Swamped with Crime, San Francisco Board Wants To Stop Calling Criminals 'Felons'
Leaders in San Francisco — a city with abnormal amounts of crime, littered streets, homelessness and drug abuse — are now attempting to deal with their problems by changing standard language in the criminal justice system.
A nonbinding resolution passed last month by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, recommends renaming several commonplace terms, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
While those found guilty of serious crimes are known nationwide as convicted felons, the San Francisco board now insists they be called something along the lines of “justice-involved” or “formerly incarcerated.”
Although the stigma of the word “felon” should go the way of the dinosaur — at least in the board’s eyes — it does not change the fact that these “formerly incarcerated persons” would in most cases carry records from their convictions.
Felons aren’t the only ones who these liberal leaders want to catch a break.
Parolees would be known as “person[s] under supervision,” according to the guidelines. Juvenile delinquents are even luckier, and would be considered “young person[s] impacted by the justice system.”
This kind of language is seen as a needed step by the board, which also stated that roughly 20 percent of California residents have some form of criminal record.
The suggested changes come despite the fact that San Francisco was found to have the highest per-capita rate of property crime among major U.S. metropolitan areas, the Chronicle reported last year, citing FBI data.
According to the board of supervisors, the old criminal justice language only reinforces “the institutionalization of racism and supremacy.”
“Inaccurate information, unfounded assumptions, generalizations and other negative predispositions associated with justice-involved individuals create societal stigmas, attitudinal barriers and continued negative stereotypes,” the resolution reads.
Although the resolution passed in July, the proposed language changes may have been too much even for San Francisco’s liberal mayor, who has yet to implement the suggested changes.
As of yet, there’s no word on whether the board plans to rebrand San Francisco’s homeless problem or the city’s issues with public defecation using flowery language.
If they do, here are some suggestions.
Instead of referring to persons without homes as homeless people, the city should adopt terminology referring to them as “extreme urban campers” or “persons with a mortgage-free lifestyle.”
The overwhelming reports of feces found on the streets of the city may also need a delicate rewrite.
Reports of fecal matter sound much better when called “incidents of uncontained organic waste,” don’t you think?
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