By Deanna Hoskins and Zöe Towns, The Washington Post, August 25, 2021
These days there is more reporting on the harms of mass incarceration and mass criminalization than ever before. More journalists are on these beats. Stories about conditions in police stations, jails and prisons are getting more space on the page. Entire journalism outlets are dedicated to critically tracking the criminal justice system.
Yet when we scroll through our news feeds and Twitter, or turn on the radio or news at night — only to hear important criminal justice stories using dehumanizing labels to describe the subjects at the heart of them — it feels as if our work to build a safe and just world is only getting harder.
For too long, too many of us have accepted and reproduced the “official” jargon of the U.S. criminal justice system. Designed to desensitize, terms such as “felon,” “convict,” “offender” and “criminal” replace names and other descriptions, such as “woman,” “daughter,” “father,” “child” or “person.” These carceral labels compound punishment by reducing people to their worst moments, codifying stigma and haunting people for years after sentences are served.
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