Judicial corporal punishment

Judicial corporal punishment (JCP) refers to the infliction of corporal punishment as a result of a sentence by a court of law. The punishment can be caning, bastinado, birching, whipping, or strapping. The practice was once commonplace in many countries, but it is no longer practised in any European country, and it has now been abolished in most Western countries, but remains a legal punishment in some Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries.

The Singaporean official punishment of caning became much discussed around the world in 1994 when an American teenager, Michael Fay, was sentenced to six strokes of the cane for vandalism. Since then, the number of caning sentences handed down each year in Singapore has doubled.

Other former British colonies with judicial caning currently on their statute books include Barbados,Botswana,Brunei,Swaziland,Tonga,Trinidad & Tobago, and Zimbabwe.

Many Muslim-majority countries use judicial corporal punishment, such as United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,Iran, northern Nigeria,Sudan and Yemen, employ judicial whipping or caning for a range of offences. In Indonesia (Aceh province only) it has recently been introduced for the first time.

A list of 33 countries that use lawful, official JCP today is as follows:

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