Letter to the Boston Globe Editor

August 12, 2001

In the discussion of the punitive uses of shame in the criminal justice system, the contributors neglected to differentiate shame from humiliation, which is critical to this debate. To experience shame, individuals must feel they have failed to live up to suitable behavior in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. Shame requires an awareness that one has brought disgrace upon oneself and rightly deserves his or her shame. People who are humiliated feel forced into degraded, debased, or dehumanizing positions and do not believe they deserve this treatment.

Humiliation is experienced as an assault on one¹s identity or connection to humanity. Consequently, victims of humiliation will go to great lengths to defend their dignity in the face of degradation, even if this means inflicting harm on others.

Frequently, individuals entering the criminal justice system have been numbed by years of psychological or social degradation. For many, negotiating a complex and inequitable justice system is profoundly humiliating. To compound this situation by imposing sentences constructed to abase these individuals is a simplistic, specious solution, which may merely justify an offender¹s disregard for the impact of his or her harmful behavior.

Linda M. Hartling, Ph.D.
Jean Baker Miller Training Institute
Stone Center, Wellesley Centers for Women

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