Title: Public shaming sentences: Can judges subject criminals to humiliation?
Headings: Can We Bring Back the Stockades?
Can We Bring Back the Stockades?
The constitutionality of public shaming.
By Brian Palmer
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Content: Usually, yes. Public shaming is an integral part of our criminal justice system, although its prominence rises and falls periodically. Many cities have posted the names of drug offenders, deadbeat dads, or public urinators on billboards. Some have required people convicted of drunk driving to affix fluorescent license plates to their cars once they start driving again. Kansas City experimented with broadcasting on a government-owned television channel the names and addresses of men arrested for solicitation. The “ perp walk ” is a pre-conviction public shaming ritual. Individual judges have ordered offenders to wear signs and shirts, or go door-to-door apologizing to victims of their crimes. Legal challenges to such shaming sanctions typically fail. In 2003, for example, a San Francisco mail thief was ordered to spend eight hours standing in front of a post office wearing a sandwich board that read, “ I stole mail. This is my punishment .”