Punishing by public humiliation
In response to the post I published the other day titled “Creative Sentencing: Public Humiliation.” A reader suggested that going beyond standing on the courthouse steps with a sign, some offenders might warrant internet humiliation or online shaming. Sure, standing in front of the courthouse for a few hours might be humiliating, but when it’s over, most people who drove or walked by aren’t going to remember the offender’s face and certainly won’t remember their name. An online record of stealing from a 9-year-old girl could reside on the internet for years, with an accompanying name and picture.
The Effects of Online Shaming
Mashable reports that 45% of employers now do social media screenings on potential employees, and 35% have said that they have found internet content on a potential employee that dissuaded them from hiring him or her. Let’s say you were found guilty of stealing a gift card from a 9-year-old girl (on her birthday), like the example above. If your name, face, and crime were posted on a government website, potential employers could find that information with a quick Google search and have information about you that could affect your future employment. Sound great, right? Why send people to jail and spend taxpayer money on them when we could simply shame them online. They don’t have to go to jail, we all save tax money, and the offender still gets their comeuppance, right?
The Morality of Online Shaming
Well, maybe not. Let’s continue this example above. After your face has been plastered on the internet and a horde of people have commented on what a horrible person you are for stealing from a 9-year-old girl, suppose you decide to clean up your act. You quit smoking, go to college, get a degree, get married, have a couple of kids, and for all intents and purposes are an upstanding, law abiding citizen 10 years later. Maybe you even got your record expunged.
Then you go to apply for a job. Would it be fair for a potential employer to do a simple search and find out that you did something stupid 10 years ago? Due to the ubiquitous nature of the internet, nothing can ever really be erased from it. Granted, you never served jail time, but does that punishment fit the crime? At what point should a former criminal stop being punished for past behavior?
When Shaming Gets Out of Hand
Online shaming also leads to other problems. As outlined in his book, The Future of Reputation, Daniel J. Solove points out that online shaming can be especially pernicious because it is hard to keep under control. And when online shaming gets out of control, says Solove, it can lead to permanent alienation:
Certain forms of temporary shaming, in which a person is humiliated for a short period of time and then reintegrated into the community, are much less problematic than everlasting shaming. Shame has a way of alienating people, inhibiting their ability to rehabilitate and reintegrate themselves into the community.
Online shaming can also cause the punishment to outweigh the crime, completely disregard due process, and lead to bullying and vigilantism at its extreme. Says, Solove:
Much Internet shaming . . . occurs without any formal procedures, investigation, or direct feedback to the accused offender. As a result, Internet shaming can readily get out of hand. Because the Internet allows thousands to communicate quickly, it makes it easier to form the digital equivalent to a mob.
We, as a society, feel the need to punish those who break social norms (like stealing from a 9-year-old girl), and shaming can be an extremely effective deterrent or rehabilitative force to keep society aware of the dangers of breaking those norms. On the other hand, the mass effect of the internet may prove to be too large a venue for the justice of shaming.
The Benefits and the Digital Mob
As technology progresses, and the ability for websites to protect their content increases, there might come a point when information can be controlled to an extent that someone’s name, face, and crime can be temporarily published through a government website, then taken down (and permanently erased) after the specified time, perhaps online shaming for minor crimes might be a low-cost alternative to jail. However, presently, the digital mob has the control, and the uncontrollable nature of the internet might outweigh the deterrent and rehabilitative benefits public shaming can have.
What are your thoughts? Should these types of minor criminals be shamed online, or does this type of shaming do more damage than good? Leave a comment.
For more on the effects of online shaming, read The Future of Reputation free online by clicking here: http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Future-of-Reputation/text.htm
Special thanks to CyberSafety808 for pointing me in the right direction.
Get on the crime map at CrimeReports.com
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
“45% of employers now do social media screenings on potential employees”
that’s why you should change you Facebook account privacy setting to make sure your personal information stays personal.