I was in day care one day as a small child when another child threw a ball of clay and it hit the woman who was watching us. She did not see who had thrown the ball of clay but for some reason decided I was the one who had done it.

My mother worked at the day care but was away on a vacation that week. She had told the director of the day care that she was allowed to spank me if I acted up.

I was taken to a broom closet and told to drop my pants so that this woman who was not my parent and who was only going on the words of another adult could spank me.

I was then put in timeout for the rest of the day. I also was spanked again when my mother returned from her vacation and the day care center director explained what (she believed) had happened.

I did nothing wrong, but I was still subjected to corporal (and illegal) punishment because my mother wanted to make sure I "learned my lesson" or whatever bullshit excuses that adults like you seem to think will come of subjecting children to violent retribution for their transgressions.

The only lesson I learned that day is that I should never trust those who have power over me. They don't care if they are punishing the person who committed "the crime." They just care that they are punishing someone.

Adults who think that physical violence is the only way to change the behavior of people who break the rules or who commit violent acts are nothing more than bullies themselves.

Tell me something, if I came up to you, told you that I'm going to punch you in the face (or cane you, or literally any other form of painful physical punishment) until you learn that your viewpoint is incorrect, would it cause you to change your mind, or would it simply cause you to resent me and start working to find a way to hurt me back.

Why would you think that the threat of physical violence against miscreants, child or adult, would cause them to act in any way different from how you would react?

It won’t work, we have literal piles of research showing that severity of punishment is not an effective deterrent, and to an incredible degree for children. They tend to either not think of consequences, or have youthful hubris and be certain they won’t get caught (even when they have in the past, I got spanked numerous times for the same exact things).

I would go so far as to bet it will have the opposite effect. Nothing legitimizes using violence to affect the behavior of others like the state doing it to you. I doubt they have the introspection to recognize the difference between state and personal violence, the message they’ll get is “might makes right”.

Those countries have structurally different cultures, economies and governments. Eg Singapore has a median household income that rivals or exceeds the US, in a part of the world where that makes them fabulously wealthy compared to their neighbors. That alone is a huge crime deterrent; why steal stuff you could just buy off whatever their Amazon is? They’re also a fairly small island, so it’s way easier to control drugs getting in.

TLDR Singapore and Japan have low crime rates that likely have nothing to do with severe punishments.

My sister had an interesting take on this:

"These countries also directly take care of their citizens, which I think is an important factor. Other societies will let you be homeless and say it is your fault for being broke even when employers terminate you purely for economic reasons or when there simply aren't enough jobs to go around. That backdrop contributes to desperation and predatory mindsets."

I disagree with her though, because that sounds communistic and can only lead to empty store shelves, tattered housing blocs, and the state preventing me from listening to the same rock music songs I've heard since the 1970's.