I haven't ever lived in a country where state-led violent punishments like floggings or executions were regularly performed in public, or televised. Does anyone else have direct experience of this? I imagine that regularly seeing offenders legally treated in this way might make violence seem more and more normal, and just lead to a feeling that any kind of offense justifies violent retribution. If keeping violence to a minimum is the aim, that doesn't sound helpful. I've been looking for a good report showing whether such countries do have a lower crime rate, but I haven't found anything yet.

BTW Brian, they don't save a lot of money in the US by executing offenders instead of handing out life sentences, because offenders tend to stay on Death Row for several decades, making appeals, beore the execution goes ahead.