Public Shaming As An Effective Alternative to Incarceration (Essay Sample)

The Bureau of Justice Statistics says that the United States spends more than eighty billion dollars each year to keep prisoners incarcerated. Since the cost to incarcerate prisoners is so high, judges are looking for alternative forms of punishment. A good form of alternative punishment is humiliation, such as labeling criminals for their crimes or putting the names of the offenders in newspapers. The problem is identifying which crimes are acceptable to be punished by public shaming. Drunk driving, petty theft, assault, burglary, dumping, drug distribution, and child molestation are all crimes that have and can be punishable by shaming. Public shaming is a good alternative to incarceration because it’s cheaper and effective. 

Public shaming is defined as a judicial punishment imposed on a convicted criminal that includes humiliation in public instead of imprisonment. There are many different examples of public shaming throughout history in America. The puritans used to brand criminals with the letter of their offense on the hand. If the offense was committed on the Sabbath, the brand would be burned into the forehead. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne was forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” to humiliate and remind her of her crime. More recently in 2002, a man who called a cop a “pig”, was made to stand alongside an actual pig with a sign saying, “this is not a police officer.” Even though public shaming punishments in the past have been a little harsh, the idea of shaming the criminals is a good punishment and effective way to deter future crimes. 

A form of public shaming has already been implemented in America with that of Megan’s Law. Sex offenders are forced to register their crimes to their communities to inform people of the potential dangers they posess. A study done by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy “found a 70 percent reduction in felony sex recidivism” () following their implementation of sex offender registry. Although the main purpose of the registry is not to shame the criminal, it definitely is a deterrent. That shame clearly corresponds with an encouraging decline in sexual crimes. Not only is it a good deterrent, it’s also effective in punishing criminals. The whole purpose of the American prison system is to rehabilitate. People do not like to be humiliated, and they would certainly learn their lesson if they were humiliated in front of hundreds or more people. 

Not only is public shaming an effective deterrent and punishment, it costs less than incarceration. The United States has the most prisoners per-capita of any country in the world, and more than sixty seven percent of released prisoners are rearrested within three years. Not only does this mean that incarceration is not always effective, but it’s costing America billions of dollars to keep criminals behind bars. Public shaming as an alternative punishment that can take petty criminals out of prison, which would lower the cost of prison expenditures exponentially. 

America has seen public shaming as punishment for crimes such as drunk driving, petty theft, assault, burglary, dumping, drug distribution, and child molestation before. These are all petty crimes that aren't too serious and can be punished by humiliation. People who are convicted of these crimes should be sentenced to public shaming rather than incarceration. A good punishment for these types of criminals would be forcing them to hold a sign on a busy street corner telling people what they did. You could even go The Scarlet Letter route and force criminals to wear a letter that represents the crime they committed. Repeat offenders of these crimes would have to face jail time, and for sure some type of public shaming. 

Some people may argue that these types of punishments violate the eighth amendment. The eighth amendment states that excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. This means that the punishments have to be both cruel and unusual for them to violate the eighth amendment. These types of punishments are far from cruel which makes them legal for judges to sentence. Judges would also agree that they aren’t doing cruel and unusual punishments, "The Constitution says you can't do cruel and unusual punishments. Well, I don't do the cruel part — it says, 'and.”() Although some public shaming punishments do get striked from sentences, most of them do not and most likely should not. 

Public shaming is an effective alternative to incarceration. It can deter would-be criminals from commiting crimes. It can also save the United States money that it spends on prison expenditures. Most of the sentences do not violate the eighth amendment and therefore make them legal punishments. Public shaming should be used more often as an alternative form of punishment.