People who offend are not always blameworthy. The argument goes that people who offend are blameworthy, culpable and liable to punishment, so we do them no injustice when we classify them by their offence, even if that offence is a one-off.īut this thinking is wrongheaded. Assuming that someone who has transgressed once poses a continuing danger was often a safer survival strategy than giving someone the benefit of the doubt.Īnother reason that epithets seem justified, some might say, is that anyone who has committed a crime is responsible, unlike someone with disabilities or someone living in poverty. Their usefulness – at least for our ancestors who faced threats from many directions – is obvious, as is their brutality. These punitive markers publicly identify and stigmatise transgressions. Or consider the amputated hand of the man who stole, or a prisoner’s tattooed serial number. Consider the red ‘A’ for adulterer worn by Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter (1850). One reason is that branding can be useful. So why use epithets in the area of crime? Instead, we speak now of ‘people who have autism’, ‘people who are living in poverty’, ‘people with visual impairments’, and ‘people with disabilities’. We recognise that giving people such labels hides the real complexity of their situation, and limits their ability to shape their own lives. We now see just how prejudiced these labels are. We’ve largely abandoned labels such as the autistic, the handicapped, the retarded, the disabled, the blind, the poor, and the undeserving poor. In many other social areas, we have moved away from this kind of labelling. Even conscientious newspapers such as The New York Times and The Guardian use these labels liberally, with headlines such as: ‘Prison Nurse Accused of Sexually Assaulting Convicted Rapist’, ‘To Catch a Rapist’, ‘How Not to Raise a Rapist’, ‘Sex Offender Village’, ‘Sex Offenders Gain Right To Appeal Against Registration’, and ‘Why Giving Polygraph Tests To Sex Offenders Is A Terrible Idea’. We also apply more specific epithets to people for particular offences, such as thief, murderer, rapist, sex offender, paedophile and serial killer. And we call those who’ve completed their sentences ex-offenders, ex-convicts and ex-cons. We label those who spend time in prison jailbirds and yardbirds. We brand people as offenders, criminals, crooks, felons, convicts, lawbreakers, outlaws and delinquents. Youths who grow up in households characterized by conflict and tension, and where there is a lack of familial love and support, are susceptible to the crime-promoting forces in the environment.Debates about people who have committed crimes are littered with epithets.
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