Kyrkoplikt

Kyrkoplikt (literally: 'church duty') was a historical form of punishment, practiced in Sweden and Finland.

It was a form of public humiliation in which the condemned was made to confess and repent of their crime before being rehabilitated and spared further punishments.

Uppenbar kyrkoplikt was meted out for all forms of criminalized acts: theft, adultery, abuse, witchcraft and those pardoned from the death sentence.

[1] This was viewed as a problem in the Riksdag of the Estates, because the social stigma caused by uppenbar kyrkoplikt's way of exposing the women, who felt themselves socially branded, was found to be a significant cause of infanticide performed by unmarried women desperate to do anything to avoid having their reputation ruined by the shame.

Despite opposition from the clergy, uppenbar kyrkoplikt was abolished for sexual crimes in an attempt to prevent infanticide.