In the distant past, it was absolutely normal to use physical punishments, such as whipping or beating with a stick, even for minor offenses. Theft, insults, or leading a lifestyle that did not conform to accepted norms could even lead a person to the death penalty. Over time, punishments became less violent, and the death penalty remained only for the most brutal crimes. But even this is not the limit; in many countries, the death penalty has been banned, and in some (for example, Norway), even imprisonment has become an extremely mild form of punishment, where a person is only deprived of their liberty, but is provided with access to all the benefits necessary to lead a full life.
Reflecting on the topic of why punishments are becoming more humane, one can come to various conclusions. However, a very good explanation is provided by an article on the function and regulation of aggression by psychologist Seymour Feshbach, written back in 1964. It describes the concept of empathic inhibition, the presence of which deters a person from causing harm to others. This concept can be called an early prototype of the later proposed theory of the violence inhibition mechanism, which examines the psychology of violence in more detail and depth.
As Feshbach claims, a physical attack brings psychological discomfort to the person. This, among other things, becomes a major problem and barrier in the application of physical punishments. Other forms of punishment, which do not require the direct infliction of pain and harm, are far less uncomfortable for those executing them and cause them fewer negative psychological consequences.
An example can be drawn from what the landowner A. S. Zeleny wrote about corporal punishment in 1857: “One of the most unpleasant and heavy duties of our patriarchal landlord management (and for me—yes, probably not for me alone—the most unpleasant and heavy) is the necessity of subjecting our people to corporal punishment (birching) from time to time… corporal punishment has something repulsive about it… life becomes somehow coarsened; everything feels awkward in the soul… although one realizes that the act of punishment committed is only the fulfillment of a duty and that this evil is for now necessary.”
Of course, one can always find a degenerate who feels nothing wrong at all about causing harm to other people. Moreover, a system of imprisonment instead of physical punishments requires orders of magnitude more funds for its maintenance and places a heavy burden on society as a whole. At first glance, beating a petty criminal with a stick and executing a major criminal is a far more profitable strategy than imprisoning them. But when the issue is the widespread application of punishments for crimes, it is unlikely that enough degenerates could be found to effectively apply physical punishments to everyone who has committed even the slightest offense.
The violence inhibition inherent in humans makes direct physical punishments involving pain and harm an extremely limited and non-scalable tool. Therefore, instead of these, more indirect punishments are used, in which there is no need to engage in the direct infliction of pain, even if they are more costly from an economic point of view. Of course, established bandits may still set their most degenerate agents upon particularly unacceptable prisoners, for example for political reasons, and punish them brutally, up to the organization of staged “suicides.” But this does not concern the vast majority of criminals in most places of detention. And this once again confirms the concept of the violence inhibitor.
