In Jeff Jacoby’s essay “Bring Back Flogging”, the author suggests that prisoners’ sanctions were humiliating and painful, but quick and cheap. In the essay, Jacoby uses emotional appeals, trying to persuade the audience that bringing flogging back is not a bad idea; in fact, it is more humane than cages. For example, he mentions that, “now we practice a more enlightened, more humane way of disciplining wrongdoers: we lock them up in cages,” which encourages readers to fell that prisoners are caged like animals without mercy. To illustrate, Jacoby emphasizes that prison is becoming an all- purpose punishment. For instance, he mentions that a person can “commit murder; go to prison. Sell cocaine; go to prison. Kite checks; go to prison.” Jacoby wants to flog all criminal offenses, both violent and nonviolent, which makes no sense at all. In addition, he uses statistics to support his claims, which may sound convincing, but there is no source to verify them. Further, Jacoby clarifies that even when we keep caging criminals, we think that our justice system is successful which, unfortunately it is not.
It is odd that he says that we keep caging criminals when the justice system is getting worse. To demonstrate, he gives an example: “Fifty-eight percent of all murders do not result in a prison term. Likewise 98 percent of all burglaries.” Moreover, the author uses logical reasons to criticize the penal system by accusing the prisons of becoming nothing more than graduate schools for criminals, who emerge more ruthless and dangerous than they were before, and with criminal skills taught them by older, experienced criminals.
Without a doubt, Jacoby’s essay is really persuasive, disregarding the fact that some of his supporting details were not clear. Yes, let’s start flogging criminals. In Jacoby’s essay, the supporting details were weak. At the beginning, he mentions a scary story to draw the reader's attention to agree with his opinion or maybe to scare the readers. The story concerned a man who was selling hand guns and gunpowder to the Indians, and he was punished harshly, but is that what Jacoby wants to talk about it in this essay? If he wants to convince readers to agree with gun legalization law- well it’s legal now. In another way, if he wants to convince the nation to support flogging, why use a harsh story from the past? It does not really make sense to me. Moreover, Jacoby mentions that the prisons have become the penalty for all kinds of crimes, violent and nonviolent; it is an all-purpose punishment. This is really convincing, but he does not offer a clear solution to this situation. Should we start whipping all criminals? Of course not. But we need to find a way to distinguish between violent and nonviolent crimes and those who need prison time. He does not consider the European alternative which is to fine criminals for relatively minor crimes or to impose curfews or restrictions on their movements through the use of electronic tags. There are alternatives which work in other parts fo the globe – in countires with crime rates and gun-related crime much lower than our country.
In addition, Jacoby mentions that 1.6 million Americans are behind bars today, and the percent has been increased to 250 since 1980. But are these really reliable numbers? They can be less or more. Who knows? What does this prove? That we have more criminals? It might be said to prove that we send our criminals to prison too readily and do not consider other punishments. Besides that, Jacoby says that we keep caging criminals, and we say that we are safe and our justice system is effective, but in fact, the more we cage a criminal, that does not show that our justice system is good. This means that we have a loophole in our justice system: crimes are increasing, yet we keep caging criminals. I totally agree with the author on this point, but he did not really support it with reliable numbers, and it seems to me that he exaggerated in the statistics he did provide. To illustrate, he mentions that,” fifty -eight percent of all murders do not result in a prison time, and 98 percent of burglaries.” If this is true, then the prisons should be empty now. So why does he argue that we keep caging criminals in a nonhuman way? Or is he manipulating statistics – how many of those murders are unsolved, which might be why they do not result in prison sentences.
Overall, the Jacoby’s persona was the most convincing part of his the argument. Although, he provides a lot of supporting details, even though some of them have no reliable source and are merely assertions. The author uses a lot of rational and non rational appeals to persuade the readers. Albeit his rational support was weak in some parts of the essay, I agree with his overall view. The weaknesses were that his statistics had no sources, which weakened his argument, and that he failed to consider alternatives to punishment other than prison. There is no way to make sure that the numbers he included are really true.
