# Judicial corporal punishment today > Judicial caning and flogging as they exist now: where courts still order them, what the UN position is, who they land on, and why none of it is consensual. - Canonical URL: https://consensualspanking.co.uk/judicial-corporal-punishment/ - Section: About - Updated: November 2026 (2026-11-01) - Audience: consenting adults over 18 only. Everything on this site concerns consenting adults over 18. Courts in a small number of countries still sentence people to be caned or flogged. This page sets out where that happens and who it lands on, which is the part usually left out. I have written it because a site that carries judicial roleplay owes its readers the real thing somewhere alongside it. --- ## In short - Judicial corporal punishment means a beating ordered by a court as a criminal sentence. Prison discipline was a separate system. - As of August 2026, and liable to change, so check a current source: judicial caning in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei; caning under Sharia law in Aceh province, Indonesia; flogging in Iran, and by Taliban courts in Afghanistan. Sudan dropped flogging for many offences in 2020, and the Saudi Arabian Supreme Court abolished it as a court punishment in April 2020. - The UN Convention against Torture is the governing instrument, and the bodies that interpret it treat judicial corporal punishment as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. - Nobody sentenced to it consented to it. Human rights reporting describes it landing on people without money or representation, migrant workers heavily among them. Judicial corporal punishment means a beating ordered by a court, as the sentence for a criminal offence, and carried out by officials of the state. It is the opposite of everything else on this site, which is between consenting adults over 18. The phrase covers less ground than people assume. Punishment inside a prison for breaking prison rules was a separate thing, ordered by the institution rather than by a judge. Britain had both and gave each of them up on a different date, which I have set out on the [history of corporal punishment in Britain](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/history-of-corporal-punishment/). Before anything else, and said only once. Nobody described on this page agreed to what happened to them. They were sentenced, they could not leave the room, and there is no word any of them could have said that would have stopped it. Most had no money and no legal representation worth the name. A large number were foreign workers a long way from anybody who would make a fuss on their behalf. Everything else on this site involves two adults who chose it and can end it. This page describes something else entirely. > **This page will go out of date.** I wrote this in August 2026. Corporal punishment laws get amended, suspended, revived and quietly stopped being used, and a page accurate on the day it goes up drifts within a year or two. If you need to know where something stands now, go to one of the organisations listed at the bottom rather than to a website. ## Where it is still used As I write, judicial caning is in use in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei. In Indonesia, the province of Aceh administers caning under Sharia law, which the rest of the country does not. Iran uses flogging as a judicial punishment. In Afghanistan, courts under the Taliban have ordered public floggings since late 2022, and the UN mission there reports them regularly. Sudan is harder to place: its 2020 reforms removed flogging as a penalty for many offences, and the war that began in 2023 makes it difficult to say what its courts now do. Saudi Arabia used to, and its Supreme Court abolished flogging as a court punishment in April 2020, which was a substantial change and matters if you last read anything about this before then. That list is short because I restricted it to what I could verify. Corporal penalties sit on the statute books of a number of other countries, sometimes unused for years, sometimes applied by courts operating well outside anything a British reader would recognise as a legal process. Where a country is not named above, I am making no claim about it either way. ## The international position The governing instrument is the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted in 1984 and in force from 1987. The UN bodies that interpret it treat judicial corporal punishment as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. I state that as fact because it is one. It is the settled reading of the relevant bodies rather than a position anybody needs me to argue for. States that continue to use these penalties either dispute that reading or have never accepted the obligations in question. The disagreement is real and nowhere near resolved. ## Who it actually falls on This is the part that drops out of the short summaries, and I think it is the most important thing on the page. A sentence like this does not land evenly across a population. What human rights reporting describes, in country after country, is much the same pattern: the people sentenced are poor. Many have no lawyer of any use to them, and some have no lawyer at all. Migrant workers appear repeatedly, sometimes for immigration offences, and a migrant worker is close to the least defended person any legal system contains. They may not speak the language of the court. They usually have no family in the country. In some places an employer holds the passport, and objecting to anything is the quickest way to lose the job that brought them there. Beyond the reporting, my own view is that this survives partly because it is cheap. Prisons cost money and need staff and buildings. A caning takes minutes and almost nothing else, and it happens to people in no position to make trouble about it afterwards. ## Why this sits awkwardly next to the rest of the site There is a page here about [tribunal and formal sentence scenes](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/scenes/formal-and-judicial/): two adults reading out a charge, pronouncing a number and carrying it out between them. I have run scenes in that register myself, from both sides of the desk, and the formality does something for people that warmth cannot. So I am in no position to pretend the imagery has nothing to do with me. A great deal of British spanking interest borrows from formal punishment, and the borrowing is not accidental or incidental. The procedure, the number announced in advance, the sentence recorded as served, the dismissal that closes the matter: those are the parts people want, and every one of them comes from somewhere real. The difference between the two situations is total. It has nothing to do with severity, or with how convincing a scene is. A person in a formal scene chose it, negotiated it, can stop it inside a second, and goes home to a life that is unchanged. A person sentenced by a court chose nothing, can stop nothing, and is consulted at no point. The two share a set of props and nothing else. I do not think that resolves into anything tidy, and I would be suspicious of an account that made it resolve. The appeal is real. The source of the imagery is real, and is happening this month to somebody who never agreed to it. Neither fact cancels the other. Knowing where the furniture came from strikes me as the least anybody can do. ## Where to read about this properly I am not a lawyer and I am not a human rights researcher. I have no professional standing on this subject. What is above is a summary by an interested amateur who has checked what he asserts and said openly where he could not. Take it as orientation and go to the people whose job it is. - [Amnesty International](https://www.amnesty.org), which documents corporal punishment as part of its country reporting. - [Human Rights Watch](https://www.hrw.org), the same, with more detailed case material in some countries. - [UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights](https://www.ohchr.org), which holds the treaty material, including the Convention against Torture and the reports states are required to submit under it. Search those three for the country you actually want. I have linked only to their front doors, because report addresses and country pages move and break constantly. Their material is current. Mine is a snapshot taken in August 2026 by somebody with no particular authority. I have also not linked to the enthusiast archives that collect this material. They exist, they are easy enough to find, and they present the punishment of real people who did not consent as something to be enjoyed. That is the one use of this subject I am not willing to point anybody towards. ## Read next - [A history of corporal punishment in Britain](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/history-of-corporal-punishment/) - [The birch](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/implements/birch/) - [Tribunal and formal sentence scenes](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/scenes/formal-and-judicial/) - [Is consensual spanking legal in the UK?](https://consensualspanking.co.uk/uk/is-it-legal/) ## Sources 1. United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted 1984, in force 1987. ## Common questions ### Which countries still use judicial caning or flogging? Judicial caning is currently used in Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei, and the Indonesian province of Aceh administers caning under Sharia law. Iran uses flogging as a court-ordered punishment, and in Afghanistan courts under the Taliban have ordered public floggings since late 2022. Sudan removed flogging for many offences in 2020. Saudi Arabia stopped: its Supreme Court abolished flogging as a court punishment in April 2020. Other jurisdictions keep corporal penalties on the statute book, the position changes, and a current source such as Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch will be more reliable than any list on a website. ### Is judicial corporal punishment against international law? The main instrument is the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the bodies that interpret it treat judicial corporal punishment as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. States that still use these penalties either dispute that reading or have never accepted the obligations in question. ### Is judicial caning the same thing as consensual caning between adults? No, and the gap is total rather than a question of severity. A judicial caning is imposed by a state on somebody who had no say in it, cannot stop it once it starts, and has nobody to appeal to in the room. Consensual spanking between adults is arranged by both people in advance and can be ended by either of them in a second. The imagery of formal punishment does turn up in adult roleplay, and that borrowing does not make the two comparable.