Monday Map: Corporal Punishment

It's still Monday somewhere, and your Monday map this week shows the countries where corporal punishment is still on the books. Thirty-two countries allow judges to hand down caning, lashing, whipping and more - and many of them use it.

This issue seems to pop in and out of the spotlight, as the media finds a case to get riled up about. Lashing has been in the news this week, after journalist Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein was arrested for wearing pants in Sudan - a crime that can carry the punishment of 40 lashes. The judge sentenced her to either pay a fine of about $200 or spend a month in prison. She refused to pay the fine on principle, but was then released today after serving one day behind bars when a journalists' union paid her fine.

Michelle wrote in a great post today on the Stop Genocide blog that it isn't only the fashion police and corporal punishment that threaten peace and prosperity in Sudan, but "a central regime that lacks respect for even the most fundamental of individual rights."

Lubna was freed against her will, she said, because she didn't want the fine paid and because she wasn't the only victim of injustice in Sudan. She wrote in the Guardian last week that 43,000 women were arrested in Khartoum state for clothing offenses in 2008.

Corporal punishment isn't necessarily a sign of a country's broader human rights abuses, as in some Muslim counties it is a facet of Sharia law and is probably applied much more judiciously than we hand out 15-year sentences in the United States.

Regardless, physical punishment for a crime is an abuse of human rights in itself, and it should be banned around the world. It's not an effective deterrent, and it is difficult to prevent torture or other prison abuse in a system where judges hand down whippings.