Is it ethical for businesses to post the full names of people charged, but not convicted, of stealing?
Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries publicly shamed almost 70 people charged with stealing by posting their names online.
Professor Arthur Schafer, the Founding Director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, thinks it’s a bad idea.
“We know of many cases of people being who have been named as having been committed a crime and their names published in the newspaper and it turns out that it was a miss-identification, it was a mistake, no crime is committed, or a crime is committed, but it’s not by the person who’s been publicly shamed.”
He says Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries needs to figure out how to reducing shoplifting of their goods without engaging in such a dubious practice.
“Their objective is right. I suspect most of them haven’t thought about what it would feel like if you happen to share the name of someone who’s been publicly shamed in this way. So that some of the shame sticks to you.”
Schafer does understand why they would do this but thinks it does more harm than good.
“I think the risk of harm or damage to innocent people out ways the benefit. I’m pretty sure that there will be alternative ways of dealing with a problem of brazen thieves and brazen thievery other than engaging in online shaming.”
Schafer says it would be easy to get names wrong, sometimes some people share the same name, and it could destroy people’s reputation when they might not have done anything shameful.
You can hear the full interview here.
