What A Shame

by digby

There’s been quite an outcry in China (and here) about the recent public shaming of prostitutes. Everyone seems to acknowledge that there is something inherently discomfiting about this use public humiliation.

But it reminded me of a famous essay by someone you don’t usually associate with totalitarian practices — the godfather of communitarianism, Amitai Etzioni, who wrote some twenty years ago:

Public humiliation is a surprisingly effective and low-cost way of deterring criminals and expressing the moral order of a community. It is used by a few judges, but much too sparingly. Some jurisdictions publish the names of “Johns” who are caught frequenting prostitutes.

Lincoln County in Oregon will plea-bargain with a criminal only if he first puts an advertisement in a local newspaper, apologizing for his crime. This is limited, in practice, to nonviolent criminals, including some burglars and thieves. The ad includes the criminal’s picture and is paid for by him. Judges in Sarasota, Fla., and in Midwest City, Okla., have required people caught driving while under the influence to display an easy-to-see sticker on their cars: “Convicted of Drunken Driving.”

When I mention public shaming to my social-science colleagues, their first reaction is a mixture of disbelief and horror. Such punishment seems some how to violate people’s rights, to be dehumanizing. But what is the alternative if one grants that criminals ought to be punished?

[…]

Some people respond that such penalties remind them of the stars Jews were made to wear in Nazi Germany. However, the main problem with these insignia was that they were imposed on innocent people, on the basis of creed. Marking those convicted in open court, after due process, seems a legitimate use of such a device.

Possibly people object to “psychological punishment” as an alternative to imprisonment precisely because it is public and thus highly visible. They may prefer to shut criminals away, out of town, out of sight, rather than face reminders of their own unsavory inclinations. Maybe they feel that if they were caught with a prostitute or driving drunk, they would rather not see their own names in the paper. That is no reason to suggest psychological punishment is a poor public policy.

[…]

We need more courage and creativity: Should we shave the heads of convicted first-offender teen-agers caught selling hard drugs? (It beats incarceration in “correctional institutions.”) Should we require them to carry placards listing their transgressions and calling on others to desist? Other methods are sure to be found once we look for ways to say “shame on you” to those who committed a crime, and to create opportunities for them to express publicly their shame, penance and regrets.

When I first read this, my immediate thought was that in many cases we weren’t talking about “crimes” at all — and if these behaviors needed to be regulated or punished in some way, that public shaming was the absolute worst way to do it. I certainly agreed that we would no doubt find “other methods.” There is no end to the variations of creative humiliations people can devise if given sanction to inflict them. (Abu Ghraib anyone?)

Public, degrading, humiliating affronts to human dignity, institutionalizing phony pretentions of moral superiority, enlisting the public to inflict punishment in the form of social ostracism all seem like Theodore Dreiser novels turned into social science. I recalled that essay when I saw the story about the Chinese prostitutes because it had clarified something for me that I hadn’t thought of before: that there was a side to communitarianism that I really recoiled against on a visceral level. There seemed to me to be a great temptation to force conformity through coercive social means.

To me, the idea of institutionalizing community bully tactics and moral scolding as a legitimate tool of the state is nothing short of hell on earth. I’d rather live in a totalitarian political environment any day than a totalitarian social environment that is backed by the rule of law and enforced by James Dobson and Lynn Cheney. (We don’t actually have to imagine this. We already lived it.)

The idea has gone on to become quite popular, however, in certain legal circles and is used in courtrooms throughout the nation. The rightwing has joined with the communitarians with an enthusiastic backing of such clever punishments. (One called it “beautifully retributive.“) I continue to be appalled at the notion of enlisting the community to administer public shame as a criminal punishment. This is not to say that there is no such thing as creative sentencing, there can be great utility in forcing someone to face the person against whom they transgressed, for instance, and personally offer an apology or some sort of compensation. These are called “guilt punishments” and are not the same thing as public shaming.

Shame is a powerful, primal thing and it’s been a socially useful tool since humans were still in caves. But shame is a very short hop to repression and in the hands of the powerful or the mob it can be used for social purposes that have less to do with regulating bad behavior and more to do with sending messages to the community about the dangers of individualism.

The Chinese used it as a form of political represssion during the cultural revolution and that memory is fresh enough that last week’s little pageant was protested by many throughout the country. I wonder if there would be outrage in this country if prostitutes were paraded through a town in certain parts of America? I would hope so, but I’m really not sure.

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