Public humiliation

Public humiliation or public shaming is a form of punishment whose main feature is dishonoring or disgracing a person, usually an offender or a prisoner, especially in a public place. It was regularly used as a form of judicially sanctioned punishment in previous centuries, and is still practiced by different means in the modern era.

In the United States, it was a common punishment from the beginning of European colonization through the 19th century. It fell out of common use in the 20th century, though it has seen a revival starting in the 1990s.^[1] With the rise of the social media, public shaming moved to the digital sphere, exposing and humiliating people daily, sometimes without their knowledge. ^[2]

was used by the Romans to add public humiliation to a death penalty. Josephus describes how the Roman soldiers would crucify people naked, and using different tortuous positions as a way to further humiliate them. Crucified bodies were left to decay on the cross for weeks, and crows would come to feed on the corpses; this can be seen as post-mortem public humiliation. See also gibbeting.

Crucifixion

The punishment of public humiliation has taken many forms, ranging from an offender being forced to relate his crime, to a 'shame ' (for untalented musicians), to the wearing of conspicuous clothing or jewelry (such as an oversized rosary (Dutch: schandstenen, "stones of shame") for someone late to church). The offender could alternatively be sentenced to remain exposed in a specific exposed place, in a restraining device such as a yoke or public stocks.

flute

In the , the schandstoel ("Chair of shame"), the kaak or schandpaal ("pole of shame", a simple type of pillory), the draaikooi were customary for adulteresses, and the schopstoel, a scaffolding from which one is kicked off to land in mud and dirt.

Low Countries

In the more extreme cases, being subjected to and physical abuse from the crowd could have serious consequences, especially when the hands were bound, preventing self-protection. Some sentences actually prescribed additional humiliation, such as shaving, or would combine it with painful corporal punishments, see below.^[25]

verbal

In , common forms of public humiliation were the stocks and pillory, imported from Europe. Nearly every sizable town had such instruments of public humiliation, usually at the town square. In pre-World War II Japan, adulterers were publicly exposed purely to shame them.

colonial America

In Liberia, boy soldiers stripped civilian women to humiliate them; this was described with the verb phrase "to naked someone else."

[26]

In , an adulteress was paraded with a hibiscus behind the ear. Thieves were tattooed on their faces. Other criminals were paraded with a device made of woven cane on the forehead, or lengths of bamboo hung around the neck. Errant Brahmans had to wear a string of oversize beads.

Siam

was used in ancient Italy.

Send under the yoke

Some have considered in the United States to be a form of public humiliation as judicial punishment.^[27]^[28] A convicted sex offender's placement on the sex offender registry is public via a state run website in all 50 states.^[29]^[30] In 2018, a judge in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado declared Colorado's sex offender scheme as unconstitutional, citing cruel and unusual punishment.^[31] In 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit overturned that decision.^[32]

sex offender registries

, a 2015 book by Jon Ronson on the modern phenomenon of online public shaming on Twitter, Tumblr, and elsewhere on social media.

So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Media related to Public humiliation at Wikimedia Commons