Legality of corporal punishment by nation

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Corporal punishment or physical punishment is a punishment intended to cause physical pain on a person. It is most often practised on minors, especially in home and school settings. Common methods include cudgelling and flogging. It has also historically been used on adults, particularly on prisoners and enslaved people. Other common methods include flagellation and caning.

Official punishment for crime by inflicting pain or injury, including flogging, branding and even mutilation, was once widespread in the Atteran and Babkhan empires of antiquity. However, with the collapse of Shireroth, the last great empire built upon slavery, such punishments were increasingly viewed as inhumane and inefficient. By the late 17th century AN, corporal punishment had been eliminated from the legal systems of most developed countries.


Summary of legality by nation

Nation Domestic Educational Judicial Notes
Caradia Caradia Yes Yes Yes Corporal punishment is seen as a viable form of punishment in nearly all areas of Caradian society. Parents are generally expected to discipline their children with pain as this is seen as a way of making children tougher and better able to work in the demanding working environment of Caradia's lower mining classes, should they end up in that area of work, or to better serve the country by being a more effective soldier in the military.

This principle holds true in schools as well, belief also including that strong corporal punishment will allow students to learn more, because it is believed that pain induces focus. This causes some schools to implement more stringent discipline policies, so that more students receive corporal punishment, and even for some schools to have designated days where every student must bear pain in order to learn better.

Corporal punishment is rarely used as a judicial punishment by itself, however it is a facet of many other forms of judicial punishment. For example, the most common punishment in Caradia, forced labour in the coal and iron mines, is often supplemented at said mines with corporal punishment for most infractions. In a similar belief to the one that is prevalent in education, it is believed that the pain makes the miners more efficient workers, and more willing to listen to the Flemic priests that evangelise at all of the prisoner camps. Occasionally, the death penalty is observed in Caradia, and this is usually facilitated by drowning in the ocean. Prisoners sentenced to this death penalty are traditionally flogged before being set to drown. This has been done in Caradia for many years, originating with the intention to avoid prisoners escaping after being released in the ocean.

Additionally, Flemic Church officials (priests, clerics, inquisitors) are permitted to carry out floggings on Flemic adherents. This is in accordance with the widely held belief that pain is a better form of punishment than restriction, because it confers a benefit along with the standard disciplinary improvement.

Elwynn Elwynn Yes A writ of cudgelling may be issued, under Article 8, Section 3, of the Constitution, by an appropriate agency for any act that may be reasonably accomplished through the application of cudgels provided that it is discernibly for the benefit of public order and discipline and is to the benefit of the greater portion of the citizens of the Republic. A valid writ must receive endorsement from the Court of the Prince and be executed within twelve days of issuance.
Jingdao Jingdao No No Yes The use of corporal punishment by parents and teachers is seen as both a symptom of poor authority and an ineffective measurement by itself. It is thought that it does not lead to greater obedience, but only fosters resentment against the family or school, and by extension against the state. In the judicial system corporal punishment is only used to make a death penalty more harsh. This is done to prevent the case where a criminal who knows he will get the death penalty, commit more crimes because he has already received the maximum penalty. Executioners dealing with corporal punishment cases are required to have a background in medicine.
Kalgachia Kalgachia Yes Yes Yes
  • Although nowadays superseded by primarily psychological forms of torment following the damning Toastypops Report of 187 AL, the use of corporal punishment for trivial infractions of camp discipline was an integral part of the Urchagin, the process of late-childhood hardening and conditioning which completes the amygdalo-pituitary foundation for Kalgachi citizens' subsequent cultivation.
  • In the domestic realm, the accumulated corpus of Kalgachi case law provides an approximate boundary of "reasonable chastisement" which is used by provincial tribunals of the state church to rule upon suspected cases of abuse; among wider Kalgachi society, domestic corporal punishment as a regular practice is generally limited to families of pre-Minarborian heritage, namely the Laqi and the Bergburgers (physical aggression against juvenile Deep Singers equipped with fangs and venom sacs is considered singularly unwise).
  • Although Kalgachia's decentralised judicial system allows for a wide variety of sentences, these rarely feature corporal punishment due to the prevailing Ketherist doctrine which considers ritualised inducement of physical pain and anguish to be the principal nectar sustaining the malevolent archonic host in their quest to enslave the universe. Parish police detachments do however enjoy the authority to administer summary physical punishments to maintain public order and pacify known recidivists, most frequently with cossack whips although lead-tipped cudgels of the type used in Elwynn and the UGB have become increasingly popular.
Krasnocoria Krasnocoria Yes No Yes Parents have a right to physically punish children. Educational institutions have no right to punish students, as that is the parents' job. Judicial corporal punishment is legal, and is widely spread in re-education camps and jails, especially for more serious offences.
Mercury Mercury No No No
Nijima Nijima No No No
Palesmenia Palesmenia Yes No Yes Parents reserve the right to punish children as they fit, as long as it does not involve long-term injuries or issues for the child. Schools and other educational institutes are forbidden to punish students, as that right is reserved for parents. For judicial punishments, minor offenses can result in community service or unpayed agricultural work. Major offenses can result in a stay in a mental institution, or a relocation to an agriculture work camp (with the most notable one being Ávalnté Nórud).
Ralgon Ralgon No (see notes) No Yes The use of corporal punishment by teachers is seen to be a grave abuse of authority in itself. Ralgons strongly frown upon the use of pain for parents and teachers for the sake of pain itself. Instead, light punishments for children (and those sentenced to community service) includes labor and exercise until the child is rendered deeply uncomfortable is the norm. The Ralgons want children growing up to feel loyal to their family and to the state, as well as avoid the cost of rehabilitating a damaged child. The Ralgons also follow the ancient saying, "Either they grow up smart, or they grow up strong. Regardless of the result, they will grow up useful to both gods and country."

Corporal punishment differs from Ralgons who serve in the military in any capacity. In the military, recruits are punished (according to offense) with compulsory exercise, extra duty, reduction in rank, or even (temporary) stripping of citizenship and sent to the Auxiliaries (an already painful prospect). Only in the Auxiliaries is flogging used as a default punishment (and never for rare citizens in this branch of the army), since the Auxiliaries usually consist almost entirely of prisoners who chose military service to redeem their honor (and possibly citizenship) than prison time followed by transportation, or personnel temporarily sent there from the Legion as punishment.

For more severe offenses that would otherwise lead to transportation, prison time is used, and it is there that flogging is used to preserve order. In cases of death, harsh corporal punishment is sometimes used weaken a prisoner who is sentenced to some form of death ad gladium or with exile (unarmed) to the Swamp. Other especially painful death sentences are used in which the authorities deem a violent non-citizen convict too dangerous to be kept alive. Painless death sentences are used only when a higher power commutes the sentence from a long/life prison sentence or painful death.

Sanama Sanama No No No All forms of physical punishment are banned in the federal constitution or in law.
Senya Senya No No No Corporate punishment is widely seen as inhumane and an ineffective method of punishment.
Verionian Empire Verionian Empire No No No Imperial Verionian law does not allow corporal punishment, which the government regards as barbaric and ineffective. However, representatives of the State are allowed to use physical violence when necessary to obtain their set goals. As representatives of the State are regarded, among others: members of the armed forces, members of the Corps of Watchmen, security personel, magistrates, teachers and health care workers. As the Verionian Empire is a diverse blanket of various states, religious or local custom and law may divert from the Imperial statutes.
Unified Governorates Unified Governorates Yes Yes Yes
  • Traditional Benacian societies consider the sovereignty of the patriarch over his household to be as absolute as the one-time sovereignty of the Kaiser over his former empire and of the Gods over their creation. This extends to conferring upon a father the power of life and death over his dependants, particularly including servants and children, and the obligation to subject them all to ferocious and ceaseless discipline.
  • Enthusiastic adherents of the educational policies of Ilessa Z. Aerit, the Black Legions consider corporal punishment to be an essential component of conditioning the young to understand and accept the hierarchies of obedience which will define their lives
  • The use of corporal punishment is an established feature of the criminal justice system in the Unified Governorates which is influenced by the inquisitorial system of Shireroth and the cudgel-orientated policing model pioneered by Elwynn. Since 1673 all sentences for all but the most serious or political of crimes have been suspended in favour of enforced tours of duty with the Biological Remediation Service, combating the engineered-biota inflicted upon the natural environment by the enemies of humanity, where physical chastisement - usually flogging - is a prerequisite deterrent against attempts to flee.
  • More generally, the ideology of Nationalist-Humanism holds that a society that lacks the capacity for cruelty will soon lose all vigour and swiftly become subject to external forces out of an aversion to conflict and fear of privation. As such corporal punishment is considered a public good, even if it perpetuates across generations psychological pathologies that might otherwise be considered antisocial, as it ensures that there will always remain to hand a sufficient cadre of those who understand the utility and necessity of violence.