Top Priority for Nomenclature

Along with arranging deck chairs aboard sinking ships, choosing new names for things is often taken as a sure sign that matters are going seriously awry. It was an article in the Times that set things off again:-

Jail bosses told to stop calling prisoners residents or clients

Prison officials have been told that they must stop calling inmates residents, clients or supervised individuals because it creates the wrong impression of criminals.

Alex Chalk, the prisons minister, told civil servants, prison staff, governors and probation officers that they should stick to using the word prisoner, The Times has learnt. He said the increasing use of alternative language to refer to and address prisoners was sending mixed messages about how the state and wider society perceived serious criminals. The use of residents is commonplace in guidance in some prisons across England and Wales.

Probation service manuals have rebranded prisoners as supervised individuals and service users. Some prison officials even refer to inmates as clients. The move away from referring to inmates as prisoners is part of efforts to avoid labelling people as offenders in the belief that it will help their rehabilitation. 

The alternative language is also used by officials, including Jo Farrar, the chief executive of the prison and probation service. In a speech this year to announce funding for in-cell activities, she said: “All prison governors will be given funding to spend on in-cell activities and extra technology to help our incredible staff support residents to maintain family ties and access support services.” Guidance at HMP Wandsworth in southwest London says: “Residents have phones in their rooms and are able to make outgoing calls.”

Prison officers have warned that referring to prisoners as residents can often be counter-intuitive for the offenders themselves. One former officer said: “I have locked some people up in the worst accommodation you can imagine and actually if you called them a resident in that accommodation you’d be taking the mick. Why are we trying to pretend they’re not in prison?”

Ministers fear that moving away from traditional terminology to refer to prisoners risks undermining the public’s trust in the penal system and sends out mixed messages. A source close to the prisons minister said: “This kind of language does nobody any favours. People in prison are there because they have committed serious crimes and need to be locked up to protect the public. We should be speaking plainly and not pretending that these people are angels residing in a cell out of choice.”

Andrea Albutt, president of the Prison Governors Association, supported the move. She said:

“We’ve used the term prisoner for many, many years. The word prisoner is inoffensive, it refers to everyone who’s in prison — whether they are on remand and unconvicted or convicted. It doesn’t really matter what crime they may have committed — they are a prisoner. We’ve had residents, we’ve had clients, we’ve had service users — all sorts. It muddies the water. Prisoner is simple, it’s inoffensive and it refers to every single person who is in prison.”

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Rob Allen has picked-up on the issue:-

Rehabilitative Culture War

Last month inspectors reported on a prison where “a variety of well-embedded arrangements aimed at keeping residents and staff safe were in place”. Good news, except perhaps for Prisons Minister Alex Chalk who so dislikes the term “residents” he is seeking to prevent prison staff using it to describe or refer to people in prison.

Chalk has more important things to worry about than opening up an unnecessary front in the culture wars. But he reportedly believes the increasing use of alternative language is sending mixed messages about how the state and wider society perceives serious criminals. Apparently “we should be speaking plainly and not pretending that these people are angels residing in a cell out of choice”.

While far from being the most important problem in prisons, language can be important. I recall seeing a notice from a Governor a couple of years back reminding staff not to talk about “feeding” at mealtimes or “bending up” when applying restraint. Would Chalk prefer a return to this sort of plain speaking?

There has been an overdue recognition of the importance of treating people in prison with respect and dignity, giving them a voice and showing and encouraging trust. Why? Not least because more positive perceptions of so-called procedural justice by prisoners predict lower levels of misconduct, better emotional well-being and mental health outcomes and lower rates of future reoffending.

Of course, the dreadful conditions and experiences faced by many prisoners can make the term resident look peculiarly ironic and ill fitting. But requiring the application of a generic label of prisoner could allow Mr Chalk and his colleagues to ignore those awful realities, or worse justify them under the dismal doctrine of less eligibility. He would do well to remember that people are sentenced to prison as a punishment, not for a punishment.

In an important statement launched this week, the United Nations is rightly promoting "a rehabilitative approach to prison management that fosters the willingness and ability of prisoners to lead law-abiding and self-supporting lives upon release, and that is embedded in a decent, safe and healthy prison environment and the positive engagement of officers with prisoners".

As part of such an approach, surely governors and staff should be able to continue to use terminology which communicates most productively with prisoners and their families, something which has been particularly important during the pandemic. If the language contributes towards a more rehabilitative ethos so much the better. Referring to people in prison as residents won’t solve all of the problems in the system but neither will it do any harm.

Rob Allen

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And of course readers on here and Twitter have joined in:-

We now have PoPs. People on Probation. I read it in a recent PI. No more SUs, offenders etc.

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Really? They know us offenders don't give a stuff about all that lol and would rather you just .... you know....help us out a bit.

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When HMPPS organises the deletion of the "offender" label from its databases, the ones that everyone working in the system sees every day, I will give some credence to this virtue signalling. Hang on, no, cant wish for that, because that would necessitate the establishment of a Change The Culture Manager, with a #workstream #budget. And recruitment of staff away from the actual work, Just shove some blummin' money at the coal face, we are desperate.

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There’s no more offender managers, it’s now either probation practitioner or sentence manager.

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I’ve never called myself an OM & I’ve always had cases, so I will just ignore this as I’ve done so for the last however many years each time there’s been a change!  Been in the service nearly 21 years (as a qualified PO for 15 years), so it’s still not going to work for me!

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There needs to be a complete culture shift away from administrative managerialism back towards one based on human relations. We basically need a revolution.