Err, actually if you look into this, there's a huge wealth of statistics out there which demonstrate that capital punishment does not deter crime. In fact, as an example, murder rates are higher in US states that have capital punishment than those who do not.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-about-deterrence-and-death-penalty
Of course I cannot make this example using the UK, because the UK does not have capital punishment. But the same logic can be applied to corporal punishment.
You mentioned bringing back stocks earlier? Are you serious? You want the entire country to revert back to a medieval form of punishment? In what way is that moving forward as a civilisation? Furthermore, if stocks were such a deterrent, surely they would never have had to use them, right? The very fact that these various barbaric punishments are regularly used starkly demonstrates their utter failure to act as a deterrent.
Honestly, the Daily Mail overtones in this thread would be amusing if they weren't a tragic sign of the unnecessary hysteria that is becoming all too common these days. In the grander scheme of things, the UK has a very manageable rate of crime - yes, this story about this elderly woman is horrifying, but is this happening on a daily basis? No. So why totally reform punishment laws and revert back a few centuries in terms of judicial methodology?
I'm not a bleeding heart; I believe that there should be consequences for crimes. But at the same time, you cannot ignore the patterns that we see in the majority of criminals - people who come from deprived backgrounds, abusive childhoods, violent surroundings and other negative factors. These things breed criminally-minded people, and should be the primary focus in the battle to deal with the problem of crime. Simply punishing crime does nothing to combat the attitudes that lead to people committing them; that story in the BBC yesterday about the burglar who wrote a rude letter to the owner of the house he burgled just demonstrates the root of the problem of so much crime in this country: a sense of entitlement and a lack of respect for others that has developed in certain parts of our society, largely as a result of the factors I mentioned above. Beating people or putting them in stocks does not create respect. On the contrary is breeds fear and resentment.