I’m sure you’ve seen the perp walk on T.V.  A prisoner is shown, being escorted by police, usually handcuffed and waring prison garb, often times trying to shield their face from the camera.  Michael Jackson did it several times.  Lee Harvey Oswald did it several times before he was shot by Jack Ruby during a perp walk.

Recently, the U.S. has come under criticism from some in France over the perp walk of the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Why should we care.  Well, if it turns out he is guilty then I guess neither myself, nor anyone else, will have much sympathy for him.  He deserved a perp walk and a whole lot more.  But what if he is acquitted?

We claim to believe that the accused are innocent until proven guilty.  In 2000, in France, they went one step further.  They outlawed the perp walk until after someone is convicted.

We should do the same thing in the U.S.  The danger of the perp walk is that if someone is innocent, the images of the scruffy defendant in handcuffs and prison garb is forever in the imagery of the American public.  In the internet age, those pictures are never more than a few clicks away.

Someone who is wronfully accused is forced not only to defend themselves in court, but to also live the rest of their lives reminding people that they were wronfully accused.  The perp walk makes it that much harder.

So, why should we keep the perp walk?  There aren’t any good reasons.  Sheriff Joe Arpaio, from Arizona, has used the perp walk to embarrass those already convicted by forcing a string a inmates to walk in front of cameras. He is obviously doing so for political purposes.  While that situation is different, because the prisoners were already convicted, it does show the only reason that police do it now.  To create early pretrial publicity.  Doing so serves two purposes.  It creates political support for the police and prosecutors and it taints the jury pool against the suspect, making a conviction more likely.  Neither of these purposes are legitimate.

With no good reasons to keep it and some rather compelling reasons to get rid of it, the perp walk needs to go.  It’s time