Wylted 100th Debate: The United States should implement caning as a punishment for criminals.

=Aff case=This debate breaks down really, really simply. You vote Con because Pro provides no coherent explanation of how caning is actually going to be implemented until the last round and his plan fails to actually gain him any advantage. Let's look at the flaws I pointed out in round three, and how they still apply. First, Wylted tries to get around the fact that no judge is going to award the sentence of caning to an inmate for the same reason that other politicians are afraid of being seen as soft on crime--the moment someone they cane instead of imprison hurts someone, political opponents will seize upon it and attack them, slapping them with a very potent label that has meant political death to many a politician. Wylted says that judges will have to follow guidelines to determine if criminals are "grave or imminent"--first of all, who writes these guidelines? The people who write the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate[1]--every politician involved will ensure that the people appointed write guidelines to let as few people be caned as possible, lest the voters rage over crime come down on them. Secondly, Wylted is pretty inconsistent here. The judge is allowed to use "common sense"--literally the Judge's personal opinion-- along with "raw data", but still has to follow mandated guidelines without the autonomy to reject caning as a punishment. All this while somehow keeping the human element in while also disallowing the judge from having any personal opinion but also allowing the use of what Wylted terms "common sense"? It simply makes no sense--contrary to my opponents accusations of rhetoric, I just genuinely have absolutely no clue what he's arguing here and what kind of system we're supposed to be working with. No rational voter in the real world would vote for a plan that they didn't understand, and neither should the voters here. Moreover, even if you buy his argument and grant him the impact of caning actually becoming a widespread punishment you still vote Con because, as I pointed out, letting off murderers and rapists--even if they pose no threat to society-- with a spanking is a moral abomination. Prefer my analysis of the multipronged purpose of the criminal justice system to both deter crime and to punish lawbreakers.Wylted tries to dismiss my argument that the Supreme Court would characterize the type of caning he brought up in round three as cruel and unusual by calling it an oxymoron because I would choose it over life imprisonment. First, remember that he's advocating this penalty for mostly non violent drug offenders and public order offenders like prostitutes--there's no way SCOTUS would okay a vicious beating in these cases when they're too squeamish to allow the state to painlessly put to death a vicious child rapist. Secondly, he doesn't understand what the Supreme Court looks at when it evaluates what is Cruel and Unusual punishment--The American Bar Association[2] explains that SCOTUS looks at what it terms "evolving standards of decency" to as it's eight amendment litmus test. This is why the Supreme Court upheld the execution of juveniles as constitutional in 1989, only to strike it down in 2005, because in that period 6 states had abolished the death penalty for juveniles by nearly unanimous votes--hence showing how standards of decency had evolved during the period. Considering that the last flogging in the United States was over 60 years ago[3], SCOTUS could easily reject the practice of judicial corporal punishment based on the fact that standards of decency have already evolved way past it. SCOTUS would be far more likely to reject the caning option if it's as painful my opponent advocates, and politicians would never allow it. The only form of caning possible in the United States would be of a much milder variety.Remember also that Wylted did not dispute my analysis in the last round that he can't win because he never gave us any evidence that caning would be any better than imprisonment. There are countries which use caning--he should've shown how great caning works for them. He didn't, so you can't rush into a huge change in the system based off no evidence whatsoever. Pro argues that my counterplan of using electronic monitoring as it's a "slap on the hand" but it could be used in certain cases where the criminals are deemed not a danger to society but we still want to properly punish them by keeping them in confinement. Kind of like the exact thing my opponent is advocating, except that there's actual evidence suggesting that EMT reduces recidivism, and absolutely nothing to suggest that caning does. If you buy all of my opponents arguments, you still vote Con because we should have the same system except confine people to house arrest using EMT because, like Wylted pointed out, it works better than prison. He's given us no reason to think that caning would work better than prison.And indeed, as I've argued before recidivism would go absolutely through the roof if criminals were given the option of a caning which we know due to political realities would not be very brutal at all.Pro concedes that by separating the small fry from the hardened criminals now that I've reduced the prison population by a fifth I solve most of the impact of teaching criminals to be better criminals. His only argument is that I'm only mitigating his impacts, except my case solves for his harms while having unique benefits of its own that far outweigh which I'll talk about when we get to my case. Pros argument about social considerations is bunk--remember, I solve *more* social problems by ending the drug war than he does by reducing the prison population because my impacts effect places far outside the United States. Affirming is continuing the drug war that's cost over 100,000 lives in Mexico alone--it's hard to vote Pro here when he's addressing the symptom rather than the disease that's destroying poor communities all around the globe. I solve for this. Wylted's case hinges on the fact that he's reducing the prison population a lot but, like I've shown, he probably won't reduce it all that much more than me. Like I argued, it's incredibly unlikely that juries or judges will *ever* let any violent criminals get off with caning so the only people it's possible will get it are non violent criminals. The problem for Wylted here is that he argued that we should look at the statistics and the statistics show that the biggest subset of non violent offenders besides drug offenders (who are covered under my case) are property offenders who, according to his own evidence, have a huge recidivism rate. Public order offenders account for virtually all of the others and they generally don't get large sentences so he isn't saving much money at all. Compare these minuscule, unquanitifed cost savings to the $46.7 billion in revenue I bring in. =Neg case=Punishment theory/Death penaltyWylted's argument here consists of seriously advocating letting a murderer or a rapist go with a mere spanking which makes a mockery of punishment--the reason that societies always implement some kind of criminal justice system is because they believe that certain individuals *deserve* punishment. Wylted tries to argue this is some outdated "eye for an eye" type idea, but I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that the entire purpose of prosecuting lawbreakers is because we, as a society, have come to the conclusion that these individuals are worthy of retribution. Indeed, Wylted describes this contention as some kind of appeal to emotion, but he seriously underestimates the necessity of punishment in a society. As the great sociologist Robert Nisbet explains, with murder[4]: "The impact goes far beyond the victim; it goes to family and kindred, indeed to the entire village or town. Tensions compounded of fear, dread, pity, anger, desire for revenge mount quickly and steadily among the inhabitants. A life has been foully taken, a sacred value violated. The tensions become higher as the search takes places, still higher when the murderer is captured and found guilty. Only with his just punishment do the tensions within the locality subside."Indeed, I think it's safe to assume that under Wylted's plan, most murderers given a prison sentence would get off with a spanking. This is a slap in the face to the victims family and their community, as well as an invitation for more people to commit murder when they see the penalty is so light. Remember the justice system has the twin goals of reducing crime and gaining justice. Wylted's plan fails on both sides.You can extend my death penalty impacts from the second round--the debate is very confusing because Wylted never made a coherent plan, but basically the point is that even if you buy his case and grant him the caning option to murderers usage of the death penalty would absolutely skyrocket. He never argued against the harms of this.Wylted argues once again that it would be good to allow juries to convict when the prosecution failed to prove its case because the penalty is so light. Not only is this a tacit concession that his penalty is ridiculously light, but it's unfair to convict someone when the evidence isn't there just to be safe. CounterplansWylted doesn't argue against either of these in his last round and he never argued against their positive impacts. They are dropped and therefore conceded. You have better evidence to suggest that legalizing drugs and treating inmates humanely and having them pay back their victims helps society more than caning, so my plan is to be preferred. The resolution is negated.Sources:1. http://en.wikipedia.org...2. http://tinyurl.com...3. http://jnjreid.com...4. Nisbet, Robert. "Crime and Punishment." Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary. Cambridge: Harvard U, 1982. Print.