Perp Walks and the American Zest for Humiliation

The perp walk of Dominique Strauss-Kahn has attracted much criticism in France and in parts of the United States. It is hard to avoid the view that perp walks are designed to aggrandize the prosecutor in reckless disregard of (or with the hope of) the possibility of contaminating the jury pool. But the American perp walk practice is objectionable on other grounds as well. The people of Norway understand this and take it to extreme lengths. Norway forbids the publication of photographs of an arrested or convicted person going in or out of a courtroom or courthouse (conceptually perp walks fare no better).

Last year in Egeland v. Norway, a woman was convicted in a brutal triple murder. She was photographed in tears leaving the courthouse. Those responsible for publishing the photographs were convicted. The core idea of the prohibition is that those so photographed are in a reduced state of self control and considerations of human dignity mandate privacy. The convictions were upheld in the European Court of Human Rights against the claim that the Norwegian statute offended freedom of press.

The American practice is to allow the publication of such humiliating photographs in the interest of entertainment; Norwegians believe that such entertainment is beneath basic considerations of humanity.