In the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, thousands of teachers, scholars and others were hounded by the Red Guard to parade the streets wearing dunce caps and carrying signs advertising their offenses before being shipped off to labor camps. In colonial times, the stockade was a frequent punishment, as well as public flogging. Unfortunately, we are facing an onslaught of humiliating punishments in our criminal justice system. A recently publicized Montana case illustrates the trend. Two men charged with violating probation fabricated stories about serving in the military in the hopes of getting more lenient sentences. Neither was charged under the federal Stolen Valor Act of 2013, but a county district judge ordered that they stand at the Montana Veteran Memorial for eight hours on Memorial and Veterans days wearing a placard reading “I am a liar. I am not a veteran. I stole valor. I have dishonored all veterans!”

There has been a flock of such shaming sentences. For example, a Cleveland Municipal Court judge ordered a defendant caught passing a school bus by driving on a sidewalk to stand at an intersection wearing a sign: “Only an idiot would drive (as I did).” Another defendant who had threatened a police officer had to stand outside a police station three hours a day for one week with a sign “I was an idiot.”