Crime-ridden San Francisco has introduced new sanitized language for criminals, getting rid of words such as “offender” and “addict” while changing “convicted felon” to “justice-involved person.”
The Board of Supervisors adopted the changes last month even as the city reels from one of the highest crime rates in the country and staggering inequality exemplified by pervasive homelessness alongside Silicon Valley wealth.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, from now on a convicted felon or an offender released from custody will be known as a “formerly incarcerated person,” or a “justice-involved” person or just a “returning resident.”
A juvenile “delinquent” will now be called a “young person with justice system involvement,” or a “young person impacted by the juvenile justice system.”
And drug addicts or substance abusers, meanwhile, will become “a person with a history of substance use.”
“We don’t want people to be forever labeled for the worst things that they have done,” Supervisor Matt Haney told the newspaper. “We want them ultimately to become contributing citizens, and referring to them as felons is like a scarlet letter that they can never get away from.”
People First Language instead of Convict, Criminal, Felon, Inmate, Offender, Prisoner.
Person First Language instead of Convict, Criminal, Felon, Inmate, Offender, Prisoner.
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/451099-language-matters-for-justice-reform
By: DeAnna Hoskins is president and CEO of Just Leadership USA, a national, member-driven advocacy organization that seeks to cut the U.S. correctional population in half by 2030. She spent time in the State of Ohio’s correctional system and previously served as a senior advisor at the Department of Justice and as the director of reentry for Hamilton, Ohio Board of County Commissioners.
I am going to send the “Hill” link for “Language Matters for Justice Reform” to as many media outlets as I can. I did not find in the article, though, the proper way to refer to someone who has committed a sexual offense. A month or two ago, someone in a post at the FAC Website gave the proper terminology to use, which I have forgotten. Can anyone tell me what it is? I would like to add this information when I send the link. Thank you.
I just found it in the talking points from Dr. Emily Horowitz’s FAC membership call on Feb. 7, 2019: “a person who has a prior sex offense conviction”.
A special thank you to anyone else who researched this and sent me the info.
A Peron Who Has Been Directly Impacted By The Criminal Justice System Basically A Directly Impacted Individual: (a person who committed a crime; a formerly incarcerated or an incarcerated person; a person with a felony conviction.)
Persons required to register. Or former sex offenders. The latter has been used by Miami ACLU and is statistically accurate without sweeping things under the rug.
“Sex offenders” is a misnomer referring more accurately to those at risk of committing a sex offense. The sex offender registry (and even background checks) do a poor job of capturing that population, when you consider the statistics regarding (a) who is committing sex offenses, (b) re-offense rates of those convicted.
Are they changing the designation for RSOs as well?
Maybe I’ll move to CA.
My family member who is on the registry would not mind what he was called if government at all levels would review the evidence and realize public registries and residency restrictions are making absolutely no difference and laws need to be changed.
Calling him something pleasant sounding while making him register for life is the problem.
What’s holding back reform is that the public assumes that your family member, and others similarly situated, is a “sex offender,” which statistically is no longer correct. The entire debate is weakened severely by use of the wrong terminology by journalists, elected officials, and the public.
I appreciate the sentiment, but the only one of those nomers that’s really scrubbed is “returning resident.” Step in the right direction, I suppose.
Wow! Rational, forward thinking and compassionate. Definitely not the mentality here in Florida! Here in the Sunshine State it’s life long state sponsored character assassination, fear mongering, humiliation, ostracism and revenge!
uhm..let them learn from their mistakes and start over with out registry’s and with out branding them for life as any type of criminal would be a more intelligent and successful method…Well if you really wanted to solve the problem that is….
Just because you put your boots in the oven….it don’t make ‘em biscuits. Just more gutless useless words that try and sugar coat the issue without a meaningful attempt to solve the problem let alone a real solution to the problem. There is as much use for this as Bernie Sanders does for a comb.
This is great. We’re evolving. It’s good to see them leading the way.
So, What are they gonna call a Sex Offender ??. Because the label is INCORRECT !!!. Sex OffendER means a person who is Commiting a Sex Crime !! Like a SpeedER Law BreakER !!! If anything, They/We should be called EX-Sex OffendERs !!!. I’m glad things are starting to change, But like Florida, The changes seem to Forget the Ex-Sex OffendERs !!!. ……
Why can all ex felons be called and Ex-offender and not need an additional label. Everyone from law enforcement to jobs and apartment leasers can find out your past with the click of a button.
Calling us offenders mean we are out committing more crimes. Although a murderer did kill someone, is he or she still killing people? You cannot take back your offense but if we cannot move forward, what is the reward other than being in fear we will be re-arrested because we worse a blue short on green shirt day? Took me a year to get them to stop trying to arrest me because they had they kept changing the color of my vehicle in my registration. Can you imagine someone going to jail for having a red car and they have mauve listed an now you are a very bad man.
I don’t know how other people feel about this, but I feel very mixed about it. This quote is great:
“We don’t want people to be forever labeled for the worst things that they have done. We want them ultimately to become contributing citizens, and referring to them as felons is like a scarlet letter that they can never get away from.”
However even many on the left think that the situation in San Francisco has gone too far. It’s like there are two extremes, and they are off the charts on the left end of the spectrum.
We can see the ugliness of the extreme right-wing puritanism in places like where people who’ve committed a sexual crime against children are punished for life, and that creates oppression that spills over into many people’s lives that are related to those who’ve been scarlet-lettered. Then there’s San Fran crazy land where crime, rats, needles and human feces is everywhere. Left-wing extremism is also oppressive, and everyone feels it.
So, this is why I’m mixed. Their position is dead on about allowing people who’ve committed a crime in the past to move on, but the problem is that they are radicals, and in-spite of the nice weather, and massive amounts of tax revenue that they get from the tech industry in the area that city is falling apart.
So when you’ve got the most radical factions in society speaking for you that lumps you in with them. So it’s great that someone supports us, but it would be nice if they were somewhere closer to the middle of the spectrum and not so radical, because as they fail, and that city is failing, all that they say and do will be rejected and lumped in with their failure. So, I guess that’s my point. The right-wing puritanism is rejected by more people today, because it’s unsustainably ungracious, and most people know it. The left-wing radicalism is also going to be rejected because it’s also unsustainable.
So, if someone is for us, great, but I hope that it doesn’t hurt more than it helps.
I’m all for remembering people make mistakes and should be set up to succeed and not to fail.
Unfortunately the politicians say these great phrases but do not include the folks required to register for a past sexual offense. I’m tired of hearing things like “second chances” , yet exclude this very population form these policies which have potential.
Use their very own words against these politicians and pundits who talk out of both sides of their faces. CALL THEM OUT!
I hope this sentiment of not using past mistakes to define an entire persons life and contribution to society catches on.
Let people make a manse and move on.
Second-chances advocates are comfortable excluding former sex offenders, because they realize that their audience is unfamiliar with, or dismissive of, sex offender recidivism rates and assume that “they” can’t be “cured” and are therefore fundamentally different from other offenders. They are not at all embarrassed to proclaim, “I’m all for second chances, but I didn’t mean THEM!”
It’s a public education problem. It is taking a long time for he public to be aware of, statistically, who is doing the sex offending and who is not. When more people understand this, “second chances” will be more inclusive.
FEEL GOOD GOVERNMENT–WHAT HAPPENED TO REALITY?
CONSTITUTIONALLY WE COME TO THE BELIEF THAT TIME SERVED EQUALS ABSOLUTIOIN THROUGH ATONEMENT–COURTS PUNISH NOT SOCIETY. DE-CONNOTE LABELS VIA EDUCATION.
No mention of “sanitizing” the label SEX OFFENDER. Wonder why?
“Crime ridden San Francisco” with “one of the highest crime rates in the country”?
I highly doubt that. Fox News probably is just playing to their viewers’ visceral dislike of things they associate with San Francisco. Not sure why FAC would reproduce such an article.
I take it that the SF board refers to former sex offenders required to register as simply, sex offenders.
As I posted elsewhere, this seems to apply to all offenders except anyone convicted of a purported sex offense.
Well remember, all other offenders are people but sex offenders are sub-human according to lawmakers and some radical neighbors and law enforcement. Have you ever heard Mike Chitwood on tv? Two kids can spray paint some graffti on a fence and likes his key word “Sum bags”. What is the purpose of deeming people? I never judged anyone when I worked in law enforcement, I just did my job and treated everyone fairly and let the courts do the rest.