Bentham considered immediate torture less cruel than prolonged imprisonment

Evidence

In the course of this justification he maintained, for example, that courts resorting to imprisonment in cases of contempt might find the application of physical pain, or even the threat of applying it, would secure obedience in a way “less penal” than prison: “A man may have been lingering in prison for a month or two before he would make answer to a question which at the worst with one stroke of the rack, and therefore almost always with only knowing that he might be made to suffer the rack, he would have answered in a moment; just as a man will linger on a Month with the Toothach [sic] which he might have saved himself from at the expense of a momentary pang.” — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 523

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the vaulted secularism argument: punitive reform (‘humane punishment’) is itself a contingent historical construction, parallel to how Cooper shows family/Christian norms quietly shape neoliberal governance.