Disintegrative Shaming

Disintegrative Shaming Definition

Disintegrative shaming is the expression of society’s disapproval of an individual’s criminal actions in a way that brands the offender as an outcast, with no realistic hope of being accepted back into the group. Rather than correcting behavior and restoring the person, this form of shaming permanently stigmatizes them.

Effects

Because those who are shamed in this way are shut out of mainstream society, disintegrative shaming tends to push them together into subcultures composed of the similarly rejected. In this respect it is often contrasted with reintegrative shaming, which condemns the offense while still offering the offender a route back into the community; disintegrative shaming, by closing off that route, can entrench criminal identities and deviant subcultures rather than dissolve them.