Shameful appearances

Press, 23 November 1987, Page 12

Shameful appearances

In the good (or bad) old days, public shame was a familiar enough way to treat anti-social behaviour. An offender could, for Instance, be locked in the public stocks, perhaps for a day or so, and subjected to as much abuse, or even worse treatment, as the community saw fit to hurl. There are no statistics to determine how effective the treatment was as a deterrent, or as a punishment; it must have been a pretty unpleasant business. In a much more gentle fashion, the Scots are testing the power of public shame as a deterrent to drink-driving offences. People convicted of such offences are having their names displayed on Scottish television. The success of the experiment must depend on a sense of shame among offenders, and on a sense that drink-driving offences are unacceptable among the community at large. Almost anything that carries some prospect of reducing the number of road accidents caused by alcohol seems worth trying. The publication of the names of offenders in newspapers has not necessarily made much difference over the years. To have names appearing on television may have more effect, at least to begin with, because of the novelty. Unfortunately, there may also be those who see this as simply a

new way to achieve a kind of notoriety; to enjoy, for quite the wrong reasons, the thrill of seeing one’s name on television. In New Zealand the group most likely to be convicted of drink-driving offences — young males — is a group not always notable for its sense of decency or for a desire to conform to the rules the community may devise for the greater protection and comfort of everyone. For some drivers, of course, such public attention would be a strong deterrent and a sharp punishment. But the likely differences in attitude to being named on television as a drunk driver reinforces a point that applies to all punishments — they are uneven in their impact on offenders.

If the shame list experiment worked, however, it raises the prospect that the process might be expanded to include other offences, especially those with a marked antisocial flavour. It could be a splendid way to fill television time with a programme loaded with local content — lists of parking offenders, or tax evaders, could make a longer running series than “Coronation Street.” But where would it all end? In an almost non-stop parade of names that no-one bothered to watch any more?