IMAGINE that you-or, if you prefer, a younger, more reckless version of you— committed a crime. A bar brawl, driving home drunk again, some tax fiddling, getting caught with a more-than-trivial but less-than-kingpin amount of illegal drugs: something, in any event, that got you sentenced to a few years in prison. And say you were offered a choice: you could either spend those years behind bars, or you could get ten lashes. Certainly painful, probably humiliating, but it would be done under close medical supervision by a licensed flogger, and it would be over in minutes. You would recover, except for the scarring, in a few weeks. And you could get on with your life. You may think flogging is barbaric, but is there any question which you would choose if you could?
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