Public shaming does work

31/03/2008

In your March issue of MT you raised public shaming as a crime prevention method and deterrent equivalent to the stocks - it used to work.

 

In my experience as a detective working in a market town serving a wide rural area, the weekly Magistrates Court was attended by journalists for both local papers, where hearings were fully reported. A prisoner was foremost focused on freedom as soon as possible, and the next anxiety would be "Will my misdeeds be reported in the papers?' - they certainly would have been, and to a local resident this was often a greater punishment than the sentence itself.

 

Once a young felon, incensed by the full press coverage he had received, called to see me at the Police Station. He threw punches, witnessed by an 'old timer' station sergeant who had his own way of dealing with recalcitrant villains. All parties agreed to call it a draw. The assault went unrecorded, dismissed as a hazard of the trade.

 

But no longer. Now the station officer is replaced by a very nice young lady, the former Court Room is now used by a playgroup, and in a Court miles away occasionally reporters attend, supplying selective and very infrequent local copy.

 

Humility and shame have joined the stocks as things of the past.

P. Hunter, West Sussex