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9 Wake Forest L. Rev. Online 53 (2019)
Eradicating the Label "Offender" from the Lexicon of Restorative Practices and Criminal Justice

handle is hein.journals/wflron9 and id is 53 raw text is: ERADICATING THE LABEL OFFENDER FROM THE LEXICON OF RESTORATIVE PRACTICES AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE Lynn S. Branham This Essay enumerates three reasons for abandoning the prevailing practice of utilizing the label offender when referring to a person who has committed a crime. The Essay next identifies and debunks reasons that have been cited for persisting in referring to a person as an offender. The Essay then explores the question of what term or terms could supplant this label and profiles signs of emerging support for desisting from the convention of calling people offenders. One of the themes that permeates this Essay is that the language we use when referring to people can thwart systemic and cultural change - in this context, a change in how people who have committed a crime are viewed and treated, both within the criminal-justice system and by society at large. For years, I had no compunction about calling people in the criminal-justice system offenders. References to offenders were sprinkled throughout my writings, both my books and articles. Then my world changed. Embarking on studies for a Master of Science in Restorative Practices, I began delving deeply into a construct unlike any typically encountered in the world of law, policy, procedures, and programs in which I have been immersed throughout my career as a law professor and criminal-justice reformer. In this new construct marked by what * Visiting Professor of Law, Saint Louis University School of Law. B.A., University of Illinois; J.D., University of Chicago Law School; M.S., International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP). I would like to thank Professor Molly Walker Wilson for her feedback on this Essay and IIRP faculty members, Dr. Craig Adamson, Dr. John Bailie, and Mary Jo Hebling, as well as fellow attorneys and IIRP students, Tina Murua and Professor Emily Scivoletto, for their comments on course-related papers that were the prelude to the Essay. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the people from whom I obtained qualitative data, integrated into this Essay, about the term offender during an action- research project I conducted under IIRP's auspices. Finally, I am indebted to the students at the Wake Forest Law Review whose work has made it possible for me to share information and ideas that can impact how we think and talk about those who have committed crimes.

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