Suite Justice or Sweet Charity? Some Explorations of Shaming and Incapacitating Business Fraudsters

This article examines the use of shaming and stigma against financial criminals and evidence for and against their impact. It first reviews the extent to which fraudulent behaviour attracts shaming responses - which depends partly on the nature of the frauds committed - and then the extent to which fraudsters are likely to care about the shame that is sought to be imposed upon them. It suggests that potential damage to business prospects is probably more salient than shame per se to impact of informal sanctions, but that culture is an important component of the process of shaming, and that further research is needed before we can be confident about the effectiveness of shame in this area, quite apart from the difficulties of applying it in practice