Effects Of Public Shaming

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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter offers the reader an inside look at public shaming as a punishment. Throughout the book, Hester Prynne’s punishment requires her to wear a scarlet “A” on her bosom because she committed adultery and ultimately got caught. Similar to Hester Prynne and her community, judges today sentence criminals to public shaming as a reprimand for committing crimes. However, public shaming is unfair and should not be used in the United States court system.
Public shaming penalties cannot guarantee consistency between each punishment; therefore, public shaming is unconstitutional and unethical to use within the United States court system. Every year, millions of people pass through courtroom doors, and every year, millions …show more content…

Somebody who constantly endures ridicule from the public suffers greatly from decreased mental stability. Furthermore, bullying is a form of public abashment, and research has shown that both bullying and public shaming affect the victim’s mental health more than other major problems in the world. For example, recent studies conducted in the United States and Great Britain prove that “[a] victim of bullying [is] nearly four times more likely to suffer from mental health problems than a victim of child abuse” (Lewinsky 293). Victims of bullying often undergo persistent humiliation, much like a criminal who is sentenced to public shaming would; consequently, public humiliation is unacceptable in all areas of society, especially when research indicates that it affects a multitude of people. Also, if people consistently remind a person of their mistakes, the victim could always live in regret and remorse for their actions and they might be unable to overcome the amount of disgrace they experience. Public shaming not only affects the criminal, but also it can affect a faultless third-party. Humiliation affects innocent third-parties, such as family members, because the public mortification will promote the criminal to everybody in the community and possibly everyone on social media; therefore, guilt by association can accompany the family members. The extent of the punishment has the potential to be so significant that “[i]f a sign reading ‘A violent felon lives here’ [i]s posted in front of a man 's house, the felon 's blameless child ‘might get bullied because of the exposure and humiliation of the father’” (Morrison 3). Unfortunately, a simple sign that reads “a criminal lives here” can alter the life of an innocent third-party. Companies are also affected because public reprimanding would expose an employee who

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