punishmnet. It was crucial that Jacoby made this statement in his essay, had he not I believe his essay would have met with harsher critisicim then it already did.

Persona - Jeff Jacoby presents himself as a very serious, yet fair individual. He recognizes that some crimes are worthy of prison, but we need to re-evaluate sending so called small time crooks to hang out with murders and rapists. Jacobys use of plenty of statistics helps to present himself as a veryknowledgable individual.

Closing Paragraph - Jacoby closes very simply by letting peopel know that maybe we can leran a few things from our forefathers. Their methoid of punishmnet while embarassing and painful was effective both mentally and financialy.

Impression - I was very intrigued by Jacoby's essay. At first reading I thought this was ridiculous and out of the question, but after re-reading and thinking about it, Jacoby presents some very valid points. The number of inmates raped every year is one of those. Over two hundred thousand inmates raped without guard knowledge! Subjecting thieves and small time crooks to this danger clearly seems more cruel then a public whipping. Teh cost to house one inmate per year, are small time crooks worth this amount? I beleive Jacoby opens the door to a very powerful topic and some very interesting debates.

Matthew Smith
Blog Assignment week 4