R: Corporal Punishment is a reasonably adequate punishment for certain crimes.

Contention I: My opponent claims that rape, kidnapping, and attempted terrorism do not cause death, and thus does not deserve a death sentence. However, this form of "an eye for an eye" judicial system does not hold up because of the intangible psychological effect involved. The main purpose of the mentioned crimes are to inspire FEAR in the victim, and this intangible (and yes, perhaps subjective) effect of the mentioned crimes must be taken into account. Which leads to the next point, proportional response. If current laws allow the death sentence for rape and attempted terrorism and life, then my opponents arguments are clearly not inherent. Secondly, my opponent's arguments contradict themselves.He first says against my arguments for the death of rapists, kidnappers, terrorists: "1. No crime listed above results in death. The 3 I list are implied that it did not result in another crime, i.e. murder. Therefore, the death penalty would be too extreme of a punishment." However, He later says "Proportionality is not legal equivalence", taken in this viewpoint (and later on against my point of "an eye for an eye"). If proportionality is not legal equivalence, then why am I wrong in advocating the death penalty for these criminals? If you do not demand "an eye for an eye", why can we not go above and account for intangible costs and deal them the death penalty? The death penalty is the greatest punishment that we can deal out, and in the cases of the despicable acts of rape, kidnapping, and attempted terrorism, the death penalty is justified (and has already been embraced by societies around the world) Contention II: The CIA factbook does not account for other confounding variables. Simply stating a statistic without a scientific study can only be fallacious. As I have advocated, there may be NUMEROUS other reasons of why the crime rate is lower, all of which undermine my opponents argument. I'll even go farther and state that my opponent's statistic means NOTHING, due to the number of confounding variables and being an observational study rather than experiment (and for anyone who has designed experiments, one cannot draw cause and effect conclusions from an observational study) My opponent still has not provided a study that says corporal punishment is indeed inherently a effective deterrent for crime. Contention III: "The key word is construed. Essentially, it is an opinion. Since the harshness of a punishment is subjective, we must look at Beccaria's proportionality part of the 8th Amendment. Link ym contention 1 to this" Precisely, how is corporal punishment (i.e flogging, whipping ect) not harsh? Can we claim that it is the actually PLEASANT to be whipped and flogged? I think not. It is clearly intuitive that there is at least some harshness to the whipping or flogging of criminals. My opponent's link actually undermines his point, if the criminals' punishments do not have to "an eye for an eye" but merely proportional, can it not be that the death penalty should be used against them? As to my citations for the prison guard beatings, is it not PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT with the intention of PUNISHMENT/RETRIBUTION? So what exactly distinguishes from the corporal punishment except it is not carried out in a regulated place. The use of physical violence in this case is clearly forbidden, and thus should be used as a precedent against the use of PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT (aka corporal punishment). Let's assume that the beatings may not have been proportional, does that mean the precedent is suddenly null and void against punishments that are proportional? Clearly not, too many characteristics are shared by this case and what you're advocating to discount this. Contention IV: My opponent actually undermines his points here, he claims that "would have less sentences with corporal punishment if it warrant. Obviously, we would not let a mass-killer out of jail." But is not my opponent argument precisely that the mass-killers and all the perhaps mentally unstable and dangerous people in society should be given corporal punishment in order to reduce prison sentences? I think it is intuitively clear that the label of a rapist, kidnapper or terrorist fits in the same category as a mass murderer. It is clear by such lists such as sex offenders and convicted rapists on the internet that society has a legitimate reason to exclude certain criminals. Furthermore, my opponent claims that it will serve as better deterrence; however, my opponent has not provided concrete proof of it (CITED STUDY FROM A SCIENCE JOURNAL). Since my opponent has the burden of proof, his warrentless assertion must be discounted. Secondly, is not life sentence and the death sentence(which exists for the crime my opponent has mentioned) not a good enough deterrent? Would you propose that we punsish them even though they are going to be in life for jail? Is this not cruel punishment? If we wanted a deterrent against such crimes, we could just expand the death penalty to include more of the crimes my opponent has mentioned, serving the deterrence purpose. Even more so, it would cut down on economic costs, since the cost of killing someone is still (assuming that we can make it quicker than today's process) is alot less than upkeep. MY POINTS: My point is not that society should not punish, we should not use anachronistic methods of inflicting intense PHYSICAL PUNISHMENT in order to remedy crime. As a highly developed civilization, our morals dictate that we use the most reasonable and painless methods of punishment while retaining deterrence and other consequences of punishment at an acceptable level. The infliction of pain undermines the moralistic foundations of a society. If my government is actively beating people, what's to stop them from torturing us later? Perhaps we are restricting rights when we send criminals to jail, but we're violating not only their HUMAN RIGHT (as opposed to civil right) and SOCIETY'S ACCEPTED MORALS in order to deal punishment to those who might otherwise not need them. We need to restrict civil liberties of people in jail because their actions have justified that, but we have no right to invade human rights. Secondly, we're going down a slippery slope of government violating our civil liberties. If the government can actively use physical punishment against criminals, what's to stop it from abusing this power or spreading it for the general populace? NOTHING. If we do allow corporal punishment, the fundamental civil liberties guaranteed to us by the bill of rights will be severely compromised. Thirdly, my opponent claims that corporal punishment would show proportionality. Why is it that the current system does not accurately serve PROPORTIONALITY, apart from the very subjective argument that the crimes do not fit the punishment? The definition you provided for proportionaltiy could very well include the death penalty under its wings, making any discussion moot. In conclusion, the existence of the death sentence and varying prison terms already remedy what my opponent has described as necessary reasons for corporal punishment. Not only do the current methods serve the purposes of punishment better, they're also on a higher moralistic plane. If my opponent wants to deter criminals from committing crimes, the death penalty is already there. If my opponent wants varying degrees of punishment, there are varying sentence lengths and different security level prisons. My point is that my opponent's arguments are essentially flawed because they are not INHERENT. Corporal punishment is by no means the only solution to providing proportional punishment. Last but not least, my opponent has not offered a single CLEAR and IRREFUTABLE piece of evidence for the existence of corporal punishment, as most his arguments are based on conjecture with no studies or citations.