Former prisoners to be called ‘person with convictions’ under new plans

Under the National Strategy for Criminal Justice, a prisoner will be referred to as a “person with convictions” or a “person with an offending history”.

According to the government, the change underscored the “power of language” to impact behaviour.

But critics have said the change risked suggesting the government does not take crime seriously.

Justice Secretary Michael Matheson said in the national strategy that ministers were “adopting a preventative approach, not only to reduce crime and the number of future victims of crime, but to help to create a more just, equitable, and inclusive society where people’s life chances were improved.”

The document adds: “After people have been released from custody or completed community sentences, it is vital that we support them to reintegrate into society.

“We must be aware of the power of language to facilitate or inhibit this process.”

It further states: “Defining people as ‘offenders’ for the rest of their lives, will not help to change their behaviours, or shift attitudes within wider society.

“We encourage partners to use the term: person with convictions or person with an offending history, while also taking care to use language that is sensitive to victims of crime.”

Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland, Peter White, chief executive of Positive Prison, Positive Futures said there was a stigma attached to the term “offender”.

He said: “The justice system is set up so that people are punished for breaking the law and once the punishment is complete, do they have to carry that label with them forever?

“Thirty-eight percent of the adult male population in Scotland has got at least one conviction and nine per cent of women.

“If we’re going to do something, even just one small thing, to reduce offending in Scotland, then if we can help people to realise that they can move forward and are not always going to be stuck in the past, then that’s a thing that we can all do.”

But Mike Nellis, emeritus professor of criminal and cimmunity justice at Strathclyde University said the name-change could backfire on ministers.

He explained: “This is a well-intentioned move to expunge the word offender from the vocabulary of reintegration, but it could backfire terribly on the government because there are lots of people out there in society and in the tabloid press who use much worse words like, ‘villain’, ‘thug’ or ‘crook’.

“The word offender is a descriptive neutral word that does not imply bad character. It means that a person has offended against the law. It is a useful word.

“It opens the way for people to mock the government and suggest that they are not taking crime seriously.

“To speak of an offender does not preclude them being thought of as a person. What the government seems to be saying is that by using the word ‘offender’, it precludes them from being people of potential. This is not the case and the important point that must be made.”