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Stephen P. Garveyt
INTRODUCTION
An unusual thing is happening in the world of punishment. Different forms of punishment are starting to appear that challenge conventional notions of what punishment is all about. In colonial America, the fledgling state had a rich array of afflictions it could draw upon to punish criminal offenders.l Death was one. Offenders would be publicly dispatched amid great ceremony, which was sometimes sober and somber, and sometimes not. Whipping, too, was an option, again usually in full display before an onlooking public.2 Fines were widely used,3 as at times were stocks, pillories, bilboes, branks, brands, ducking stools, and, on very rare occasions, burning.4 Missing, because it had not yet come into full bloom, was the prison.5 Today, in contrast, two options dominate the penal imagination: imprisonment and simple probation. From time to time we do use a collection of intermediate sanctions between these extremes that includes traditional impositions like community service and fines, as well as more recent innovations like intensive probation supervision, house arrest, and boot camps.s Still, '[etween overcrowded prisons and even more overcrowded probation, there is a near-vacuum ... Prison and probation continue to represent our punitive orthodoxy. But orthodoxy invites challenge. Set aside the standard package of intermediate sanctions and consider instead the following collection of sanctions that have attracted considerable attention in the legal literature and popular press alike:s
A woman convicted of drug possession is ordered to stand on a street corner wearing a sign saying, "I got caught possessing cocaine. Ordered by Judge Whitfield.' An offender convicted of DWI is ordered to paste a bumper sticker on his car that reads, "CONVICTED: DWI."10 Another DWI offender is ordered to attend church.ll Men convicted of soliciting prostitutes in Kansas City, Missouri, have their faces and names displayed on the local community access channel in a program popularly known as "John TV."'2 Men in San Francisco, California, are required to attend the "School for Johns," where former prostitutes lecture them about life on the streets.l3 A landlord in Syracuse, New York, whose building was condemned as a slum, is ordered to post a four-foot square sign on the building that lists his name together with his phone number."4 A New York City landlord is...