Toxic Shame: A Recipe For Increased Crime?

Shame is an important aspect of healthy healing and rehabilitation from one's aberrant thoughts and behaviors; however, in order for shame to lead to healing, it must be the type of shame that leads to repentance and restoration. John Braithwaite, a pioneer in modern restorative justice practices, calls this reintegrative shaming.

(1) The shame we feel when we do something wrong is supposed to hurt; it's supposed to make us feel badly about ourselves. But it is also supposed to lead us to correct our bad thoughts and behavior, and it ought to lead to restoration for those who are truly repentant and changed.

The problem with shame is that as a whole it is rarely experienced in reintegrative form. The justice system and prison systems in the United States are designed to reinforce toxic shame that leads one to feel hopelessly defective or flawed and therefore unworthy of love, belonging, and acceptance. Nobody wants to feel hopelessly defective and unworthy of society's acceptance, so these feelings may lead one to a feeling of coldness or deadness. According to psychiatrist James Gilligan, this deadened feeling is the result of constant shaming; he calls this overwhelming shame "mortification" 

(2) Gilligan states, "Shame, like cold, is, in essence, the absence of warmth. And when it reaches overwhelming intensity, shame is experienced, like cold, as a feeling of numbness and deadness" 

(3) He goes on to compare this cold deadness to the lowest circle of hell in Dante's Inferno. 

While society has an interest in protecting itself from those who commit crimes, it also has an interest in ensuring that those incarcerated citizens who return to society do so without this feeling of deadness as a result of mortification. This toxic form of shame may actually lead to higher rates of violence and other crimes because those who are under constant shaming may believe they have no other recourse than to live up to the expectations of the society that is shaming them. Psychologists call this phenomenon self-fulfilling prophesy.
Restorative justice focuses on making shame restorative. Shameful behavior must be acknowledged as such, but the person who committed shameful behavior, and the one against whom the shameful behavior was committed, must not be made to feel that they are worthless as a result of that behavior. Restorative justice ensures that the cycle of shame, which according to Braithwaite may lead to a shame-rage spiral 

(4) is broken by pursuing reintegration and joint healing between the victim and offender.

It might make society feel better treating offenders as they deserve--with constant shaming, but if we are to break the cycles of crime that result from this toxic shame, we must be intentional about choosing a different way. That doesn't mean rejecting shame entirely, but it means intentionally using the shame that should result from the commission of a crime to lead to correction and a path towards restoration.

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(1) Braithwaite, John. "Restorative Justice and a Better Future." Restorative Justice: Critical Issues. Ed. Eugene McLaughlin, et all. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications Inc., 2004. 54-64.
(2) Gilligan, James. "Violence: Reflections on Our Deadliest Epidemic" qtd. in So You've Been Publicly Shamed (Jon Ronson) p. 250 (215) (publisher unknown)
(3) Ibid.
(4) Braithwaite, ibid at 56.