American jurisdictions have traditionally resisted fines and community service as alternatives to imprisonment, notwithstanding strong support for these sanctions among academics and reformers. This article contends that the reason is that these forms of punishment are expressively inferior to incarceration. The public expects punishment not only to deter crime and to impose deserved suffering, but also to make accurate statements about what the community values; liberty deprivation is a symbol of condemnation in American culture. The article uses expressive theory to explain why the American public has consistently rejected proposals to restore corporal punishment, a form of discipline that offends egalitarian moral sensibilities; and why the public is growing increasingly receptive to shaming punishments, which, unlike conventional alternative sanctions, signal condemnation unambiguously. Notes