Shame is underrated as a deterrent to bad behavior. People who scoff at fines or even jail time don't like it one bit when they're shamed in public. Some governments still take full advantage of this, to hilarious and/or horrifying results.

5 Colombia Dispatches Mimes to Shame Traffic Violators

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Unless you actually are one, chances are you find mimes annoying as shit. Any actual artistic merit they once had is long gone, and all that's left is a shell of a caricature, a failed clown without the verbal skills required to excitedly ask kids if they're ready for a Bozo-riffic good time.

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Ooooorrrr ... maybe not.

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So it would stand to reason that being scolded by such an annoying, useless creature would be a good way to ensure that you stopped doing whatever caused the scolding. That's what the mayor of Bogota, Colombia was anticipating, anyway. Back in 1998, the city was suffering through a jaywalking epidemic. Unlike most places, where they pretend to care about jaywalking laws but never enforce them because otherwise everybody on the planet would be drowning in tickets, Bogota actually wanted to quell the problem. And they did so by publicly mocking and humiliating offenders via the power of mime.

When a pedestrian would jaywalk or commit some similar offense, a mime would appear and hold up a sign that said, "INCORRECTO," which, despite being an actual word, sounds exactly like a fake Spanish sound that people use when breaking out their award-winning Speedy Gonzales impression.

Via Harvard University Gazette

That bus driver is staring down more temptation than any man in history.

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But a big pink sign wasn't enough; the mime would then go into full Mime Mode, mocking the jaywalkers by walking behind them and mirroring their movements, like the world's most punchable shadow. And as you might have already assumed, this asinine plan totally ... succeeded? Yes, it actually worked, without one mime so much as getting slapped in the dick. Turns out, traffic tickets mean nothing to the average jaywalker, since they're almost never large enough to matter. But everyone hates being humiliated, and so people started going to great lengths to cross the street correctly, lest they get laughed at by somebody whose basic job description does not allow for actual laughing.