shaming

This page considers other public 'naming and shaming schemes', including publishing photographs of offenders on billboards and making offenders wear sandwich boards.

It covers -

• introduction
• billboards and other boards
• the digital pillory?
• studies

Abuses involving use of webcams in US police stations and prisons are highlighted elsewhere on this site. A recent development, likely to be just as contentious but more emulated, is publication of DUI offender mugshots on large billboards and a website under the auspices of the Maricopa (Phoenix, Arizona) county attorney.

Maricopa has attracted international attention for measures such as forcing prison inmates into pink underwear (and only underwear) and streaming video of alleged criminals (some of whom may not subsequently be convicted by a court) undergoing strip searches.

Such measures have unsurprisingly been criticised as extrajudicial punishment of guilty and innocent alike and as an ineffective public shaming.

The billboard and website initiative, launched in November 2007, involves publication of photographs of convicted drunk drivers. The billboards feature the tagline 'Drive drunk, see your mug shot here' and the name of the county attorney, an elected official who has justified the measure as both educational (alerting the public to drink driving laws) and a deterrent. A spokesman commented that

People tend to like it, and it gets a message across to the offender. We haven't heard any complaints.

Points of entry to the US literature include Dan Markel's 'Are Shaming Punishments Beautifully Retributive? Retributivism and the Implications for the Alternative Sanctions Debate' in 54(6) Vanderbilt Law Review (2001) 2157-2242, Aaron Book's 'Shame on You: An Analysis of Modern Shame Punishment as an Alternative to Incarceration' in 40 William & Mary Law Review (1999) 653, James Whitman's 'What Is Wrong with Inflicting Shame Sanctions?' in 107 Yale Law Journal (1998) 1055 and Toni Massaro's 'Shame, Culture, and American Criminal Law' in 89 Michigan Law Review (1991) 1880.

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