Spectacular public punishment reaches only a limited audience and loses deterrent power
Evidence
The spectacular use of the culprit’s body as a deterrent or as a site of retribution, however, had its own limitations. After all, the body of the culprit can sustain only a limited amount of pain that may or may not be an effective deterrent to others from committing a similar offense. Furthermore, for this kind of deterrence to work the spectacle had to be massive and the audience great, hence the public hangings in big squares and important gathering places in urban centers. This, again, had its limitations, since only a limited number of people could be present at any one moment to watch the spectacle. And if the severity and “enchanting” nature of the spectacle of the gallows was intended to be part of a gradually expanding repertoire of stories to be circulated by the spectators to those who were absent, then more abstract means were soon to be discovered that would convey, in a more efficient way, the idea of the inevitability of the punishment and its link to the crime being committed. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 688
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: The shift from spectacle to legal code as a tool of deterrence mirrors Foucault’s disciplinary power thesis in Discipline and Punish.
Related
- Public spectacle punishments fail as deterrence because bodies and audiences are finite. (similarity 0.93)
- Mehmed Ali used bodily spectacle to enact his juridical power over subjects. (similarity 0.80)
- Punishment’s deterrent power migrated from visible spectacle to certainty of apprehension (similarity 0.79)
- Public punishment displayed excess rather than justice to affirm the sovereign’s unrestrained power. (similarity 0.78)