In the closing stretch of Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2006), Amanda Young points a gun at Lynn Denlon, the doctor she has kidnapped to keep a dying John Kramer alive, and refuses to remove the collar she built herself. John reminds her that the rules of the game are clear and asks her to let Lynn go. Amanda answers that Lynn does not deserve to go free, and fires. Jeff, the man Jigsaw has been testing throughout the film, arrives at that moment and shoots her in the neck. As Amanda bleeds out, John tells her that the test was hers, her game, and that she has lost it. So ends the disciple the saga had introduced in Saw (James Wan, 2004) as Jigsaw’s only survivor: a heroin addict who woke up with the reverse bear trap on her head, took the key from the stomach of a drugged man and then told the police that Jigsaw had helped her. Between one film and the next she became his apprentice and began building traps with no way out. John Braithwaite’s reintegrative shaming lets us read that whole trajectory as an experiment run backwards.
// The theoryTwo ways of shaming
In Crime, Shame and Reintegration (1989), the Australian criminologist John Braithwaite proposed that shame is one of the most powerful tools of social control, but that it can be used in two ways. Reintegrative shaming disapproves of the act but respects the person, keeps them within the community and offers them a way back, often with ceremonies of forgiveness. Stigmatising shaming humiliates, labels the offender as evil and excludes them. According to Braithwaite, the first reduces reoffending and the second increases it, because it pushes the person towards groups that accept them for the very things society rejects. His theory underpins many restorative justice programs.
Rehabilitation through terror
Jigsaw presents his traps as a form of rehabilitation: whoever survives would have learned to value their life. But what he does is the most extreme form of stigmatizing shame: he humiliates, terrifies and treats his victims as people who do not deserve to live if they fail his test. Amanda is the case that proves it. She is not reintegrated into any community: the only one that accepts her is her torturer’s, and she joins it. Just what Braithwaite predicted: stigma does not correct, it pushes towards the group that takes you in, even if it is a criminal one.
// The subjectA disciple without faith
The Saw saga presents Amanda as someone marked by abandonment. Before Jigsaw she had been an addict, self-harmed and been through prison after a false accusation. Jigsaw is the first figure to pay her attention, and she idolizes him. But she does not share his doctrine: he believes people can change; she does not. That is why her traps have no way out. Her relationship with him is that of a daughter seeking a father’s approval, and her final failure shows that the “salvation” he gave her was never real.
Saw III completes the portrait with her memories and her grudges. When John takes her in, in one of the flashbacks, he tells her that the marks on her arms are from another life and that they will leave that life behind. It is the closest thing to a reintegration ceremony the saga offers, and it is conducted by a man who kidnaps and tortures: the welcome exists, but inside a group whose only rite is the test. Her grudge points at Eric Matthews, the detective from Saw II. Amanda reproaches John because Matthews learned nothing from his test and stayed the same man who arrested her, the one who planted false evidence on her. “I’m a murderer,” she admits: Matthews took her life from her, and she returned the favor. Braithwaite described the effect of stigma in just this way: the label stops being a reproach and becomes an identity. Amanda does not fend off the word “murderer”; she claims it. And what she holds against John is not the cruelty of his games but their inconsistency: she tells him that what he does is no different from murder, that he tortures people and watches them die, and yet he demands she respect the rules for a woman who means nothing to her.
Amanda Young
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// The crackA horror fiction is not a program
Using Amanda to illustrate Braithwaite’s theory has its limits. Jigsaw’s traps are not a form of social control but torture, and no criminological theory would consider them a way of shaming. The comparison works as a contrast: it shows the opposite of what reintegration aims for.
Braithwaite’s theory has also been tested mainly with minor offenses and juveniles, in restorative justice conferences in Australia, with positive but modest results. Applying it to people with severe addictions and histories of violence like Amanda’s requires much more than a ceremony of forgiveness: treatment, support and time.
Reintegration that works
Restorative justice programs inspired by Braithwaite, which bring together victim, offender and community to repair the harm, are applied today in many countries, including Spain in juvenile justice. Research shows that they increase victim satisfaction and somewhat reduce reoffending. And for addictions, treatments with community support work better than punishment. Amanda needed that, and what she found was a trap on her head.
Three key ideas
- Braithwaite’s reintegrative shaming (1989) distinguishes shame that condemns the act and reintegrates the person, which reduces crime, from shame that stigmatizes and excludes, which increases it.
- Amanda Young survives a Jigsaw trap, becomes his apprentice and ends up designing traps with no way out because she does not believe anyone can change.
- The crack: the traps are torture, not shame, and the theory has been tested mainly with minor offenses and juveniles.
Sources · further reading
- Braithwaite, J. (1989). Crime, Shame and Reintegration. Cambridge University Press.
- Ahmed, E., Harris, N., Braithwaite, J. and Braithwaite, V. (2001). Shame Management Through Reintegration. Cambridge University Press.
- Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery. Basic Books.
- Sherman, L. W. and Strang, H. (2007). Restorative Justice: The Evidence. The Smith Institute.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Amanda Young?
Amanda Young is a villain from Saw, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. Jigsaw put her in a trap so she would learn to value her life.
Why does Amanda Young become a villain?
Braithwaite’s reintegrative shaming reads Amanda Young in reverse: Jigsaw claimed he had rehabilitated her, and the only community that took her in was her torturer’s.
Which criminological theory explains Amanda Young?
Amanda Young's case is analysed through Vergüenza reintegradora. John Braithwaite’s theory of reintegrative shaming (1989) distinguishes two ways of condemning a crime: one that condemns the act but welcomes the person back, which reduces reoffending, and one that humiliates and excludes the offender, which pushes them towards criminal groups. Amanda Young, of the Saw saga (2004-), is a young addict who wakes up with a trap on her head that will tear her jaw open if she cannot get the key, hidden in another man’s stomach. She survives and, instead of reporting Jigsaw, becomes his disciple. When he falls ill, she starts designing traps that cannot be survived.
