DOJ office that funds re-entry programs finds new ways to refer to people with criminal records
Terms like “felon” and “offender” are demeaning when used to describe people who have been released from prison, and the Office of Justice Programs within the U.S. Department of Justice will no longer use the words to characterize individuals who finished their sentences, the office announced today.
“The labels we affix to those who have served time can drain their sense of self-worth and perpetuate a cycle of crime, the very thing reentry programs are designed to prevent,” Karol Mason, an assistant U.S. attorney general who heads the Office of Justice Programs, wrote in a guest post for the Washington Post. Her office funds various reentry programs across the country.
Going forward, she wrote, her office would describe former inmates with terms like “person who committed a crime” and “individual who was incarcerated.” The announcement follows National Reentry Week, which ran April 24 through April 30, and does not apply to the entire Department of Justice.
“Our words have power. They shape and color our estimations and judgments. They can build up or tear down,” Mason wrote. “The hundreds of thousands of people who come out of our prisons on an annual basis and the millions more who cycle through local jails need to hear that they are capable of making a change for the better.”
