CANING FOR PUNISHMENT? IDEA RECEIVES COLD SHOULDER LOCALLY

Cape Girardeau Mayor Al Spradling III isn't ready to cane anyone. Besides, he and local criminal justice experts doubt it's legal.

A St. Louis alderman suggested Thursday that vandals, who spray-paint graffiti, be publicly caned.

Alderman Freeman Bosley Sr., whose son is mayor of St. Louis, said he would introduce a resolution asking the state attorney general and city attorneys to see whether there is any legal reason why criminals couldn't be caned.

But Spradling -- who is an attorney -- and Southeast Missouri State University criminal justice professors Michael Brown and Carol Veneziano say caning criminals would be unconstitutional.

Said Brown, "Right now, it is not much more than political rhetoric, I would say."

Brown said he believes Bosley's suggestion reflects the public's frustration over the nation's crime problem.

He said there's "a whole generation of young people who have grown up with no apparent respect for the rights of other people's property."

Caning, he said, wouldn't survive a court challenge. "I am quite confident that the Supreme Court would consider that (caning) to be cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the Eighth Amendment."

Veneziano, chairman of the university's criminal justice department, agreed.

"There are some court cases decided some years ago that basically outlawed corporal punishment," she said. "If such a (caning) law passed, it would be struck down pretty shortly."

Spradling discounted caning as even an option. "I don't think unless the state statutes are changed, we will have to worry about that."

Even though Cape Girardeau operates under its own charter, Spradling said, "we still can't do something that is not constitutionally permissible through the state of Missouri."

Spradling said he doesn't believe caning is the answer to the crime problem. "That seems to me a significant overreaction to the problem."

If Americans would resort to caning, said Spradling, why not take it a step further and dispense an "eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" justice as is done in the Middle East and Far East.

He mockingly suggested that Cape Girardeau could "set a schedule of caning" for various offenses. "If you smoke in a public place, you are going to get caned once on the spot.

"We could get a caning gallows," he remarked. The Common Pleas Courthouse Park band shell would be a perfect spot to flog offenders, he quipped.

Brown said that even if caning were legal in the U.S., it wouldn't work.

"For punishment to change behavior, it has to be swift and certain, and our legal system won't allow the immediate imposition of punishment like that," said Brown.

Strictly defined, caning involves soaking a 6-foot-long bamboo rod until it is flexible and then hitting the individual with that, Brown said.

The Texas Department of Corrections used to whip prisoners, but not with a bamboo cane. They used a half-inch-thick leather strip, 3 inches wide and 3 feet long, which was attached to a 2-foot-long wooden handle, Brown said.

But such beatings ceased years ago. "Legally, I don't think it has been used since the 1930s and '40s," he said.

Veneziano said punishment hasn't worked. "We've got the longest prison sentences in the world," she said.

"The fact is we've got kids out there committing these kinds of acts because of the kind of environment they've been raised in, not because of what the criminal justice system is or isn't doing."

Persons who talk about caning as a solution are "looking for a simple answer to a complicated problem," she said.

Brown agreed. "If we want to do something about kids, we are going to have to provide them with the skills and education to be able to function as citizens, and that kind of training comes through the schools, the churches, the home."