Introduction:
The Australian Braithwaite first devised the concept of shaming.
His theory dictates that due to the crime statistics, young,
male, lower class juveniles were committing the majority of
crime, and another solution to criminal activity could be
found within shaming. This means that following the criminal
act, the offender is censured by the community and family
and asks for forgiveness, therefore being made to feel shamed.
The benefit of this system is that it avoids the stigmatisation
of criminal actions, and instead facilitates the apologies
of the criminal and the forgiveness of the victim.
Shaming is termed by Braithwaite as,
“…all social processes of expressing disapproval
which have the intention or effect of invoking remorse in
the person being shamed and/or condemnation by others who
become aware of the shaming.”
Subsequent to this process is the reintegration of the offender
whereby he is reaccepted into his community and theoretically
becomes a law-abiding citizen.
It will be shown here that although shame punishments can
work in elements of society, the necessary societal factors
required for shaming to work may not be present in all societies.
The moral acceptance will also be analysed in conjunction
with a brief outline of some other sentencing rationales in
order to determine if any of the other rationales would be
deemed as morally acceptable when juxtaposed with the shaming
process to our contemporary society.
The Advantages and Success of Shaming
The process of shaming does have a few advantages. A key
one is that it helps to avoid the stigmatisation of criminals,
which according to labelling theory,
can result in the offender continuing his criminal behaviour
as he is labelled as, and therefore considers himself, a criminal.
Within the shaming process then, this stigmatisation is avoided
and, as previously mentioned, instead of being a criminal
within society, the offender reverts to the ‘normal’
role of a law-abiding citizen.
“Disapproval should be made clear, but a relationship
of respect must still exist.”
Braithwaite pointed to the comparatively low crime rate among
Western adolescent girls. This may be due to the fact that
girls interact more thoroughly within a family-structure at
a younger age.
“It also helps explain why adult men, within the interdependency
of a new family are more likely to desist from crime.”
A good example of a successful use of the shaming process
is Japan. Family values and loyalty to community are at the
heart of Japanese culture. Combined with this is the culture
of forgiveness in Japanese society, where forgiveness is asked
for and errors are admitted to, and subsequently people forgiven
for their actions.
There has been an acceptance of shaming in elements of the
United Kingdom’s law enforcement departments. A study
by Young and Goold in 1999
indicated that the Thames Valley’s Restorative Cautioning
unit in Aylesbury had used re-integrative shaming to an extent,
and had been successful in its utilisation. This perhaps indicates
that shaming can be successful in British society.
It is likely that the main advantage of the shaming theory
is the continual education that it offers to children, as
they see members of their family or community being shamed
because of their criminal behaviour. The children within society
are then aware of a more specific or detailed concept of right
and wrong, as issues are framed in a context that makes more
sense to them; people they know are shamed and punished for
a actions that are morally reprehensible.
“Children need to learn about the evil of murder,
rape, car theft, and environmental pollution offences through
condemnation of the local butcher or the far away image on
the television screen. But the Shaming of the local offender
known personally to children in the neighbourhood is especially
important, because the wrongdoing and shaming are so vivid
as to leave a lasting impression.”
In light of Braithwaite’s above comment, it could be
argued that an initial use of shaming cannot just deter crime
in some offenders, it can also be used to prevent children
from growing up and becoming criminals, and therefore eradicate
crime to a larger extent than other rationales of punishment.
This is surely an indication that shame punishments can work
and do have inherent advantages.
Disadvantages of Shaming
Shaming, although it certainly has some important ideas and
concepts to offer, is perhaps too fanciful a system to be
fully integrated into crime legislation. A familiar criticism
of shaming is that it is too dependent on instilling a concept
of a communitarian society within the offenders and victims,
and creating a set of core values upon which everyone agrees.
“It seems rather optimistic of Braithwaite to believe
that everyone will rally around the core values which he propounded
for his republican society and accept that these values should
be protected by the criminal law.”
The main disadvantage of shaming theory seems to be its requirement,
as Jones states, of a common set of values. This value system
would only be compatible and functional in segments of our
society that firstly respected them, and secondly were willing
to use them as a basis for criminal law. Braithwaite himself
found that young, juvenile males committed the majority of
crime. As this is the case, it may be unlikely that these
members of the population would be susceptible to the process
of shaming and following that, re-integration. As they are
willing to commit crime within a community, censure by that
community may have no effect. Another factor is that the family
structure within Braithwaite’s theory can prevent crime
by instilling core values within the individual. Ergo, those
with a poor or non-existent family structure will commit the
majority of crime. Because of this, the censure by a family,
who perhaps do not care, or a community will have little impact
as they represent values that cannot be reconciled with the
offender’s personality or personal value system.
“However, if the offender feels alienated from society
and is unrepentant, it is unlikely that re-integrative shaming
can successfully take place: the offender may never have been
integrated into society in the first place.”
Essentially, shaming will only work if there are certain elements
in place. Our contemporary society does not have the values
or cohesive structure that pervades another society and culture,
like Japan, where shaming is regarded as a valid and successful
process
It seems unfeasible to build a criminal law system around
concepts that are outdated or irrelevant to the way its members
regard contemporary society. Certainly re-integrative shaming
has some benefits and positive ideas, not least in preventing
the stigmatisation of young offenders. However, re-integrative
shaming may leave the victim feeling short-changed and less
than satisfied with the punishment. Victims who had no desire
to be present, or felt pressurised into participation have
occasionally attended indeed the conferences where the victim
and community or family members confront the offender.
The aim of punishment should probably be to give the victim
some retribution to the wrongdoing committed by the offender.
There is a question mark hanging over re-integrative shaming
as to whether there is real recompense and retribution for
the victim, or if this is foregone in order to protect the
offender from stigmatisation.
|
