Officer Beth Timmins liked her job at the Female Corporal Punishment Center #3 very much. The pay was fairly modest, though more than she had made at her previous job as a "Sales Associate" at the local branch of a large chain of discount stores. But, aside from that, her job at the Center came with the full benefits of a civil service position-health insurance, paid vacation, a 401k plan and the like. It was certainly a pretty good package for this area for someone without a college degree.

Moreover, Beth liked her colleagues. Her boss, Sergeant Sue Miller, who was the senior officer at the facility, could sometimes be a bit rough, but Beth supposed that wasn't surprising or terribly out of place in the circumstances, dealing with the dregs and misfits of society as they did in this line of work. In any event, she had been very helpful acclimatizing Beth to the job when she had started out.

She had a good relationship as well with George, the man who actually delivered the punishment to the naked buttocks of the offenders who were paying their debt to society in this facility. Although he spent a good part of his day dealing with naked female offenders, he kept a professional demeanor and delivered his court-ordered lashes with unfailing severity to all alike.

She had also liked the doctor who had been the Medical Officer at the facility until a couple of weeks ago, Priya Raman. She had left to take a very fancy job with some pharmaceutical company that had a cream that healed wounds, like the one that George's rattan put into the flesh of the suffering women unfortunate enough to have been sentenced to a session at their facility. Beth had enjoyed working with Priya, who treated her and Sue as equals, not the way some doctors looked down on everyone who wasn't a member of their profession, like nurses and technicians.

The Department of Corrections was looking to hire a permanent replacement for Priya, but it seemed a lot of doctors weren't keen on taking a job such as this, since the pay was less than what they could make in a private practice or hospital and some didn't want to be associated with deliberately causing pain to criminals.

Priya hadn't seemed concerned with that. Beth had asked her a few times what had led her to give up her previous job and take this one. Priya had been a bit vague, though it seemed the regular hours were a big attraction. In the meantime, the Center was served by rotating doctors from other DoC facilities.

And what of the offenders, the reason for the existence of this Center? Beth had to admit that at first, the notion that women like herself were made to strip, strapped down to a frame and subjected to a flogging had given her pause. Beth had never felt the rattan herself, of course, but the force with which George delivered the strokes and the writhing and screams of anguish they provoked gave her every reason to imagine that they were horribly painful.

At one time or another, she would imagine herself suffering on the frame and wondered how she would react. Would she be stoic, like some of the offenders, taking at least the initial lashes in silence, before finally breaking? Or would she be one of those who shouted their protests from the beginning?

She had even, once or twice, thought about asking Sue whether she could try getting a single stroke, just to see what it felt like and how she would handle it, but she didn't dare, for fear of being thought weird. Besides, she was fairly sure that such a trial caning would violate all kinds of Department rules. So, Beth would just have to wonder, unless she went and violated the law, which would likely get her fired, so she wasn't about to do that.

Probably the best part of the job for Beth was the stripping. That was when the women, whatever their background, all became equal, naked and vulnerable, their bodies no longer their own, but property of the State.

Beth found the different body types, skin tones, blemishes and adornments on display interesting. She wasn't a lesbian-she liked men and had had several boyfriends over time, though she was single right now-but sometimes she felt a tingle down below staring at all that girl flesh.

And the feeling of power, being fully clothed while the offenders had to be naked, appealed to Beth, even though she wasn't proud of that. Her previous jobs had no authority, she had been a drone, serving customers and having to obey managers who were often petty and overbearing.

Here, by contrast, while she worked under Sue and had to follow Department rules, she could be bossy and dismissive of the offenders. In fact, Sue often encouraged her to be more commanding than Beth's natural inclinations would have led her to be. "Show, those bitches, who's in charge!" Sue liked to say. And Beth found herself doing that more and more as time went on.

She knew that the purpose of the punishment was a full behavioral modification. Strip the offenders of their old ways and impress upon them the need to obey the law. Did it work? Well, Beth couldn't recall too many women who had re-offended and returned for a second punishment session, though the program hadn't been in place long enough to be sure.

Nevertheless, Beth couldn't help feeling sympathy for many of the offenders. The majority were women from disadvantaged backgrounds-minorities and poor whites-often with drug problems. Many had been busted for drug offenses or for shoplifting or prostitution to support their habits. Priya had put in place a program to help them, which seemed to be doing some good.

Beth had less sympathy for those from good homes, with plenty of advantages in life, who screwed up through their own stupidity. They had seen a number of students from the fancy school in town, Dorsbury College, who were busted for stupid pranks like vandalizing college buildings or for underage drinking or DWI.

And then, more recently, there had been students and even faculty who had been protesting corporal punishment and were busted for violence or disobeying police orders. They had just had two students caned at the facility, and a third caned together with her mother, who had been a professor at Dorsbury before taking a job in Chicago.

The professor, Susan Gelden, had taught Priya when she had been a student and there was some backstory, the details of which Beth wasn't clear on.

 

What she was clear on was that these protestors were threatening her job and Sue's and George's, or would if the public paid any attention to them, which they didn't. Even though the state legislators, several of whom had shown up to witness the caning of the mother and daughter, showed no sign of wanting to change the law, Beth wasn't happy to have the Center be a target of public protests.

In fact, on the list for this week, was another protestor, a professor at the College named Barbara Moore, who had chained herself to the door of Judge Powers' courtroom, along with a couple of students, as a protest.

His Honor, known as "Maximum Marty" for his tendency to award towards the upper range of the sentencing guidelines, hadn't appreciated the stunt at all and had sentenced Professor Moore to eighteen strokes of the cane for obstructing government operations. Beth was looking forward to their date.