Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> At 11:49 AM -0400 6/6/01, Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema wrote:
> >This is the distinction between shame and guilt, or as Piers put it, between
> >socially mediated id control in which the person responds to correction by
> >the collective voice of the community (usually a small, more or less
> >pre-modern one), and the more modern type of socially mediated id control in
> >which the person responds to the personality of the internalized parent. Or,
> >to paraphrase Piers further, this is the distinction between the person
> >submitting to the ego ideal and the person submitting to the superego --
> >shame as opposed to guilt. The public slap is a token of putting the person
> >to shame for a transgression. The " slaps [say in anger] and formal corporal
> >punishment, more or less in cold blood," (Carrol is quite wonderfully
> >eloquent here.), are practically calculated to generate a harsh, punishing,
> >authoritarian superego.
>
> The Right in the USA wants to return shame to criminal justice:
>
> ***** The New York Times
> June 3, 2001, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
> SECTION: Section 4; Page 5; Column 1; Week in Review Desk
> HEADLINE: The Nation;
> Justice as a Morality Play That Ends With Shame
> BYLINE: By DEAN E. MURPHY
>
> IN Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter," the adulterous Hester
> Prynne was required to wear the letter A on her chest so that all
> would know of her unforgivable sin.
>
> "Shame, despair, solitude!" Mr. Hawthorne wrote.
>
> Modern America may seem far removed from Puritan New England, but the
> idea that punishment should be based on public humiliation has never
> disappeared. If anything, it seems to be resurgent.
>
> In Corpus Christi, Tex., Judge J. Manuel Banales recently ordered
> registered sex criminals to post notices on their homes and
> automobiles warning the public of their crimes. The result: One
> offender attempted suicide, two were evicted from their homes and
> others said their property had been vandalized.
>
> Another Texan, Judge Ted Poe of the Harris County District Court in
> Houston, helped write legislation in 1999 allowing Texas judges in
> probation cases to order "public notice" of a crime in the county
> where it was committed.
>
> Judge Poe's 300 or so "public notice" sentences have ranged from
> requiring a man who beat his wife to apologize on the steps of City
> Hall to ordering a drunken driver to parade in front of a bar with
> the sign, "I killed two people while driving drunk."
>
> "Most of us care about what people think of us," Judge Poe said. 'If
> we are held up to public ridicule, we don't like it and two things
> will happen. We will change our conduct and our attitudes. It started
> in New England in the colonial days." Shades of Hawthorne.
>
> Bringing morality into the courts in this way could have far-reaching
> implications for how America administers and regards justice. Some of
> the most serious concerns center on the separation of church and
> state and whether shaming is actually religion-in-the-courtroom in
> disguise.
>
> That is what worries Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil
> Liberties Union. Ms. Strossen says the move toward shame-based
> punishment reflects a broader effort by religious conservatives to
> impose their values on the political and legal systems. As examples,
> she cites attacks on lesbian and gay rights and the intense lobbying
> in Washington for judicial nominees with strongly held religious
> beliefs.
>
> "I see a real danger," Ms. Strossen said, "not only for the First
> Amendment values of separation of church and state but for all kinds
> of other civil liberties, just because they are not consistent with
> those religious beliefs."
>
> In some cases, judges have actually ordered offenders to attend
> church. In one instance in Lancaster, Tex., a judge required a
> 14-year-old boy, charged with disorderly conduct, to attend Sunday
> school. In Lake Charles, La., Judge Thomas P. Quirk sent hundreds of
> offenders to church, in lieu of fines or jail time, until the
> A.C.L.U. intervened in 1994.
>
> In the case of Judge Poe in Houston, some critics suggest his
> religious beliefs are difficult to separate from his legal ones.
> Others say that public punishments have created an irresistible
> temptation for grandstanding, especially by judges who are elected,
> have political ambitions or preside in conservative communities.
>
> "In Judge Poe we have a judge who is a born-again Christian, a lay
> preacher, devoutly religious and, as all judges in Texas, elected,"
> said Edward A. Mallett, a Houston lawyer who is president of the
> National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Mr. Mallett says
> Judge Poe has memorized the phone numbers of local reporters so his
> rulings won't go unnoticed.
>
> Self-publicizing judges are not, however, providing the underlying
> impetus to the shame-based trend. That comes from a much more serious
> source: society's determination to control the threat presented by
> sex offenders. This gave rise to the so-called Megan's laws (named
> for a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and killed in her
> neighborhood), which vary by state, but generally provide for
> alerting residents to the presence of sex criminals.
>
> Megan's laws encourage the view among many people, including some
> judges, that criminals -- even those who have served their time --
> should not be anonymous.
>
> "We all came to realize it is anonymity that breeds more crime," said
> Marc Klaas, an advocate for the changes, whose daughter, Polly, was
> kidnapped and murdered in California in 1993.
>
> Whether this sort of punishment affects criminal behavior is a matter
> of fierce dispute and statistical uncertainty. Nonetheless,
> shame-inspired punishment seems to be everywhere these days. In
> Kansas City, Mo., city officials broadcast a regular television show,
> popularly known as John TV, that features photographs of people
> arrested for crimes related to prostitution. In Arizona, bookings at
> the Maricopa County jail are taped and posted on the Internet for
> anyone to see. In Pojoaque, N.M., a liquor store advertises the names
> of bad-check writers on a huge marquee.
>
> For practical and legal reasons, there has been no rush to challenge
> the shame-based sentences. In most cases, they are offered as an
> alternative to prison, which removes the incentive to make an issue
> of it. Judges also have broad discretion to impose conditions at
> sentencing, so defense lawyers say it would be difficult to prove
> abuse. And on constitutional grounds, the Eighth Amendment protection
> against cruel and unusual punishment sets a high threshold.
>
> Some legal scholars say criminal justice has always been moralistic
> at its core. Akhil Amar, a Yale Law School professor of
> constitutional law, said the tradition of public trials was developed
> not only to protect the rights of the accused but to expose them to
> public scrutiny. Even the word penitentiary, he noted, derives from
> penitence.
>
> "The criminal justice system is from start to finish a morality
> play," Professor Amar said. The danger of shame-based sentences, he
> said, lies not in infusion of more morality but in its origin and
> motivation. "We need to make sure that morality doesn't become an
> official promulgation of government or religion," he said.
>
> GRAPHIC: Drawing: Being confined in a pilory was one punishment that
> also subjected a convict to public scorn. (The New York Times) *****
>
> Can the USA ever become modern?
>
> Yoshie