I am often a bit too long winded, to the vexation of some readers, so I have decided to open this writing with a quote from Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative. At least this will give you some insight into the long and winding trek that I intend to take you on. This is from a Ted Talk that he gave: “…ultimately, our humanity depends on everyone’s humanity… I’ve come to understand and to believe that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. I believe that for every person on the planet. I think if somebody tells a lie, they’re not just a liar. I think if somebody takes something that doesn’t belong to them, they’re not just a thief. I think even if you kill someone, you’re not just a killer. And because of that there’s this basic human dignity that must be respected by law.”
I would love to give a Ted Talk one day. But I can easily see myself settling for being able to write effectively, not just effectively, but becoming an expert and skilled aficionado of the language. By virtue of that stated desire, I am admitting that I am not. In fact, a rather confident person who billed himself as Poe 2.0 and whom I mistakenly reached out to in search of advice and mentoring, assured me that my skillset was wont to leave the reader wanting. So with that disclosure I will now dive into the preface of my topic, but not before offering yet one more tidbit: I am a Master’s degree candidate in Statistics, I graduated cum laude with a BA in Sociology, and I had an IQ score so high as a middle schooler that I was retested—only to score several points higher. Poe, I am not, however I ain’t no slouch. Again, please pardon what may be construed as a lack of brevity, as I only intend clarity, not literary ad nauseam.
Let us conjugate a verb. If a person completes an act we say she did that thing. If she is in the commission of said act, then she is doing it. Should someone ask me “who did that,” then I would identify her as the doer for having done that thing. I would not however identify her nominally as “doer”, no, I would identify her by name or title. For example, let us say that the act that she completed was splitting an atom, is she a splitter? If she integrates a trigonometric function is she an integrator? If she blue prints a structure is she a blue printer? The answer to those questions, of course, is no; she would be referred to as a physicist, a mathematician, or an architect. There are occasionally exceptions, just as there are to all rules. Sometimes a profession takes on the verb as a designation, for illustration, a person who writes for a living is called a writer, but sending a note to grandma usually does not earn one such a distinction in spite of the fact that the person engaged in the act of writing. Someone who bakes pies, cakes, and other pastries commercially would be referred to as a baker, however, it does not matter how many dozen dinner rolls that dad pops into the over after delivering the mail, he remains a postman, not a baker.
The name, appellation, label, or noun is indicative of the action or verb; it is a way to describe the performer of the action, and to do so, to describe a person (place or thing), requires a noun, not a verb or a verb’s conjugant. Right? We are describing the person, not the action, are we not? We all learned this pretty early in our educational lives. Further, in some situations, the place of residence describes the label. As an example, someone from Cleveland would be an Ohioan. An entity residing on Mars would be a Martian. People who have the misfortune of dwelling in prison used to be called inmates, or residents. Where, in the use of legitimate language, do we find justification to now describe the latter group, and the subject of this writing, as offender? My contention is that there is no justification other than to minimize their personhood, their humanity.
The label “offender” is considered a pejorative term by incarcerated individuals, almost to a person. One would think that that fact—that people do not want to be referred to in such terms, coupled with the fact that the term is not grammatically correct, would be enough to return to one of the previous descriptions for the group in question, that is if we simply cannot find the decency to call them people. We normally tend toward our “evolving standard of decency”, thus, we no longer, at least publically, refer to gays as fags, women as chicks or broads, nor black folks as niggers. Darwin had it right; we are evolving, though we find a few Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon left among us.
Recently a prison guard happened upon a conversation that this writer was having with another correctional employee concerning this subject. Just as many of his comrades feel emboldened since “Agent Orange” took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he too felt disposed to enrich us with his penny’s worth. His contention was that this name calling, “offender”, is a mandate from the state (I tried to remind him that the result of the Nuremberg trials was that one is not absolved of culpability by saying ‘I was just doing my job.’ He possessed not a clue as to what Nuremberg was, so I let him continue on, uninterrupted). I did something that is an incongruity in the present climate: I listened to him. In the course of assuring me of whom and what he was, he attached himself to his aforementioned position, that it is a state mandate to call incarcerated people offenders. Then, he was even kind enough to suffer a no-account like me an audience, so I reminded him that the highest official in this state, Iowa, had recently reclassified the guard’s job and its description. The prison guard in the state of Iowa is no longer (and never should have been) considered Public Safety (Boshart 2017). This being the case, the guard should no longer call himself a correctional officer or insist that the incarcerated citizens, whom he refers to as “offenders”, call him correctional officer, he is but a public employee who serves the citizens as a prison guard. Webster describes officer as: one charged with the enforcement of the law; 2, one who holds a position of authority or command in the armed forces. Again, according to the state’s highest ranking official, the prison guard fails to meet that standard. Certainly if we are going to follow the interior state directive, we too are compelled to follow the contemporary one as well, right? Right? He excused himself, while I am only speculating, to attend his ditto head session with Glen Beck.
And furthermore, who, exactly, is an offender? Is it any person who is convicted of an offense? Is it only those persons incarcerated for their offense? I have been incarcerated for nearly twenty-two years which is long enough to have witnessed prison staff offend. One of the staff “offenders” still works in the Department of Corrections, but is never referred to as wife beater or offender. A recent group of staff “offenders” convicted of introducing contraband into the institution were not referred to as offenders, but rather they were called “former corrections officers.” So we must infer that the mere act of offending does not make one an offender. Yet, that leaves us with the supposition that residing in a correctional facility is what makes one an offender and not an inmate, prisoner or resident. This is the conclusion that many researchers have reached, as they refer to those persons who are no longer in prison as “ex-offenders” (Hirschfield and Piquero 2010). Name-calling is a problem, and it is hard to justify. More correctly stated it is hard to justify calling someone something that they do not wish to be called. We live in an age and time where if a person who is anatomically a female desires to be called a man, then we will refer to that person as sir. And in spite of our having done so, the Earth remained on its axis, the sun came up, and everyone who was due a paycheck this past Friday was paid in full. There exists not a single corrections, societal, or reformative benefit in referring to inmates as offenders, or even inmates instead of incarcerated persons. The only benefit that can be derived is one that can be extrapolated from a statement made by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man he won’t notice you picking his pocket; hell, give him someone to look down on and he will empty his pockets for you.”
I would be remiss if I did not note that there are those among correctional staff who find the word offender to be a bit offensive. Sherry Davison, who was once the warden of a prison said, “Just as you might refer to someone by their occupation, ‘an attorney, a writer, a teacher’, while a person is in prison, they are an ‘inmate’…. I am a retired state prison warden, and ‘inmate’ is the term staff and inmates used.” (Hickman 2015) I don’t agree with her comparing a brick to a tomato (attorney: inmate, writer: inmate, or teacher: inmate) but I get the point she was attempting to convey. Further, a former guard commented, “For me the word inmate is not synonymous with criminality…Inmate suggests people confined within a dwelling, and for me, nothing more than that…For perspective, I worked at Reeves County Detention Center III as a correctional officer from 2006-2008” (Hickman 2015). For the present writer’s money, if there is any connotation of criminality implied by the label “inmate” at least it is in the past tense, whereas offender infers that the person is currently offending.
As an aside, if a correctional officer, who really is not an officer, offends but is not an offender, what is the rationalization for calling a now incarcerated, retired Lieutenant Colonel, who is an officer, an offender? Yes, I reside in a cell house with a military officer who worked at NSA, and was instrumental in keeping us safe from cyber-attack. Yet after more than twenty years of dedicated service to our nation he is nothing but an offender.
Normally, academia is the direction that we turn in our efforts to generate informed public policy, “…Recognizing that the research community shapes prevailing opinions though language…”(LaVigne 2016). Through that lens, I find my position bolstered by the fact that Ohio University calls their distance learning program for prisoners the “College Program for the Incarcerated,” not offenders. And my Alma Mater, Adams State University, titled its program as the “Prison College Program”.
There is an innate need for egality in the human being; no one wants to be treated as other. This need becomes more pronounced once an individual is labeled and pigeonholed into a stigmatized group. Though many people tend to ridicule “finding God in prison”, this inherent desire for equality is the driving force behind it (Maruna, Wilson and Curran 2006). God tends not to be disposed to negative name calling and sees everyone as equal as long as they worship Him and treat others as equals. This seems to be a rather small price to pay, at least in the incarcerated person’s mind, for human dignity. It is not my presumption that all “prison conversions” are legit and lasting, the point is that it is much more desirable to be called, or to consider oneself, a Jew, Christian or Muslim than it is to be referred to as offender. It is, indeed, sometimes a matter of maintaining mental fitness, “Wishing you were one thing and knowing you were another is severe and produces tension that may find release in the religious conversion experience” (Gillespie 1973).
As I close this writing I must tell the reader that almost as a rule, and much to the chagrin of my wife (and my academic advisor) I generally try to avoid personal anecdotes in my writing as I am a scientist and I prefer facts, however I will share the following. My grandparents produced fourteen children that reached adulthood, and those fourteen children gifted these “Great Migration” Chicago settlers with sixty-six grandchildren. Of those grandchildren I am the middle child, I am number thirty-three. My grandmother and I shared a love beyond description, and by the estimation of many, my grandmother’s untold affection for me was because I am a clone of my grandfather in both my facial features and disposition. My mother used to say of her mother, “she believes the sun rises on your brown face and sets on your black ass.” My grandmother suffered from a horrendous case of Rheumatoid arthritis, and for as long as I can remember she had been bed-ridden. The disease left her hands almost useless. As a little boy I would wash her face in the morning, administer her medicine to her, played countless games of dominoes with her, and even assisted her when nature called and emptied her pot when she had finished. Yet I am not defined by that love I exhibited for years and called grandson. Instead, the sum of my existence is boiled down to one night and my horrific decision to discharge a firearm; I am called offender. That sentiment is not mine alone, I found that it is shared almost verbatim, “…terms such as ‘offender’ or ‘criminal’ reduce a person solely to someone under arrest or convicted of a crime. They are no longer parents, siblings, children, coworkers or neighbors…” (Law and Roth 2015).
Labels are important; because of labels we have avoided injury and loss of life….no one mistakes bleach for vinegar; psychotropic prescriptions are not mistaken for aspirin; and kerosene is not accidentally ingested. At the cost of thirty-six thousand dollars per inmate per year can we afford to continuously stigmatize a portion of the citizenry by depreciatory labels and making them feel as the unwanted other? Is this conducive to avoiding injuries and loss of lives?
Johnny Ledell Pippins
Works Cited
Boshart, Rod. Public employee union vows to ask court to block new law. February 17, 2017.Rod.boshart@thegazzette.com (accessed February 2018).
Gillespie, V.B. “Religious Conversion and Personal Identity: How and Why People Change.” Doctoral Dissertation. Birmingham: University of Alabama at Birmingham, 1973.
Hickman, Blair. Inmate. Prisoner. Other. Discussed: What to call incarcerated people. March 4, 2015.https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/03/inmate-prisoner-other-discussed (accessed January 2018).
Hirschfield, Paul J., and Alex R. Piquero. “Normalization and Legitimation: Modeling stigmatizing Attitudes towards ex-offenders.” Criminology, 2010.
LaVigne, Nancy G. People First: Changing the Way that We Talk About Those Touched by the Criminal Justice System. April 5, 2016. https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/people-first-changing-way-we-talk-about-those-touched-criminal-justice-system (accessed 2018).
Law, Victoria, and Rachel Roth. Names Do Hurt: The Case Against Using Derogatory Language To Describe People in Prison. April 20, 2015. https://rewire.news/article/2015/04/20/case-using-derogatory-language-describe-person-prison/ (accessed 2018).
Maruna, Shadd, Louise Wilson, and Kathryn Curran. “WHY GOD IS OFTEN FOUND IN PRISON.” RESEARCH IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, 2006: 161-184.
