Summary Of Shame Is Worth A Try By Dan Kahan

In Dan Kahan’s, Shame is Worth a Try, he claims that the use of shame as punishment is a more effective and economical alternative to imprisonment. Kahan uses a plethora of rhetorical devices in his article. He uses many examples of places in which shame is already being used as a punishment.

In the first paragraph, Kahan states that “Nevertheless, courts and legislators have registered have resisted alternative sanctions-not so much because they wont work, but because they fail to express appropriate moral condemnation of crime”. In this statement the author uses asyndeton. The reason he chose to use asyndeton was to emphasize that politicians and political leaders are unwilling to see that shame will not morally condemn the guilty. This is

By using asyndeton, Kahan makes a clear point to readers that this statement is of key importance to the article. The author once again utilizes asyndeton when he says “Nor do we condemn offenders to educate the retarded, install smoke detectors in nursing homes, restore dilapidated low income housing, and the like.”. He is referring to the lack of punishments that condemn the person who commited the crime. Asyndeton is once again used to emphasize that not much is being done at the moment to truly stop and convince crime committers that they should never do it again. Services such as educating the retarded and installing smoke detectors in nursing homes are not

He uses logos and empirical evidence when he says that “Indeed, preliminary reports suggest that certain shaming punishments, including those directed at deadbeat dads, are extraordinarily effective”. The author incorporates logos in this article specifically to back up the statements he is making. In this quote he quotes previous reports to show that shaming punishments are effective. Then, the author further backs up his point by saying, “In fact, a series of studies by Harold Grasmick, a sociologist at the University of Oklahoma, suggests that the prospect of public disgrace exerts greater pressure to comply with the law than does the threat of imprisonment and other formal punishments”. This statement is important because it proves Kahan’s point that shame can be more effective than imprisonment. The use of facts is important because without them this article seems very opinionated. By bringing up a report by a trusted source such as the University of Oklahoma, Kahan is able to persuade readers that were not already convinced and that needed more evidence to be