Should state justice prevent or punish?

As much as I disrespect Malaysian public media, I have to get my daily dose of news, so I have picked one of the less disturbing papers to go through in the mornings. You can judge the paper by its editorials, and the first editorial I read in the New Straits Times made me suspicious. But I stuck - when the choice is limited, even half-a-step closer to the truth is better than nothing.

Today's NST editorial made me speechless.

Malaysia is often criticised for its poor human rights record, particularly for the caning as legal punishment for more than 40 offences, not just violent offences, but sometimes non-criminal. Judicial caning is a brutal torture - picture flying flesh and blood, scars, which don't heal for moths. There is nothing human or fair in caning, nothing to make it justified as punishment.

Malaysian immigration law imposes caning as punishment for illegal employment, both to the workers and their employers. Whereas hapless foreigners are caned regularly and mercilessly, none of their Malaysian employers has ever been caned.

Can you guess what an idea could have crossed the mind of NST's editor to make caning more palatable and justify the practice in Malaysia? He suggested that if a few Malaysian employers of illegal labour were caned, the overall practice of caning would sure become more fair and just. Either the editor just missed the point that caning as punishment is despicable, by suggesting that caning everyone, indiscriminately of their legal status in Malaysia, will solve the problem of human rights violations, or he is a cruel bloodthirsty beast.

To be fair, the idea of the state justice being a preventive system, rather than official punishment machine, is difficult to digest even in the humanly more developed countries... but caning - isn't it just too much?

My other postings on caning:
Caning for drinking - June 15, 2005
Cane them - that's right! - June 16, 2005

and illegal immigration:
Legal ways of becoming illegal - March 8, 2005