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I ran across this in the newspaper of my former hometown. I know that there have been other cases where people have been sentenced to some form of public humiliation , including I would suppose the whole picking up trash by the highway thing. But this just seems to me to cross a line into 'put them in the stocks and throw vegetables at them' territory. ______________________________________________________________________ Pennsylvania thieves dealt public punishment BEDFORD, Pa. — Two Bedford women who stole a 9-year-old girl’s gift card on her birthday publicized the matter Tuesday as part of Bedford County District Attorney Bill Higgins’ public punishment initiative. Fifty-six-year-old Evelyn Border and her daughter, Tina Griekspoor, 35, stood outside the Bedford County Courthouse displaying signs as part of a plea agreement. Higgins said he will ask the court to impose a sentence of probation instead of a jail sentence. The women displayed the signs for 4 1/2 hours after being charged with theft. Higgins said the women stole the child’s gift card that she had set on a shelf at a Walmart store in Everett while an employee assisted her April 26. The women used the card to pay for their own items. They also returned to the store days later and attempted to use the card again. The public punishment initiative was suggested by Assistant District Attorney Travis Livengood, who saw the necessity for a special kind of punishment to combat disgraceful criminal behavior such as stealing from a little girl on her birthday. “I told their defense attorney they had two options. Plead guilty and leave sentencing open to the judge where I would ask for substantial jail time, or serve their public punishment prior to their guilty plea and the commonwealth (Pennsylvania) would agree to probation. Such shameful conduct deserves to be met by equally shameful punishment,” said Livengood. Higgins said the public punishment was accepted as part of a plea agreement. “Be it a sign around a thief’s neck, a public apology in the town square from a domestic abuser to their spouse, or cleaning out the animal cages at the humane society once a week, it is time that the blame and shame be focused exactly where it should be — upon the criminal,” said Higgins. Livengood said the public punishment initiative is not imposed only for punishment but also to promote rehabilitation and prevention of future crimes. “Guilt and shame are powerful motivators to reform one’s behavior,” said Livengood. “Likewise, the fear of public humiliation is an equally powerful motivator to refrain from committing crimes in the first place.” He said the public punishment is of great benefit to the public “by providing greater transparency into the criminal justice system.” He said the victim’s mother supports the initiative. “I spoke to the little girl’s mother about the proposed public punishment and she was thrilled with the idea. Not only did it give the young victim and her mother the satisfaction of justice, but her mother told me she would be driving her daughter past Griekspoor and Border today to teach her daughter a lesson about responsibility and leading a law-abiding life. This is precisely why I suggested the creation of the public punishment initiative. “Every day, law-abiding citizens hear about outrageous conduct from criminals and say ‘They should be ashamed of themselves.’ Now, with our public punishment initiative, we can tell the law-abiding public that these criminals will be ashamed of themselves,” said Livengood. ___________________________________________________________________________________ I also was a little worried at the prosecutor's examples of other public punishments. Having a domestic abuser apologize to his victim in the public square is not going to keep him from abusing, but it sure will piss him off real good. Are other parts of the U.S. experimenting with this kind of thing, or is my area once again in the forefront of weirdness?
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 15:08 |
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| # ? Nov 21, 2009 11:33 |
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For things like DUI I think there should be public beatings.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 15:14 |
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quote:Plead guilty and leave sentencing open to the judge where I would ask for substantial jail time It was a small gift card. What the hell is wrong with you mr. DA?
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 15:19 |
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Vilerat
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This seems to have practical problems. I suspect that the people who'd want to give out these punishments are not the people who are interested in reducing recidivism or otherwise helping society. They're probably the people who focus on punishment. So, if widely accepted, I think these things would likely spiral into cruelty very, very quickly.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 15:29 |
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Just about every resource on Restorative justice will tell you it's typically a terrible idea that doesn't effect recidivism in the slightest. It only serves to further separate the community, victim, and offender.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 15:35 |
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mugrim posted:Just about every resource on Restorative justice will tell you it's typically a terrible idea that doesn't effect recidivism in the slightest. It only serves to further separate the community, victim, and offender. But I bet it does wonders for the political career of the "Law and order" prosecutor. Which is probably a very large part of this. It's political theater with real live people as props.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 15:38 |
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Limbo posted:But I bet it does wonders for the political career of the "Law and order" prosecutor. Which is probably a very large part of this. It's political theater with real live people as props. The justice system is already a farce. Let's increase the speed of which it becomes useless like the health care industry! - Young lawyers
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 16:07 |
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Limbo posted:The women displayed the signs for 4 1/2 hours after being charged with theft. I'm reminded of an old Playboy cartoon, which showed a young Puritan woman having a scarlet letter A sewn on her gown in court, and two male spectators, one whispers to the other "I like this system. It takes all the guesswork out of it."
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 16:53 |
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mugrim posted:Just about every resource on Restorative justice will tell you it's typically a terrible idea that doesn't effect recidivism in the slightest. It only serves to further separate the community, victim, and offender.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 16:55 |
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McCaine posted:Can you link to some evidence? Evidence that public shaming separates a person from the community?
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 16:57 |
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As long as we can publicly shame adulterous women with a big red A I will support this. Also maybe make jews wear something so we can shame them too.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 16:59 |
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Evidence that public shaming separates a person from the community? You know, all the parts of the post he quoted that make your attempted smarm even more painfully inappropriate than it would be anyway.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 17:08 |
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McCaine posted:Can you link to some evidence? This isn't RJ based but it's along the same lines. In general it's pretty much assumed the more you ostracize someone the further they're fractured from society...seeing as how it's kind of the definition of ostracize. Consistent with predictions, it was found that feelings of reintegration/stigmatization experienced during an enforcement event were related to reoffending behaviour. Those taxpayers who felt that their enforcement experience had been reintegrative in nature were less likely to report having evaded their taxes two years later. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....ract_id=1148025 Public shaming already occurs just by being arrested. Anything beyond that point will only fracture you from the community that much more. Offenders have to feel that they will be able to mend the communal bonds they've broken or else they'll start to go into labeling theory and forever see themselves as a criminal and act accordingly. Even the public shaming advocates out there in the CJ community admit that the biggest risk is permanent stigmatizing. mugrim fucked around with this message at Nov 04, 2009 around 17:25 |
| # ? Nov 04, 2009 17:13 |
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This is something along the lines of schoolyard justice. The biggest con to this style of punishment is the resentment that it creates within the punishee. Resentment breeds contempt and contempt is a very dangerous emotion. So, think back to all the bullies you knew back in the day and how much love was felt for them and then apply that en masse to all levels and branches of government.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:04 |
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Why stop at this? We should make the criminals wear pink and feed them rotting food, and put them in tents in the desert. And beat them severely, so that quite a few die or become paralyzed while in custody. And why wait until they're convicted?
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:07 |
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Baloogan posted:For things like DUI I think there should be public beatings. When I was in high school the local judge would give DUI offenders the option to be tried in the school gymnasium in exchange for a guarantee of no jail time or something like that. The whole school would assemble for like an hour or two and these guys would be trotted out there and raked over the coals. Local news teams all over the place and everything -- it would have sucked so hard to be the offender. It was awesome. To cut down on riffraff and heckling, the judge made the whole gym a courtroom and said if you caused a disturbance you'd be charged with contempt. I don't know if he would have actually done that, but it worked, we were pretty quite. They would do this once a year or so. E: Whoa, I read beatings as hearings. There weren't any public beatings.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:19 |
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I really don't see anything wrong with this level of public punishment, especially if it's as effective as a small fine and jail time. If such things spiral out of control, then that's one thing, but I don't see why we should be wedded to only using fines and incarceration.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:28 |
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Honestly, I would rather see things like this than prison time for petty things. If you think this sort of thing is humiliating a breeds resentment, watch someone one who has spent time in prison, especially a California prison that has completely lost control of its gangs. Punishments that relate to what the person actually did are better than punishments that send people to a place where surprise sex is condoned and the strong dominate the weak. Prison corrupts people and takes away their sanity, making them feral. I want to correct the behavior of a shoplifter, not turn train them to become armed robbers by sending them to prison.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:38 |
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Fire posted:Honestly, I would rather see things like this than prison time for petty things. If you think this sort of thing is humiliating a breeds resentment, watch someone one who has spent time in prison, especially a California prison that has completely lost control of its gangs. Punishments that relate to what the person actually did are better than punishments that send people to a place where surprise sex is condoned and the strong dominate the weak. Prison corrupts people and takes away their sanity, making them feral. I want to correct the behavior of a shoplifter, not turn train them to become armed robbers by sending them to prison. Saying something that is "better than a California prison" does not make a good thing.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:40 |
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Kaal posted:I really don't see anything wrong with this level of public punishment, especially if it's as effective as a small fine and jail time. If such things spiral out of control, then that's one thing, but I don't see why we should be wedded to only using fines and incarceration. Because restorative means are not only more healthy for all involved, but also more effective. Shaming is just a feel good method, and is at best only really usable for wealthy clients who are not damaged by fines but don't commit a crime deserving of prison time. For everyone else there's typically far more serious underlying issues that you can't just shame away. Shaming risks permanent stigmatizing which is extremely bad.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:43 |
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Fire posted:Honestly, I would rather see things like this than prison time for petty things. If you think this sort of thing is humiliating a breeds resentment, watch someone one who has spent time in prison, especially a California prison that has completely lost control of its gangs. Punishments that relate to what the person actually did are better than punishments that send people to a place where surprise sex is condoned and the strong dominate the weak. Prison corrupts people and takes away their sanity, making them feral. I want to correct the behavior of a shoplifter, not turn train them to become armed robbers by sending them to prison. Yes, few things are worse than gang surprise sex. Likewise taking a couple of toes is preferable to most people. That doesn't mean it's a great idea for a justice system. Likewise almost no one goes to prison for petty things, they go to jail. California JAILS are not nearly as bad as their prisons and pretty analogous to jails elsewhere. They're short term lock ups.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:45 |
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im reminded of that king of the hill episode where a guy breaks into hank hill's car and is sentenced to live in a car for 2 weeks because America (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 18:55 |
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I feel like previous posts are ignoring that this was a plea bargain and that the convicted women willingly accepted public humiliation over jail time. Clearly these women didn't feel that the wrath of the public was worse than alternative punishments, so I don't exactly feel sorry for them. Would you rather be made to look foolish for a few hours or incarcerated for an undetermined period of time? If public humiliation is so undesirable, surely others won't accept such plea bargains in the future. That said, sentencing the women to community service would have been far better in my eyes: the community benefits, the victims still feel that justice has been served, etc.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 19:30 |
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Die Enormous posted:I feel like previous posts are ignoring that this was a plea bargain and that the convicted women willingly accepted public humiliation over jail time. Clearly these women didn't feel that the wrath of the public was worse than alternative punishments, so I don't exactly feel sorry for them. Would you rather be made to look foolish for a few hours or incarcerated for an undetermined period of time? If public humiliation is so undesirable, surely others won't accept such plea bargains in the future. With the amount of human rights abuses in prison I would literally take losing a hand over a prison sentence in some places in the united states. It's preferable to prison because being dead is often preferable to prison.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 20:01 |
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:With the amount of human rights abuses in prison I would literally take losing a hand over a prison sentence in some places in the united states. It's preferable to prison because being dead is often preferable to prison. Right. I would also argue that it is preferable to not just prison time, but also jail time as well. So shouldn't this type of punishment be seen as a step forward? We can argue that shaming is bad, but if it's preferable to the alternatives, isn't it at least a baby step in the right direction?
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 20:14 |
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I saw some people in Cambridge (UK) wearing 'community payback' jackets, they were painting fences. People were coming up to them, expressing warm words, offering cups of tea and so on, it was nice because you could actually see the reconnection between criminals and the community and come to the conclusion that those on the scheme might consider, if contemplating crime in the future, that the person they were offending against might be one of those citizens who gave them warm words and a hot drink and not go ahead. I picture that same situation again, but now that citizen threw a cabbage in their face and called them a disgusting thief, and can only come to the conclusion that it would make them act in a more inhumane manner.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 20:24 |
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IMO personally it seems to be a bad idea. Yea, it might look good now however if that person has a mental disability or just something unbalanced. Then putting them in a situation where they can get emotional and mental trama which could lead to long term bad results.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 20:39 |
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Vilerat posted:It was a small gift card. What the hell is wrong with you mr. DA? I'm gonna guess it's not the monetary value they are being punished for. 
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 21:55 |
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Vilerat posted:It was a small gift card. What the hell is wrong with you mr. DA? I'm guessing these two were pro-se defendants who didn't realize that the ADA/ASA could recommend whatever he wanted, but the judge was going to give them what he or she wanted to give them. I assume the ADA/ASA wanted to spook em with potential consequences of going forward so that they took to his public humiliation option. Or he is overbearing, one of the two. I guess I don't see the value of giving public humiliation when the typical response to something like this would be restitution and community service. I would think society gets more out of that (monies returned, charitable work done) than laughing at people in a modern pillory.
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| # ? Nov 04, 2009 23:46 |
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Public humiliation is kind of dumb. On the other hand, replacing most minor crimes that result in jail time with fines and community service sentences seems like a good idea to me.
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 00:06 |
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Die Enormous posted:I feel like previous posts are ignoring that this was a plea bargain and that the convicted women willingly accepted public humiliation over jail time. Clearly these women didn't feel that the wrath of the public was worse than alternative punishments, so I don't exactly feel sorry for them. Would you rather be made to look foolish for a few hours or incarcerated for an undetermined period of time? If public humiliation is so undesirable, surely others won't accept such plea bargains in the future. For people not accused of a crime, coercion or the threat thereof is assumed to impair one's ability to give one's consent. While we don't afford as many rights to people who are accused of crimes, there is nothing fundamentally different about them as human beings that changes what entails consent for them.
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 00:41 |
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I think public humiliation is a terrible idea. It's the kind of punishment that you can't take back if you find they were wrongly convicted. You can't unshame people and it's pretty hard to put the poo poo back in the cat so the community knows that the public shaming was a mistake and their good name should be restored. Community service is the right answer if you think prisons or jails are not appropriate. Giving them a Scarlet Letter and making sure their peers never, ever trust them again is a terrible, terrible idea. Even if they deserved their guilty sentence how are they supposed to crawl back out of the hole and become productive members of society. Not only do they have to answer in the affirmative regarding being convicted of criminal activity but they have the gossip side weighing against them as well. There's nothing public shaming does that community service doesn't do better other than act as a muted form of vengeance and spite. I know for goddamn sure I'd rather have someone doing 10 hours of something productive than 100 hours of them holding a sign saying "I'm a douchebag".
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 01:14 |
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Limbo posted:"or cleaning out the animal cages at the humane society once a week" So, technically I've been exposing myself to more punishment than some convicts get by doing this 3-4 times a week for the past year? 
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 01:26 |
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I'd take the humiliation over prison. So did the two thieving beyotches. Happy birthday, little girl. You were given the gift of justice. I hope you got to point and laugh.
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 07:54 |
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Die Laughing posted:I'd take the humiliation over prison. So did the two thieving beyotches. Most people would, but that doesn't really mean we should keep prisons as privately owned torturehouses instead of rehabilitation oriented facilities.
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 08:23 |
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Whats next, stoning or public hangings? Sometimes America suprises me.
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 08:43 |
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Zeitgueist posted:Why stop at this? We should make the criminals wear pink and feed them rotting food, and put them in tents in the desert. And beat them severely, so that quite a few die or become paralyzed while in custody. Hello there fellow Arizonan.  Community service is way better than public humiliation. This ruling is dumb and the whole "on her BIRTHDAY!!!" thing is just as dumb. There's no reason for this when we have perfectly good community service that needs doing.
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 12:50 |
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I can imagine some criminals taking the humiliation because they just don't care and it beats getting locked up. Or they might even view it as something to be proud of. I can also imagine that it can have an amplification effect on offenders that already have problems with their personal attitudes and self-image, causing them to reoffend in a possibly more serious manner. And frankly, I think the American justice system can be overly brutal and vicious as it is already. There is no need to encourage it further in that direction.
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 12:53 |
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Kthulhu5000 posted:And frankly, I think the American justice system can be overly brutal and vicious as it is already. There is no need to encourage it further in that direction. It's like everyone else is trying to figure out rehabilitation and integration to the society where as the US stopped their progress at some point and are progressing backwards now.
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 13:23 |
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Kehveli posted:It's like everyone else is trying to figure out rehabilitation and integration to the society where as the US stopped their progress at some point and are progressing backwards now. The US is also one of the most advanced though when it comes to restorative justice work, it just depends where you happen to be.
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| # ? Nov 05, 2009 14:13 |
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