The main role of public shame is teaching different people lessons. A good example here could be that of the NFL players when there was an incident in which a Miami Dolphins player had to quit for the fear of harassment by the teammates. In defending himself, the other player maintained that it was just a locker room talking and that it would not be a big issue. It was however interesting because the bullying had also taken place over a text message. This resulted in the player being publicly disgraced for harassing a colleague in addition to being racist. This, therefore, made him learn their lesson on the crimes they had committed as well as suffering the consequences of such actions because even up to now everyone knows and understands him as a bully. Upon reading the two essays “Shame is Worth a Try” by Kahan and “Condemn the Crime Not the Person” by June Tangney, one is able to notice the two sides of public shame. June Tangney’s work does not support the claim of the use of public shame whereas in contrast, Shame Is Worth a Try by Kahan supports and states the importance and effectiveness of the use of public shame as a form of punishment (Bazelon, 305). People can as well argue public shaming as an efficient punishment form, especially for the minor offenders to inflict the feeling of loss of self-worth as well as that one of public humiliation as a deterrent to the commitment of crimes. This article contributes to the social changes by identification of the public humiliation in courts as well as challenging its practice keeping with the thesis according to Kahan’s Shame is Worth a Try and Tangney’s Condemn the Crime Not the Person arguments that, a decent society is known to be the one that never uses institutions to humiliate its citizens.
Arguments
The return of judicial moral shaming of offenders in court has been influencing the final outcome of a sentence, as under the mitigation identified that is substituted for other punitive sanctions by the judge. To most people, public shaming remains an efficient and reliable form of punishment which should be embraced. This is because it is a judicial punishment whose imposition on a convicted criminal is known to include humiliation instead of imprisonment. According to June Tangney in her essay argues the United States to embrace stigmatization and public shaming as ways of punishment to the law offenders because they are effective and cheaper ways of curbing a very broad range of crimes that happen to be non-violent in nature (Goldman, 415). In a real sense, this is true because it is the escalating incarceration costs that makes it be a much less expensive form of punishment. For one to have a better dealing with the non-violent crimes in an efficient manner, public shaming remains a great way that ought to be embraced. This is because most people and nearly everyone will not want to be publicly shamed, for the fear of ruining their reputation. A good example here is where people were to drive with a bumper sticker that claimed the presence of DUI in them, then it is most likely that such people will get mortified because everyone who will look at them will end up looking down upon them.
According to Kahan, the criminal sanctions that include incarceration need to be degrading and shaming, thereby expressing the disgust with the offenders of different crimes. Kahan asserts that offenders need to be subjected into an intrinsically repulsive effectively stigmatizing as well as degrading punishments. Kahan’s view is that the milder types of such criminal sanctions like community service and fines are not whereas, in contrast, incarceration remains sufficiently shaming and debasing. Although professor Kahan's recommendations for the continued intentional shaming of the criminal offenders is both inhumane and morally repugnant, he provides insightful statements on the insightful role played by shaming in the control of crimes through punishments (Bagaric, 343). My opinion is that it remains to be the chronic shaming above all that accounts for the most destruction that is caused on the minds of the most prisoners under incarceration. Unlike the other physical and emotional pains induced by beatings and spanks, public shaming has got long-term damaging effects of the corporal punishment.
Although criminologist Dr. Michael Tony maintains that the affirmative theories by Braithwaite have nothing to do with the proposals that Kahan had made and which on the contrary celebrated, embodied the destructive process kinds that Braithwaite had decried. Most people, myself included would easily fall in agreement with Tangney's Criticism in regard to the "reintegrative shaming" that Braithwaite had coined so as not to look or focus on behavior, but the person along with a focus on remediation and apology and hence seemed to be more congruent with guilt dynamics (Barett, 147). Tangney, therefore, warns against the use of shaming for what would be referred to as guilt, and that the use of the word could possibly perpetuate the long-term existing confusion between shame and guilt that is already prevalent in both scientific and clinical literature.
Tangney’s opinion is that, the approach of the punitive criminal justice both labels and identifies the offender’s illegal act as wrong and deviant. This antisocial act is therefore only identified as wrong by those people who are known for using the restorative justice approach. She maintains that the description by Braithwaite of the denouncer and offender interactions when there is the use of restorative justice fit the description of guilt inculcation as opposed to shame inculcation. To explain why in agreement with Tangney, the term guilt is best used rather than shaming in describing the aspect of healing that Braithwaite had referred to as reintegrative shaming. This could best be done by differentiating shame and guilt. According to Tangney's investigations, it is guilt and not shame that helps people in choosing and determining their moral path of life (Bazelon, 305). The research therefore consistently makes a demonstration of the relationship that exists between proneness to shame as well as a whole host of psychological symptoms that include anxiety, depression, subclinical sociopathy in addition to self-esteem.
Counterarguments
I would argue that there are almost no advantages to the use of public shaming as a way of punishment. This is the reason for the implementation of the sex offender registry. The true impetus behind it is that it was designed to ensure that such people cannot live beyond their past to start a new life that is law-abiding. It, therefore, makes the offenders perpetual targets of vigilantes in addition to the unending harassment by the government as well as discrimination public shaming proves that the offenders’ registry does not do anything in trying to improve the safety of the public (Goldman, 415). This is because it is capable of increasing the risks of such offenders by isolation from the possible resources of treatment and positive support, not forgetting about the employment and housing, yet it will be very hard for people to let that think deep into their skulls because of the general pathologic need by the Americans to watching people suffer for the very past wrongs they committed. It is therefore hard for one to stand such people full of such a moral superiority complex.
Evidence
Most programs such as the Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA) which are known for their effectiveness in Canada have always been facing hardships in taking hold there because of the restorative nature of justice as opposed to the punitive justice. The laws do not in any way punish and torture the offenders beyond the points served in prison parole, therefore large numbers of people vociferously oppose it. For the Canadians for instance, they ensure that their registry of offenders remains inaccessible to the public. This is because it has been a regime in which courts have been relying on the most torturous of reasoning in avoidance to calling it what it is, an unending punishment and shame under the civil regulation’s color (Massaro, 645).
It is because of the element of choice that comes along with some types of creative sentencing that always gives a pause to some of the people. There have been numerous cases for instance where the offenders have been seeking for a lenient way of surpassing the law. Sex offenders in California are a good example where they have been requesting for both actual and chemical castration after which they should be let free. It is for such reasons that the civil libertarians have been objecting on such unusual and cruel grounds of the constitution, for it amounts to no choice since it continues to get more dangerous close to the medieval notion like that of cutting a hand of a thief for them not to be able to steal again. Conclusion
Conclusion
It is worth concluding that, despite the sentencing court has a wide latitude of designing the conditions that assist in the rehabilitation efforts, there are no such conditions that may be imposed for the sole purpose of humiliating or shaming the offenders or defendants of a crime in a court of law. Highest courts in the sister states in the United States have also reached such a similar conclusion, which elaborates reasons as to why shaming is not in any way related to the punishment and may, as a result, provide such circumstances that could overshadow any possible rehabilitative effects that could otherwise be provided by the punishment. This is in agreement to the constitutional decision that public shaming can never be intended to contribute to one’s rehabilitation, but rather a different form of punitive sanction, a sanction that is not authorized under the sentencing code (Bazelon, 305). The unorthodox punishment of criminals should, therefore, be avoided at all costs because it is against the constitution and the judicial systems in accordance with the rule of the law.