Abstract
Public shaming as punishment acquired attention in recent years when Indian courts sporadically employed it as a substitute for the ancient punitive method of jail or fine. The article critically analyzes if public shaming can be incorporated in India’s constitutional scheme of affairs, particularly in the area of human dignity, equality, and personal liberty. Public shaming through penalizing the culprits by making them march with placards having the word of the offence written on them or public apologies is seriously challenging Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Indian Constitution. Legal, psychological, and social dimensions of such punishments have been examined here by a comparative analysis with international human rights law provisions and case law. Following analysis of judicial precedents, psychological factors, and constitutional imperatives, it is the finding of this paper that judicial public shaming is unconstitutional and detrimental to the rehabilitation of offenders and needs reconsideration in practice in India.
Keywords:- Public Shaming, Human Dignity, Constitutional Law, Judicial Precedents, Human Rights, Alternatives to Sentencing, Rehabilitation, Indian Jurisprudence, Right of Equality, Right of Freedom
Introduction
Public shaming as a form of punishment has come back in recent Indian law, although legality and effectiveness of public shaming are doubtful; Public shaming is humiliating the subject in public before a group of people in order to discourage him or her from repeating such acts in the future or simply in an attempt to gain people’s approval of the act committed. Even though this form of punishment is not technically statutorily sanctioned by Indian law, it has at times been applied by courts ad hoc, especially where judges have felt that usual punishment in the form of imprisonment is inadequate or inappropriate for the crime being committed. Public shaming also raises gigantic concerns under Indian Constitutional law, the most significant of which are with regard to rights of equality, speech, and personal liberty.
Article 21, providing for the right to life and liberty, has been construed generously by the Indian courts as also encompassing the right to live with dignity. The present paper is a critical examination of the constitutional viability of public shaming as a punishment in India. It contains a critical analysis of the intersection of judicial discretion, human dignity, and constitutional protection. Based on comparative jurisprudence, case law, and literature, it strives to propose a possible critique of public shaming and propose alternatives within the human rights standards.
Research Methodology
This research applies a doctrinal research approach, drawing from legal doctrines, judicial precedents, constitutional law, and principles of human rights in order to carry out a critical analysis of legality and impact of public shaming. The research is structured as follows:-
- Primary Sources: These include the Indian Constitution, i.e., Articles 14, 19, and 21, and some judicial decisions on public shaming.
- Secondary Sources: Scholarly articles, academic literature, psychological research on the effect of public shaming and its linkage to constitutional law, and international human rights conventions.
Approach:-
1. Constitutional Analysis:
Ensuring whether public shaming violates fundamental constitutional rights, i.e., making reference to human dignity under Article 21.
2. Judicial Precedents:
Analyzing the history of public shaming punishments in Indian law and how the judiciary has interpreted them.
3. Comparative International Perspective: Citing international norms in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and other human rights treaties.
Review of Literature
There has been wide-ranging debate in legal, ethical, and psychological discourse by scholars and jurists alike about public shaming. This section evaluates such scholarship and critically determines leading scholarly contributions.
Legal Scholarship on Public Shaming-
James Whitman, in his magnum opus The Two Western Cultures of Privacy, argues that shaming is a term to be defined as an archaic form of punishment that intrudes into a citizen’s privacy and dignity. In the opinion of Whitman, such practices, as existed there earlier, are intruding into the modern human rights and constitutional standards of the day.
Dan Kahan and Geoferry Miller are more conservative, insofar as they believe public shaming is an effective means of preventing some crimes, particularly those with a very strong moral or social component. They do, however, concede that the emotional and psychological effect of public shaming can be painful and damaging to most.
Upendra Baxi laments public shaming as punishment because it has the potential to enhance social injustices and stigma against marginalized individuals. Upendra Baxi suggests alternative, restorative justice such as community service or restorative dialogue as suitable and within constitutional guarantees of justice and human dignity.
Psychological and Social Perspectives
June Tangney and Ronda L. Dearing emphasize the adverse psychological effect of public shaming, i.e., intense shame, guilt, and social exclusion sentiments. Public shaming is likely to increase the psychological state of criminals by rendering them depressive, anxious, and recidivistic, according to their study.
Dan Ariely comments on the economics of shame behavior, and how although public shaming might inhibit one from immediate misbehavior, it will instigate a revenge spiral and resentment that will nullify the rehabilitative purpose in the long term.
Psychologists also refer to the dehumanizing effect of public shame that can lead to long-term psychological harm and ostracism, validating the feeling of inferiority and rejection.
International Human Rights Framework
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) requires that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Public shaming, particularly where it amounts to physical or emotional degradation, is clearly within this prohibition of forbidden punishments.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), Article 7, also states this prohibition on cruel and degrading punishment. Public shaming practice, even symbolic use (e.g., placard-wearing or humiliating acts), contravenes international human rights law norms.
The European Court of Human Rights has persistently believed that shaming in public insults the human dignity of the subject, and constitutes infringement on rights of privacy and freedom from treatment that is degrading in terms of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Constitutional Analysis
Article 21: Right to Life and Personal Liberty
The dignity of living is part and parcel of the Right to Life and Personal Liberty under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution.
Public shaming contravenes this principle in so far as it demeans a human being to the level of an object of contempt. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India is a such landmark judgments that extended the ambit of Article 21. This reiterated again that dignity is an integral part of the right to life. Offenders being humiliated in public through force, and thus, infringing their right to live with dignity.
Article 14: Right to Equality
Article 14 of the constitution mandates that all human beings must be treated equally by the law.
Public humiliation punishment is applied haphazardly and always ends up affecting marginalized individuals more than others disproportionately. Excessive use of this mode of punishment on particular social sections is tantamount to discriminatory treatment against the rule of equality under Article 14. Public shaming, with few exceptions, also results in **long-term social stigmatization, bizarrely endured by marginal sections, i.e., economically less privileged and lower castes.
Article 19: Right of Freedom of Speech and Expression
Public humiliation will also breach the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19 of the Constitution.
In the majority of cases, the people who are subjected to public shaming are forced into publicly apologizing or owning up to their errors and, in doing so, violate their right against self-incrimination or freedom of expression. Forcibly obtained public confessions of this type may fall under emotional coercion and are also aimed at humiliating the victim further.
Judicial Precedents
Babloo Chauhan v. State of NCT of Delhi (2011)
- The criminal had been ordered to perform public sanitation work as punishment.
- The Delhi High Court decision came under widespread criticism for lowering the dignity of the accused. Such punishment, it was argued, was not only humiliating but also ineffective since it did not address the root causes of the criminal’s behavior and instead tried to shame him in public. This case highlights the tension between sentencing judicial imagination and constitutional protection of dignity.
Vikram Singh v. Union of India (2015)
- The Supreme Court required the broader psychological and social effect of public humiliation to be taken into account.
- The Court held that although the judicial process must be flexible, punishment can never bring the person to a debased level or infringe his/her fundamental human rights. The Court reiterated that any kind of punishment must adhere to values of the Constitution and can never be used as a tool for exclusion from society.
State of U.P. v. Mohammad Sharif (1987).
- This case looked into the issue of humiliating and inhuman punishment under the Indian Penal Code and the CrPC. The court held that any punishment that humiliates human dignity is against concepts of the constitution. This is also an argument that holds that public shaming, as a form of punishment, is inherently morally wrong but legally untenableState of U.P. v. Mohammad Sharif, (1987) 3 SCC 435, at 440.
Comparative Jurisprudence
United States
Public shaming is not adopted in the United States and employed sparingly in a narrow range of classes of legal cases, e.g., United States v. Gementera (2004), in which the Ninth Circuit affirmed an order requiring a defendant to wear a sign advertising his offense.
Such tactics, it is claimed, are contrary to the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. In Kenneth S. v. New Jersey, the court denied use of public humiliation in reaffirming that punishment should function as an affirmation of human dignity.
United Kingdom
Public shaming in England is nearly unheard of as a legal practice. British law standards promote rehabilitation over punishment, and the European Court of Human Rights tends to hold that public humiliation is degrading treatment under the European Convention on Human Rights. Z v.
SUGGESTIONS
1. Legislative Action: There is a pressing need for legislative clarification. Parliament needs to unambiguously prohibit public shaming as a punitive measure, in the light of preserving offenders’ dignity in all instances.
2. Judicial Oversight: The judiciary needs to be more circumspect in turning to public shaming. Courts need to establish very stringent parameters in assessing proportionality and efficacy of sentencing, lest punitive sentencing against constitutional rights is invoked.
3. Restorative Justice Practices: Reformation in the direction of restorative justice, which works towards repairing the harm caused by crime rather than punishing the offender, can help rehabilitate criminals without undermining their dignity.
4. Public Awareness Campaigns: Encouraging the psychological and social consequences of public shaming can make society sympathetic and ill-disposed to such punishments.
Conclusion
Public shaming as punishment continues to be constitutionally fragile, morally suspect, and legally unproven in the Indian criminal justice system. Despite being invoked by dint of deterrence or moral reform, such practices squarely violate the constitutional bases enshrined in the Constitution of India—especially the assurances of dignity, equality, and individual liberty under Articles 14, 19, and 21. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence has repeatedly asserted that any curtailment of basic rights must meet the touchstone of fairness, reasonableness, and proportionality. In this regard, public shaming—be it through forcing convicts to carry signs of confession, undergoing acts of shame in public places, or committing symbolic acts of penitence—seems not merely to find no explicit statutory basis but also to fail to meet these constitutional criteria.
As a moral matter, public shaming violates the conception of justice as a rehabilitative and reintegrative process. The drama of humiliation not only causes psychological damage to persons but also serves to reproduce a cycle of stigma, exclusion, and marginalization. It adversely impacts those already socially and economically disadvantaged, hence furthering the existing hierarchies and inequalities. Essentially, such punishments not only punish individuals for their wrongdoings but disentitle the individual to their position within society, something that is antithetical to the constitutional assurance of dignity.
The Indian judiciary, guardian of the Constitution and a major stakeholder in the shaping of penal policy, has to be at the forefront of bringing about a paradigm shift towards a more humane, restorative, and reformative model of sentencing. Restorative justice mechanisms like victim-offender mediation, community service with a rehabilitative mindset, and counseling have to take precedence over prehistoric and humiliating practices that ring even the faintest echoes of medieval justice. Rehabilitation, and not revenge, has to be the beacon of a just society.
In addition, India’s extraterritorial commitments under human rights conventions like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and obligations under customary international law also limit the state’s discretion to inflict punishments which may be interpreted as cruel, inhuman, or degrading. Being a constitutional democracy, India is not only required to turn its gaze within towards its legal and moral values but also outside towards international standards of human rights and justice. Public shaming, as it now functions, has no rightful role in a modern democratic state dedicated to the rule of law, basic freedoms, and the dignity of its citizens. It needs to be squarely rejected as a judicial innovation that crosses the fine line between discretion and arbitrariness. The future of India’s criminal justice system has to be based not on public spectacle, but on constitutional morality, where justice is tempered with compassion, legality, and respect for human dignity.
Name:- Tanishqa Nenawati
College Name:- Kirit P. Mehta School Of Law, NMIMS, Mumbai