I wrote:

...

In most of the world, indiscipline and bad behavior in the prison will get you beaten, unofficially in Australia, officially in Japan. (Yes, *corporal punishment*, gasp, oh the horror).

Rachel_P._Kovner@gorgias.ilt.columbia.edu writes

Umm, minor point, but just for my personal clarification, are you sure there's corporal punishment in Japan? I seem to remember that during this whole Singapore thing, Japan was often raised as a model of a society with Singaporean crime rates and no corporal punishment.

There is no corporal punishment for crimes, but if you are a prisoner and you misbehave, you will get wacked, just as you will in most places. In Japan they do not seem terribly embarrassed about this. I saw this on TV. A bunch of prisoners sitting perfectly still for a long period, and a guard with a cane who wacked anyone who moved. He did not wack them very hard. It looked perfectly civilized to me, and I recommend the practice to US prisons. How can you maintain discipline in a prison otherwise? Answer: In US prisons there is no discipline. Prisoners learn to be aggressive, rude, and obnoxious to the guards and to each other. Good training to render them unemployable when they emerge.