Cole Stryker What Is Wrong With Public Shaming

What does it mean to be publicly shamed? Have you ever been publicly shamed? These are all great questions that come to mind when you consider the world we live in today. Author Jon Ronson does a wonderful job answering these questions in his bestselling book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed. Throughout the book, Ronson takes the reader into the lives of those who have been publicly shamed.

Public shaming has been around for a long time. Back in the 1700s it was very popular, especially with the Puritans. Literature such as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible show examples of such public shaming and punishments. Hester Prynne is made an example by the colony’s leaders by forcing her to wear a red A on her clothing. By doing this along with public hangings seen in The Crucible by Arthur Miller, people would follow the rules because they do not want to end up like the example set before them. Although there are not public hangings like in The Crucible, at least not in America, there are still forms of public shaming that are sentenced by courts. Public shaming as a punishment to criminals can be fair and just depending upon the crime and whether the judge takes things too far; it can also be effective in making the criminal not want to do what he did again.

In the article, “ Condemn the Crime, Not the Person,” published in the Boston Globe on August 5th, 2001, Tangney argues against the public shaming policy as a method for punishment. She reports that while the judges are searching for creative alternatives to traditional sentences, public shaming stands out as a beneficial method. However, scientific evidence proves that there are disadvantages to this implementation. Tangney notes that public shaming; instead of leading people to constructive changes, it belittles individuals and leads them to do a number of defensive tactics such as being aggressive toward others. On the other hand, guilt, which is a sense of remorse, fosters constructive changes in behavior.

Dan M. Kahan argues in his article “Shame Is Worth a Try” that people who understand the potential of shaming know that it is “cheap, efficient, and an appropriate alternative to short jail sentences” (571).

When justifying a punishment, American adjudicators look for five reasons to justify the punishment: incapacitation, restitution, deterrence, rehabilitations and retribution. Out of these five reasons only three apply to “doxxing” and even then they are classified as deeply noted social ills (racism, sexism and homophobia) to shame others. Stryker continually states that people are bound to impulses they hate.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of Braithwaite’s reintegrative shaming theory. This will be accomplished by providing a description of the theory before examining the literature surrounding its strengths and weaknesses. The strengths of the theory surround its novel concepts, utility amongst academics and its policy implications. On the contrary, the weaknesses of the theory surround its limited empirical evidence, its ambiguous terminology and its impracticability towards certain offences and certain offenders.

It’s common to argue that a perpetrator “deserves” to be shamed, but in fact human psychology doesn’t work this way. Many pedophiles, for instance, recognize that that they are inexorably—even biologically—bound to impulses that they themselves loathe. Does the shaming—through public registries for example—cause the pedophile to reform? Unlikely. Does it deter others from engaging in pedophilic acts, or does it drive them to darker corners and sneakier tactics?

As an individual, it’s a part of life to make plenty of mistakes, but is public shaming the answer to solving it? In todays’ society, punishment for people is completely different from back in the Puritan days. For example, in the novel the Scarlett Letter, Hester Prynne commits adultery, which leads her to having to wear the letter “A” on her chest, which is a form of public humiliation but in this sense, it’s not right. This is Hester Prynne’s sin that she committed that she lives with forever and it shouldn’t be any of the public business for her to be humiliated even more. This is a form of public ridicule, reintegrative shaming where attention can be drawn by wrong doing, and in order for you to learn in life you have make some mistakes . Public shaming is immoral in today’s society because as an individual that has done something wrong, you will start to feel like an outcast besides having to endure humiliation for your actions.

Around the globe, violence and hatred between races, authority, and civilians rage among the streets of our communities. Various chapter-based organizations for certain races have been created such as ¨Black Lives Matter¨ that raise awareness for the many people that have been treated unfairly or have lost their lives for no reason at all. For the most part the biggest problem for these types of organizations are the ones holding the gun, the police. The population is always quick to blame the ones behind the badge, but no one seems to look at the big picture. The popular organization Black Lives matter has made Law Enforcement a staple for fear, and hate for everyone who catches them in the streets. Once, police officers were our heroes and

Most people believe that public humiliation is cruel and unusual punishment, yet it seems to be the only thing working. Doxxing is when you take someone's personal info -info such as social security numbers or address- and post it for the world to see. Some people still see doxxing as ineffective and just flat out wrong as discussed Cole Stryker in “The Problem with Public Shaming” written in The Nation, Stryker notions that public shaming doesn't work and that people need to talk about its effects on people all around the world. Stryker discusses how doxxing and Scarlet Letters are one in the same and are equally bad to do, he even “And when it slithers its tentacles in a person’s life, we become desperate for some way to fight back—to

The world of Law Enforcement is something that often gets laughed at, especially in this day and age. People don’t respect Law Enforcement, or even care about them, as much as they actually should. After all, who comes to find the culprit if your home has been burglarized? Or what about a loved one being killed, who finds the murderer? There are so many things that everyday citizens forget about, things that happen more often than we’d like to admit, and we should be thankful that we have people to deal with all of it for us. Why would you let the action, poor judgement, or any mistake of one single person affect the way you see an entire group? That’s like saying every German is a Nazi, and they all hate Jews.

Our society shows how racism and police officers are a focal point within our country. In the United States, many police officers demonstrate racist qualities. Research states that many police officers are only patrolling around predominately African American neighborhoods. People agree that police officers are just sitting in areas where African Americans live instead of just sitting anywhere and waiting for any crimes. (Martin, Trayvon. Racial Profiling). Polices are just waiting for African Americans to make a mistake. Most Police Officers haven’t changed their ways on racism. “Diallo was gunned down by NYPD officers while trying to enter his apartment building. The officers had mistaken Diallo for a suspected rapist—who was also black’’ (Martin, Trayvon. Racial Profiling). NYPD killed an innocent man because he was African American and he looked like the guy they were looking for. Therefore, this just proves police officers have not changed their racist

These days, police are often stereotyped as aggressive, corrupt beings. The growing hatred for police officers widens the divide between citizens and law enforcement, causing tension and intensely aggressive feelings on both ends. The recent shootings of young African-American men have also added to the societal hatred of law enforcement. Through media exposure, these shootings have been portrayed as cruel, often times revealing the victim to be an unarmed man.

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change”(Brené Brown). In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a woman is publicly shamed for having a child with a man who is not her husband. Another example of public shame can be seen in modern day articles “Florida ‘Scarlet Letter’ Law is Repealed by Gov. Bush,” by Dana Canedy, and “Houston Couple Gets ‘The Scarlet Letter’ Treatment.” Both talk of public shame that people have had to endure in the present day. Public shaming is not an effective punishment because it is a cruel and unusual punishment, it does not deter crime, and it can emotionally traumatize the one being shamed.

The punishment of criminals in our modern society is most commonly achieved via jail time, fines, and community service, however, recently some judges are putting into practice the more archaic and controversial punishment of public shaming. The history of public humiliation is long, but it most notably played a large role in puritan New England where criminals were routinely sentenced to be dramatically humiliated by the public as retribution for their crimes. Following the revolutionary war it steadily became less common as our society began favoring other forms of punishment until the 1990s when support for the practice rose again (Reutter). What proponents of court issued shame based punishment may not realize or fully understand is