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Monica Sanad
Professor Benjamin Bever
English 112
18 March 2016
Primitive Punishments: Analysis of Bring Back Flogging by Jeff Jacoby
In retrospect, Jeff Jacoby demanded the return of flogging in 1997, when he wrote an article that discusses his justifications for supporting flogging: an act of punishing guilty people using whipping, paddling or any other torturous method. The Puritans were notorious for punishing people by flogging during the 17th century. Jacoby used a lucid and strong title that clearly states the purpose and the thesis of his article, he also used a sub heading for his essay: “Boston’s Puritan
Forefathers did not indulge miscreants lightly” (Jacoby 1) which creates a comparison mood where he is demanding at first in the
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He also uses imagery, as he includes a small picture illustrating how punishments were like, which provides a more vivid picture to the readers. Jacoby comes along as more dexterous writer with stronger evidence when he quotes the words of a higher authority: John Dilulio, a Princeton criminologist, to support his argument.
Adding to that, Jacoby also statistics to support his ideas, “Some 1.6 million Americans are behind bars today. That represents a 250 percent increase since 1980, and the number is climbing”(Jacoby 1). However, we need to pause and think if that necessarily mean that this increase is an indicator that the prison system is failing? Does it really have to do with an increase in number of crime? Maybe, however, it may be because there are way more sanctions and laws nowadays than there were in 1980, so people are now held responsible for the simplest things that were similarly happening in 1980?
Personally, I think that corporal punishment is a brutal way to treat people and is way