‘To knock the cudgel out of the enforcer’s hand’: the Serbian Parliament on the abolishment of corporal punishment

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1873, the Serbian government proposed to abolish corporal punishment from the Criminal Code. (Since 1860, it existed in the form of beating of up to 50 strikes.) While the parliamentary committee supported this amendment, listing five arguments in favour of the abolishment, the opinions in the plenum were divided. Some MPs supported it, seeing corporal punishment as anachronistic, or underlining inequalities and abuse involved in its application. However, some thought that prison could not serve as a sufficient deterrent to potential offenders, and they feared that abolishing beating would lead to an increase in crime rates. The discussion was concluded by a long speech of Đorđe Cenić, Minister of Justice (and author of the amendment), after which the proposal was accepted with a prevailing majority. This article will analyse the MPs’ attitudes towards this form of punishment, Cenić’s influence both as a political figure and as an expert on criminal law, and the arguments given by both sides, while attempting to place the analysed case into a broader legal-political framework.