For good or bad, shame is part of the criminal justice system. We post pictures of individuals accused of crimes in newspapers, we reduce the identity of incarcerated individuals to a number, and we mark them, much like the fictional Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter was marked, with their own kind of scarlet letter. We do this not by forcing individuals to sew letters onto their clothing, but by tagging them with criminal records that follow them for life.

Yet never-ending shame is not punitive or rehabilitative; it’s vindictive and holds people down. It creates second-class citizens by permanently excluding and devaluing individuals in our society regardless of their ability to change. In contrast, both society and individuals have much to benefit from offering individuals a clean slate.