Punishments have existed for a while now, to say the least. However, as time has gone by, punishments for crimes have constantly changed. To talk a little bit about history, one of the first legal codes ever created was The Code of Hammurabi, which continues to have an impact on contemporary criminal justice procedures. One of the first instances of the modern proverb "innocent until proven guilty" is found in this collection of court precedents for various crimes and conflicts.
However, while there are various punishments that sound horrific and understandably are horrifying to receive, there are quite a few punishments that may sound easy and not even harsh at all, but in reality - well, it’s terrible. One Reddit user was curious and started a thread asking folks online to share what punishments they know that don’t sound bad but are actually terrifying. Turns out not all of them are used for serious crimes.
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Losing the right to vote when convicted of a felony. You're still expected to obey the laws and pay taxes, but you don't have any voice in the democratic process. We went to war over taxation without representation.
Fortunately this is changing. More states are restoring voting rights on release from prison.
It's an unpopular opinion, but I think you should only lose your voting rights if you're convicted of treason. I think people should be able to vote from within prison. If prisons are supposedly teaching people to be productive members of society, why not start by letting them vote?
Same with legal immigrants. Living here with a Greencard, still can't vote, but have to pay taxes. I find that f****d up, too.
My dad once tickled me until i peed. It was so unpleasant and I still hate being tickled
Waterboarding at Guantanamo bay sounds like a nice vacation if you have no idea what either of those things are.
Kneeling on rice as a kid left my husband with permanent scars and knee damage.
IMO one of the most horrifying things about today's world is how child abuse is still extremely normalized.
sleep deprivation
The Oubliette/Standing Cell
It's a jail cell so small, you can't sit down, so you're forced to stand or wedge yourself against the concrete walls. They typically can only be accessed through a hatch in the ceiling.
Standing doesn't seem so bad, but humans aren't meant to stand for extended periods. Blood pools at your feet, the lower body swells, the pain is crippling, and there's no way to get any relief.
Even worse, "oubliette" comes from the French word "oublier"-to forget. They'd toss prisoners in these cells, and literally just forget about them. No food, no water, they didn't even bother cleaning out the corpses. They'd just let the vermin eat their fill, and toss a new prisoner on top of the pile of bones.
In middle school I had a lot of issues with being late. I have dyscalculia so I struggle with numbers and time as a whole, and living far away from the school while having s****y public transport did not help.
One morning I was late one time too many and the school counselor stood in the entrance to catch those who are late. Without telling anyone she screamed at me and took me to the library and commanded me to stay in the corner. I wasn’t allowed to leave, not even to the toilet, and since it wasn’t allowed to eat in the library I couldn’t eat either. Our school had a no phone policy, not even in your backpack, meaning if I was to try and call my mom I would get in even more trouble for having a phone with me. I was a good kid and my only issue was being late to school.
I cried all day and the librarian yelled at me to stop crying. I couldn’t. I sat there for 8 hours just miserable
Also; the counselor didn’t tell anyone she put me in the library as punishment, so my teacher thought I didn’t come to school. The teacher called my mom who was hysterical because she’s the one who dropped me off that specific day. My mom thought I went missing
Solitary confinement
I know a man who was innocent but charged with murder and given a life sentence. He served 11 years before the actual murderer was found but in those 11 years he spent 5 in solitary and it completely messed him up his head. He said it was worse than if he had served a full life sentence
Sound. I know that it is well-known that playing certain songs/sounds respectively has been used as a torture device. Personally, I can agree it is the worst.
Not sure if anyone’s ever seen the movie “Dumb and Dumber,” but there is a part where the main character asks if another character wants to hear the most annoying sound in the world. He then proceeds to yell in a loud, monotonous sound in his ear. The guy snaps angrily.
Well, my daughter is nonverbal autistic and makes different sounds. She will go HOURS making the same exact noise, same pitch and tone without stopping. It is hell. Highest quality noise-cancelling headphones and still hear her (I have used to go shooting and car races and barely heard anything). I will be on the other side of the house…heard.
Neighbors (and our houses are quite a ways apart) have asked what is going on. I have her in special sessions now to atleast change the sound to something else because stopping is not possible. I would rather be in constant pain than the sounds non stop.
The noise of people eating or making excessive (and unneeded) eating noises (lips smacking, "MWWWWWOAH!" and so on) makes me seriously twitch...
The Silent treatment.
my mom gave me this for weeks on end when i was younger, as a punishment for the smallest things. forever severed relationship with my mom. i wish she was like a normal parent and punished me in a normal way instead :(
The Incans had a punishment for smaller offenses that seems lesser-known.
The criminal would be bound to a post and spat upon by llamas.
(Not just a few, either. Like...50 llamas).
I thought that sounded pretty silly and harmless at first when I heard of it but apparently the threat was taken pretty seriously.
Llamas have acidic spit. It's not good if 50 spit on you at once. I don't know, but I can imagine painfull irritation would be the point of it.... Or it's half as bad and it was a status downgrade or something...
A diet of bread and water. Apparently it really messes with your bowels and become incredibly painful.
Your diet would also be completely lacking in Vitamin C, and you would likely develop scurvy. Symptoms include anemia, muscle weakness, joint pain, swollen gums, tooth loss, and hemorrhaging.
In high school two of my friends were messing around at tennis practice and the coach made everyone *else* run extra laps. On face value it seems like the messing around people got off easy, but having the rest of the team mad at you is a really effective punishment.
This is the kind of twisted thinking that leads to decades of abuse under these coaches. Look up the downfall of a coach recently in Kingfisher, OK, US. The whole town is now on the hook for the damages because of this sick individual so I guess the concept comes around like that too. If only there were another way.... 🙄
People think an insanity plea would be a nice cushy life sentence but those hospitals for the criminally mentally ill are just as bad as a regular penitentiary.
A night in jail.
No big deal right?
If you’ve got a job to be at, you might have just lost it. Your car probably got impounded, and that’ll cost minimum $250 to get it out, even if you go the next morning. No money? Kiss your car goodbye.
If you’ve got kids, CPS might come and get them. You’ll have to fight to get them back out.
Then if your job takes you back, you’re pretty much stuck at it till you go to court. Which could be the following year in some jurisdictions.
And wait till your apartment hears about it when you go to renew your lease. You might not be able to renew and have to move someplace new.
I’m lucky to be able to say this has never happened to me. But I don’t pretend I’ve never broken the law. It could. Like that time my car insurance went unpaid because I forgot to update them with my new card number. What if I’d been pulled over? I think about this sort of c**p all the time, too. A night in jail sounds like no big thing. And if you’re basically transient to begin with, or live with family still, maybe it’s not. But if you’re an adult with a life to maintain, that 12 hours could be the beginning of the end for you financially.
I live in eastern KY where the vast majority of people are born, live and die in poverty. Getting in trouble once can start a vicious cycle.
When my high school's district banned paddling/spanking as punishment, they switched to something even *more* effective: "Billy rags"
They're just rags that have been wiped alllll over male goats in rut. Goat farms sell them for goat breeding purposes (lady goats love 'em).
If you acted up, you'd be sent to the VP's office, he'd take you outside (wouldn't dare to open the jar indoors), he opened the jar with the rag in it, and you'd have to stick your nose in there and inhale for 60 seconds.
Let me tell you, bullying and hazing went way down.
The classic, holding your rifle over your head punishment. F*****g torture
People are talking about some crazy punishments here, but I feel like in general we underestimate how devastating standard punishments can be. People flippantly talk about 2 year, 5 year, 10 year prison sentences as if they are nothing, but as someone who's never been to prison, the thought of someone just removing me from.my life for 5 years is terrifying. The idea of just losing 5 years of your life, 5 years of growth and development, 5 years of socialization, and 5 years of building relationships. Without even considering the actual harm prison does in general, just the idea of missing out on your life is terrifying to me.
I'm 27, when I look back at my life at 22 and think where I would be if the last 5 years of my life never happened, that would be devastating and stunt the rest of my life.
As children we would often be made to stand on our tip toes when we were in the corner. The pain was excruciating after a few minutes and if we stopped then our timer was reset.
Sitting against the wall. Usually easy for the first few minutes, but after a while you definitely feel it.
It's torture to be tied to a chair.
and a drop of water drips on your head every second.
It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it can drive you crazy in 24 hours.
Being sentenced to listen to a same song over and over on a loop. Seems fine since I do this anyway but when it's forced onto you and you do not have a choice, that becomes a different story.
for me, it depends on which song. there are multiple songs that i would be more than happy to listen to hours on end. but if im forced to listen to some cocomelon s**t...hell nah
Extra Duty in the Army.
It's not losing rank, or losing money... You're not going to jail...
But then you're up until 2AM every day polishing the same floor, re-arranging rock-garden rocks or sweeping rain out of the motor-pool, and you've still got to be at work at 6:30AM (since the minimum amount of sleep for soldiers per-regulation is (or was, they seem to have at least started to figure out how dumb this is) 4hrs/night)...
And you work from 6:30 to 2 on the weekends (doing the aforementioned tasks) while everyone else has free time.
For between 15 and 45 days.
Bamboo shoots.
Hear me out, it's far worse than sticking shoots up your fingernails. The horrific part is the bamboo shoots are still planted in the ground. They continue growing *through your fingers*. Bamboo grows very rapidly. If you don't talk today, you might tomorrow.
Not just used for torture on fingers, either. It was a common method of execution. They would hang prisoners above a bamboo shoot. After a day or so, the bamboo penetrates their body and they eventually die by impaling. It took a few days.
Imagine being impaled in slow motion by a plant.
Learned this one from a friend (she was a history student) in grad school. She found this story in some old book in a library when doing research for a paper.
The book version was surely much better but I'll relate it as best as I can! I have mentioned this before on here but it's a pretty perfect story for this question.
____
There was some European King in the late middle-ages. He really liked his dogs. He had several dogs, staff on hand to train them, and demanded that they be shown the highest respect, even moreso than the Dukes / other members of his royal court.
He would also allow them free reign to roam around even at fancy banquets, and God help you if you denied them some of your food.
Well, apparently one day at some sort of formal dinner or event, one of the King's beloved dogs got up on the lap of a duke. The duke tried to show respect and allowed the dog to get up on him, but as the dog began panting in his face, the duke gagged and retched from the dog breath. (I imagine him turning his face away, fanning the air, maybe even pushing the dog off him, lol)
The King, seeing this, was **livid**. He summoned his guards and issued the following sentence on the Duke:
"Take him to the dungeon. Bind him and lay him down, face up. For a period of 2 weeks, he is to smell dog breath day and night. Work with my dog trainers and make sure he doesn't spend a single waking moment without a dog panting in his face. Rotate the dogs every few minutes so he cannot adjust to the smell."
(He was allowed 6 hours a night to sleep and a couple meal/drink breaks to keep him alive, but that was it. 18 hours a day of dog breath).
During summer camp for bad children there was a punishment that they took your thumbs and tied them to your wrist, not too tight of course but with a strong piece of rope.
It looks like a fun and "what the hell" at first, but then you find out that almost everything you are doing with your hands is done or supported by thumb.
tied to your wrist like it was bent in a weird way, or tied like it was just immobilized and you were constantly giving everyone a thumbs up?
There's a pretty gruesome one from cavalry units in the military back in the day (until fairly recently). I've heard it go by different names but the one used in the book I was reading (college research) was **"Riding Under Tail"**.
The "Keelhauling of the Cavalry," Apparently it was the most severe and feared punishment in many cavalry units, reserved for the worst offenses.
The offending soldier was made to ride his horse sitting backwards, and towards the rear. He was then made to start leaning down, bending over and straightening out, until his face was right up to the horse's rear end (literally less than an inch away).
He would then be bound tightly in that position, particularly around the neck.
Another soldier would ride the horse from the saddle, and the offending soldier would be made to endure a full day's ride from this position.
Long divisions … this was the standard punishment in my senior grade school for acting up before the advent of calculators. There would be at least 30 numbers in dividend and 5 in the divisor. And … then you’d have to prove your answer was correct by having to multiply it out so it matched the starting dividend. I’m ashamed to say I became an expert in doing them.
When I was a kid my parents punished me by having to sit on the living room couch. First time for a day, second time for 5 days. So it was get up, shower, eat, sit on the couch until the bus comes, come home, do homework, sit on the couch until bed.
It was brutal.
Try that sitting at the dining room table. My father and his wife were rather sadistic.
You ever have to peel an entire bag of sunflower seeds? Like no stopping ? No thanks
Mandatory silence at a monastery: At first it just sounds like a peaceful retreat, but after weeks without speaking, the inability to express even the simplest thought can drive a person to the brink of madness
LOL, no. There are many other ways to communicate without speaking.
Nice list ! You can talk about being impaled by bamboos or wearing wet socks 🤷🏽
Using a wedge of raw garlic to create a blister to get rid of warts. I was told to do it until the blister was wider than the wart, and had to repeat when it didn't go all away. The intensity of pain as the acid ate away my skin slowly has always been pain I compare all others to, probably why I have too high a tolerance.
Nice list ! You can talk about being impaled by bamboos or wearing wet socks 🤷🏽
Using a wedge of raw garlic to create a blister to get rid of warts. I was told to do it until the blister was wider than the wart, and had to repeat when it didn't go all away. The intensity of pain as the acid ate away my skin slowly has always been pain I compare all others to, probably why I have too high a tolerance.
