Examples Of Public Shaming

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Is Public Shaming the answer? As an individual, it is a part of life to make plenty of mistakes, but is public shaming the answer to solving it? “A vital art of growing and developing as a human being, is learning from ones’ mistakes. Although this is expected, many today resorted to public shaming which is morally wrong. In todays’ society, punishment for people is completely different from back in the Puritan days. For example, in the novel the Scarlett Letter, Hester Prynne commits adultery, which leads her to having to wear the letter “A” on her chest, which is a form of public humiliation but in this sense, it’s not right. This is Hester Prynne’s sin that she committed that she lives with forever and it shouldn’t be any of the public business …show more content…

It’s not fair that your problems should be out for the public to see because what comes with that are bullies that doesn’t care about your thoughts, opinions, or feelings. The author state, “sometimes compare it to bullies in a schoolyard all ganging up on person who, for one second, said the wrong thing” (Leopold, Todd. The price of public shaming in the Internet age. Modern, 2015.) The shaming is becoming more relentless because society is starting to commit the crime by shaming the individual that is being publicly shamed by the whole public to see. For example, many people, including children, may have the mentality that supports public humiliation. They’ll start to think that it is acceptable to humiliate people on the regular basis which can be a …show more content…

In the Power of Public Shaming for good and ill, Woodyatt state that “it punishes the norm violation by lowering the status of the transgressor and the pain of shame; and it elevates the status of others as norm conformers.” People in todays’ society, do tend to care about what others think of them more than they care about a secret punishment. While you can hide in confinement from making the mistakes that you made, the other is much harder to do. Despite its usefulness in some cases, this punishment is still not made for modern society. One day you can be seen by the public as one thing and the next day, you can be judged based on that one mistake. Your mistake will start to become their only perception of who you are which you try but can’t recover from. Public humiliation is a crime within itself and no horrible act deserves that. Everyone should be able to tell their story by choice and not by the law for everyone to

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    As we read the novel, “The Scarlet Letter,” we were acquainted with the manner the Puritan society branded their sinners contingent on the immoralities they have committed. They believed that punishing these sinners by humiliation was the prominent way for them to bear the cost of their debauchery. Resembling this past our present has been subject to this same form of branding and labeling. We judge the way the Puritan society strictly punished its citizens by putting them on scaffolds where they were publicly humiliated. We hypocritically judge this form of punishment when we are practicing these same immoral acts. Although we are not putting them on scaffolds or literally branding people we are causing them the same kind of degradation and bestowing on them labels that will hurt them the same way.

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    As Hester wears the Scarlet Letter the people around her label her as well as her changing for her society around her in order to fit in. Hester Prynne has committed the sin of adultery, which in her society she needs to wear a Scarlet Letter as a punishment. Hester was put in front of her community and is exploited to what she is. “I charge… speak out the name of thy fellow sinner… though he were to step down from a high place.” (Hawthorne 77) Because she is a sinner, and people want her to confess her sin she goes against them and refuses to speak. When she does not speak, many people in the society thinks that she should be

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    One character who demonstrated the effects of sin was Hester Prynne.  Hester Prynne commits adultery with the Reverend Dimmesdale.  Because this act resulted in a child, she was unable to hide her wrongdoing while Dimmesdale’s analogous sin went unnoticed.  Her punishment for her crime was to spend a few hours on the scaffold to face public humiliation, and she was forced to wear the letter “A” on her clothes for the rest of her life.  Hester’s punishment for her sin was distinguished in that the results of her actions were for the most part external.  Hawthorne describes what Hester’s punishment was like when he states, “In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished.”(p.44) Although Hester was somewhat emotionally damaged through public humiliation and alienation, Hester was actually internally content at the fact that she was paying for her crime. The consequences which Hester faced for her actions were the result of her admission of guilt.  This proved to be much less harsh then the internal punishment which Dimmesdale faced.

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  • Shaming Offenders

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    The shaming of offenders has been in existence since the late 18th century. It was a form of corrections that was used to serve justice by offenders who had committed criminal acts. Offenders who had committed crimes against person or property were likely to be handed a sentence of shaming. In lieu of serving a sentence in a cell or incapacitated place, an offender could be sentenced to some degree of public punishment that would attempt to reform the offender and help him see the error of his ways. Popular methods of late 18th century shaming included "the whipping post, the pillory, stocks, branding, banishment, the dunking stool, and the use of the brank." All of these devices were used to demonstrate public shaming of the offender. Common reasons that would incorporate the use of shaming would be "blasphemy, adultery, failure to observe the Sabbath, and a general laziness." All of these punishments were used to help re-instill popular religious beliefs and bring back the good of a person into society. Lo and behold, shaming must have some positive attributes to it because it still exists in the present day. Instead of judges issuing jail/prison sentences, many offenders will receive some form of probation. Of course, this all depends on the seriousness of the crime. Judges tend to use probation on offenders in hopes of bringing them full circle from being a criminal to an integral part of society. Plus, a judge has more discretion in the use of probation as a form of corrections than with incarceration. Just as in any form of corrections, there exists four main goals that are to be achieved in some way, shape, or form. In order for the offender to feel the intended outcomes of shaming, he must experi...

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