Tag: Felon

NYT says NO to “the other f-word,” and YES to Gov. McAuliffe

The New York Times has two great Sunday editorials on issues relating to collateral consequences.  One deals with the issue of labeling people with a criminal record, of special concern when headline writers seem unable to resist using what Bill Keller at the Marshall Project recently called “the other F-word.”  The editorial points out that ugly demeaning labels like “convict” and “felon” are “an unfair life sentence.”  Let us hope the message reaches newsrooms across the country, and that journalists (especially headline writers) will find another way of describing people with a criminal record. The Times also has another very fine editorial on Virginia Governor McAuliffe’s restoration of the vote to more than 200,000 individuals, pointing out that his authority under the Virginia Constitution is indisputable. A very good day for the editorial staff of the Gray Lady, whose editorial page is setting an example of enlightened thinking about criminal law issues – notably including the collateral consequences of conviction. Read more

Justice Department (or part of it) will no longer use the “f-word”

The Washington Post has published an op ed by a top Justice Department official responsible for grants and contracts announcing that her agency* will no longer use labels like “felon” and “offender” to describe people who have a criminal record.  Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason, who heads the Office of Justice Programs, said that she had recently issued “an agency-wide policy directing our employees to consider how the language we use affects reentry success.” I have come to believe that we have a responsibility to reduce not only the physical but also the psychological barriers to reintegration.  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. This is terrific news, and comes on the heels of a thoughtful editorial by Bill Keller of The Marshall Project proposing that journalists ought to make an effort to avoid disparaging language: [W]ords that not long ago were used without qualms may come to be regarded as demeaning: “colored,” “illegals.”  “Felon,” which makes the person synonymous with the crime, is such a word. Likewise “convict.”  I’m less troubled by words that describe a temporary status without the suggestion of irredeemable wickedness — “inmate” and “prisoner” and “ex-offender” — but ask me again a year from now. Ms. Mason’s piece explained further: This new policy statement replaces unnecessarily disparaging labels with terms like “person who committed a crime” and “individual who was incarcerated,” decoupling past actions from the person being described and anticipating the contributions we expect them to make when they return.  We will be using the new terminology in speeches, solicitations, website content, and social media posts, and I am hopeful that other agencies and organizations will consider doing the same. Interestingly, the Post editor either didn’t read Ms. Mason’s piece or didn’t agree with it, since the paragraph introducing it used the word “convict” twice.  I guess it just takes time. __________________ *A note at the bottom of the op ed explains that Ms. Mason’s new policy applies only to OJP and not to the Justice Department as a whole. Read more

“The Other F-word” – A journalist’s perspective on labeling people with a criminal record

On Monday we published a piece by CCRC Director Margaret Love titled “A plea to stop labeling people who have a criminal record,” which was critical of the media’s usage of “degrading” terms like “felon” and “offender” to describe people with criminal histories. Yesterday Bill Keller, Editor-in-Chief of The Marshall Project, responded to Ms. Love’s critique in a piece that provides an interesting look at the issue through the lens of his own experience as a journalist.  It also includes a response from the style editor of The New York Times on the specific subject of Ms. Love’s criticism.  We republish Mr. Keller’s piece below. The Other F-word By Bill Keller Original article The other day Margaret Love, a veteran clemency lawyer, scolded The New York Times for this front-page headline: “Virginia Governor Restores Voting Rights to Felons.” She applauded the news — some 200,000 Virginians, most of them African-American, recovered their voting rights under Governor Terry McAuliffe’s executive order — but she deplored the word “felons.” “This ugly stigmatizing label has been broadly criticized as counterproductive to reintegration efforts, perpetuating stereotypes about people with a criminal record and encouraging discrimination against them,” she wrote in a blog post. “While the Governor himself was careful with his language, not a single major newspaper reporting on his action could resist including the word in its headline.” As you can probably imagine, this is a familiar discussion at a news outlet focused on criminal justice. I wrestled with it a year ago and solicited feedback from our readers. The callout provoked some strong feelings, but no clear consensus, even among readers who had been incarcerated. A couple of months ago I visited the editors of the newspaper published by residents of San Quentin Prison, and heard a young writer argue that the words “inmate” and “prisoner” should be discarded as the oppressors’ labels. His alternative was “incarcerated American.” (“Incarcerated person” was not embracing enough.) An older man, the managing editor, rolled his eyes and pointed out that inmates and prisoners call each other inmates and prisoners. On both sides of the bars, it can be tricky navigating between the obligation to be direct and clear to readers and the desire not to give gratuitous offense. As journalists (not that I speak for all journalists) we tend to resist the banishing of words, especially words that are accurate, precise, and well understood. We cringe from euphemisms that amount to badges of political correctness — “incarcerated Americans” — or that just sound like jargon. Prison staffers prefer to be known as “correctional officers” because, they say, “guards” sounds passive; at The Marshall Project we use the words interchangeably, because “correctional officers” is a bureaucratic mouthful and “guards” carries no opprobrium. On both sides of the bars, it can be tricky navigating between the obligation to be direct and clear to readers and the desire not to give gratuitous offense. I contacted my friend and former colleague at The Times, Phil Corbett, the standards editor, and he had this to say about the “felon” furor: The whole point of the story was in WHO these thousands were — that is, “people who had been convicted of serious crimes.” Or, in the sometimes bludgeon-like shorthand of headlines, “felons.” In this case, their criminal history was indeed the essential element. That said, I don’t deny that using that shorthand noun conveys a tone beyond just the informational content. It’s somewhat analogous to calling someone “a schizophrenic,” which we try to avoid, as opposed to “a person with schizophrenia.” (Of course, the analogy is inexact — committing a serious crime is not the same as developing a mental illness.) I don’t think we would serve readers well by downplaying or sugar-coating someone’s legal history, when that history is directly relevant. And I suspect “felon” might be hard to avoid at times in tight headline confines. But in the text of a story like that one, we could probably make the effort to say, e.g., “200,000 people convicted of serious crimes” instead of “200,000 convicted felons.” What I tell my staff is to minimize the use of labels when referring to an individual; individuals have names, and nobody should be defined solely by the worst thing he or she has done. (And Margaret Love is probably right that reducing people to epithets makes it harder for them to assimilate and live within the law.) But it’s appropriate and often unavoidable to use labels when writing about measures or events that affect whole categories. In our morning newsletter, our summary of the Virginia news was: “Reversing 150 years of felony disenfranchisement, Virginia governor restores voting rights for more than 200,000 ex-offenders.” Love doesn’t love “ex-offenders” either, but I can live with it. Language usage in the mainstream media evolves, and the creative dynamics of the internet seem to have accelerated the process. The New York Times didn’t begin using the word “gay” until 1987; today it freely uses the word “queer,” which not long ago was described in the paper’s style guide as “an offensive slur,” but which has been reclaimed by a younger generation. Likewise, words that not long ago were used without qualms may come to be regarded as demeaning: “colored,” “illegals.” “Felon,” which makes the person synonymous with the crime, is such a word. Likewise “convict.” I’m less troubled by words that describe a temporary status without the suggestion of irredeemable wickedness — “inmate” and “prisoner” and “ex-offender” — but ask me again a year from now. Read more

A plea to stop labeling people who have a criminal record

On April 22, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe issued an executive order restoring civil rights to more than 200,000 individuals once convicted of felonies.  His courageous action is welcome and long overdue, and there are now only three states nationwide that permanently disenfranchise people based on a felony conviction.  The Governor’s press release promises new restoration orders on a regular monthly basis as additional individuals become eligible — the model followed in Iowa between 2005 and 2011, when convicted individuals were restored to the franchise under a similar executive process before it was discontinued by a Republican governor. The one sour note on an otherwise happy occasion was the pervasive use of the word “felon” in print and media accounts to describe the beneficiaries of Governor McAuliffe’s action.  This ugly stigmatizing label has been broadly criticized as counterproductive to reintegration efforts, perpetuating stereotypes about people with a criminal record and encouraging discrimination against them.  While the Governor himself was careful with his language, not a single major newspaper reporting on his action could resist including the word in its headline. It is not that hard to avoid.  For example, instead of announcing that “Virginia Governor Restores Voting Rights to Felons,” the New York Times might just as accurately have told us that “Virginia Governor Restores Voting Rights to Thousands” — and in the bargain conveyed an additional useful piece of information about the scope of the order.  Over the weekend, the Washington Post could have told us that “Governor McAuliffe’s Move on Voting Rights Upends 2017 Races,” and anyone who cared would have known exactly what was meant. The problem is not confined to headline-writers, or to journalists new to the issues.  Senior reporters at The Times used the word “felon” 37 times in two articles published on April 23. One of the articles added the meaningless prefix “ex-,” seeming to concede the problem without dealing meaningfully with it. The one bright spot at The Times — and a very bright one at that — was provided by its editorial board, which put Governor McAuliffe’s action in the larger voting rights context and avoided labels entirely, showing that where there’s a will there’s a way. On the eve of National Reentry Week, it seemed timely to reprint a piece written several years ago for The Crime Report, in an earlier (and evidently unsuccessful) effort to persuade journos of good will to stop using the term because of its negative effects in an increasingly important area of public policy.   What’s in a Name? A Lot, When the Name is “Felon” March 13, 2012 By Margaret Colgate Love At a recent conference of journalists at John Jay College, I raised an issue I have about language in the media:  the frequent use of the word “felon” to describe a person who has been convicted of a crime. One recent example, in a Washington Post story this month, is headlined: “Erhlich plans law school clinic, training program for felons seeking pardons.” “Felon” is an ugly label that confirms the debased status that accompanies conviction.  It identifies a person as belonging to a class outside many protections of the law, someone who can be freely discriminated against, someone who exists at the margins of society. In short, a “felon” is a legal outlaw and social outcast. But the word “felon” does more work than that. It arouses fear and loathing in most of us.  I confess that it arouses those visceral feelings in me.  I do not want to live or work around felons.  I do not want to socialize with them. The word “felon” conjures up images of large, scary people (men, of course) whose goal in life is to steal my things and hurt me, the staple weekend fare on MSNBC.  Affixing an “ex-” changes nothing. Felons deserve a wide berth and whatever opprobrium they get. I make a living representing people who have been convicted of a crime.  They are, for the most part, very interesting and thoughtful people who have a great deal to offer society.  In many cases, it is precisely their experience in the criminal justice system that has made them this way. So it is hard for me to think of my clients as “felons.”  And yet that is the label they must bear, in the workplace, in their communities, and in society at large.  It is an unhelpful label and in many cases it is deeply unfair.   My clients come to me because they hate the label, because they want it removed, because they think they don’t deserve it. And they are right.  They are all right. In the Middle Ages, and even in the early days of our own Republic, felony convictions were hanging affairs, and civil death statutes simply anticipated the impending corporal end.  After the Civil War, felonies expanded to include many minor property crimes (Mississippi’s infamous “pig law” is illustrative), and prosecution became a convenient way of disenfranchising and re-enslaving the recently-freed black population. In the late 20th century, the war on crime made conviction an industry, and reinforced status as punishment.  These days, you don’t have to do anything particularly evil to be condemned to what sentencing scholar Nora Demleitner has called “internal exile.” The “felon” label now applies to more than 20 million Americans. A journalist friend at the John Jay conference pointed out that “felon” is convenient shorthand, helpful for headlines, certainly evocative.   How could I argue? But labeling people as “felons” is also fundamentally at war with efforts to reduce the number of people in prison, to facilitate reentry, and to encourage those who have committed a crime, or even many crimes, to become law-abiding and productive citizens. Social liberals and fiscal conservatives alike pay lip service to the supposed American ideal of second chances. But our language, like our law, points in the opposite direction.  We have schooled ourselves to avoid other stigmatizing labels that in the past were used to distance mainstream society from ethnic and racial minorities, and those groups from each other, because we understood that labels function to distract and excuse us from the hard work of building community. The word “felon” (and for that matter other less ugly but still degrading labels like “offender,” with or without the feckless prefix “ex-“) is no less dysfunctional.   We can do better. So, my journalist friend asked, what word can we use instead?   What snappy alternative sobriquet can we give the headline writers to describe this class of people with a criminal record? Perhaps there isn’t a single word, and perhaps that is precisely the point.  We can say first that our brothers and sisters are people, then (if relevant) we can also say that they are people who have been convicted of a felony. Skilled writers can find ways to avoid using words that are toxic.  Even headline writers can be weaned from them.  Journalists play a key role in advancing the cause of social justice, and they do it through the language they use. It is time to junk the label “felon” and restock our language toolkit.   Read more