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Hester Prynne Sanction Essay, Research Paper

Hester Prynne Sanction

The persistent issue of corporate punishment has been the proverbial

thorn in the side of many people throughout history. Corporations have caused

many people huge amounts of both physical and emotional pain due to instances of

improper mechanical maintenance, ignorance towards the environment, and the

manufacture of life threatening products. The main problem that lies as an

obstacle in front of prosecutors of these corporations is, who do they punish?

The Lord Chancellor of England questioned, ?Did you ever expect a corporation to

have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked??

Countless victims throughout history have been perplexed to come up with a

solution to answer the Chancellor’s question. How can people throw a corporation

in jail, or have them compensate for their immeasurable losses? In his work The

Hester Prynne Sanction, Peter French analyses ways in which the courts can

change how they punish corporations more effectively. This essay will take a

critical look at French’s solution, examining if it is an effective and morally

justified fashion of punishing corporations.

In our society, retributive ideals have been implanted in us, as the

famous biblical ?eye for an eye? concept seems to be society’s manner with which

we punish criminals. This is an interesting case though, because corporations

don’t simply have one individual they can place the blame upon. Rather, they are

comprised of hundreds or even thousands of people, and therefore there is no

extensive punishment prosecutors can place upon everybody who is employed by a

corporation. In a famous case in Indiana involving Ford Pinto whose ?cost

benefit analysis regarding the redesign of the gas tank on the Pinto? cost a

person his life. The firm ended up paying $200,000, but how can you place a

price on human life? And furthermore, who can you go after for retribution? The

engineer who drew up the plans? The CEO who approved the change? Or even the

Factory worker who placed the new tank in the car? None of them, according to

the current laws, writes French. ? The idea that a corporation can pay a court

fine or a set sum to the relatives of its’ victim in a homicide case, and

therefore expiate its guilt is, however, regarded by many people as a shocking

affront to justice.? Very few of these cases can be directly linked to

individual negligence or intentional recklessness, and the fines can easily be

written off as business expenses. The corporations usually recover fines quickly

by means of higher prices. This poses a major problem for society, because the

fines imposed on corporations are not even regarded, ? in the corporate world as

punishment comparable to human incarceration.? Therefore people want to gain

control of the ?most powerful institutions in our community? and more

importantly gain the justice that they rightly deserve. This justice comes in

the form of Peter French’s Hester Prynne Sanction.

French’s Hester Prynne Sanction is an ?alternative type of punishment? ,

and is a well thought out and researched proposal. The solution takes a

psychological approach to the problem. French notes that our legal system is ?

guilt based, and guilt is an economic notion? , and that guilt has been looked

at as a debt to a victim or to a society in general. The way to repay this debt

is by punishment, which consequently acts as a means to repay and restore

society’s equilibrium. Therefore, if a corporation is guilty of pollution they

simply repay society by donating money to a group who will ?clean up? the

astronomical mess they made, and in turn, the damage they caused will be repaid.

French believes we, as a society, should abandon this outlook and switch to a

shame based attitude when it comes to justice involved in the corporate law

system, because the feeling of shame makes one feel inadequate or inferior. With

this system, if a corporation was involved in a situation that was discordant

with the law and trust had been shattered, the courts could induce shame as a

means of punishment.. This shame would enlighten the media to the wrongdoing,

who would in turn enlighten both the corporation of their mistakes, as well as

the public of this ?shameful behavior?. The advantage to this new system is that

shame cannot be eliminated by a payment. ?Paying a fine cannot restore the

status quo disrupted by shameful actions. It cannot reestablish worth or trust.

Regaining worth, reclaiming identity is not a question of purchase.? This

forces the shameful party to act in a positive, courageous, and valiant way to

try and recreate themselves as worthy. People look at the party involved with

disgust which relays, ? a signal to them that identity must be rebuilt.?

The Hester Prynne Sanction is a very effective method of deterring and

punishing corporate offenders by inducing shame on an offender. The shame ?

threatens prestige, image, and social standing? , a mark that is carried with a

person for the rest of his life, and this is particularly damaging in the

corporate world where image, prestige and reputation are everything. For

corporations to survive they must strive to maintain a good image, and a

corporation with a tarnished image will suffer tremendous set backs, as they

should. The

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