Some people in the U.S., and even the UK too, were surprised to learn that shooting someone with a water gun is illegal. That's what happened to actor Tom Cruise in 2005 in London, UK as part of a prank. Cruise had the men arrested, but later agreed not to press charges. But of course any kind of threat that leads to any physical contact that the person finds offensive is illegal. And they are not allowed in prisons in the western world, including in the U.S. The last flogging in the United States was in Delaware in 1952. And cases, like Johnson v. Glick in 1973 with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, established standards for a correctional officer's use of force too. And punishment should never be humiliating either. In 1993 Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio started making inmates wear things like pink underwear, when he opened the infamous Tent City there. Wearing pink underwear wouldn't seem like much to you or me. But for certain classes of people, like criminals, it can be humiliating. And that is the point of the human rights abuses that go on in places like prisons, and in the military too with things like waterboarding at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba in the early 2000's. They are often things that seem harmless. But any punishment, or treatment, that involves any physical contact, or is humiliating (even in a supposedly "funny" way), is just plain wrong. And it must be outlawed in all its forms. The world has long recognized human rights abuses by doctors, and places like mental hospitals. But it has only begun to recognize the rights of prison inmates too (who often are mentally ill or mentally deficient, or just born into poverty), with things like the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners at the UN in 1955.
