According to the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett has ordered staff to stop calling incarcerated persons “inmates” or “prisoners.” They are now to be called “residents” or “those who are in our care.” Such a change would produce some unintelligible results if applied generally. Nelson Mandela’s famous quote would become “Only free men can negotiate. A [resident] cannot enter into contracts.” Yet, what is most interesting is that the word “inmate” was derived from a term for residents.
Barrett made the change after meeting with the nonprofit Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development. He declared
“I view this change in name as a way to humanize those who are within our care…This proactive approach to our criminal justice reform is going to allow us to move toward a 21st-century policing mindset in which we treat everyone within our community with dignity, respect and humanity… As your sheriff, I believe our philosophies, policies and practices should be proactive and not reactionary like many other areas of our criminal justice system.”
Barrett further added that “The Dane County Sheriff’s Office is a national leader in appropriate progressive reform, and many follow our lead.” Dane County Supervisor and Democratic state Rep. Sheila Stubbs added that the change would give incarcerated individuals “a sense of belonging.”
I have worked in prisons and jail for three decades, including running a national prisoner project. I am not convinced that calling inmates “residents” will lend a “sense of belonging.” Moreover, the asserted goal of reducing the “stigma” of prison is somewhat counterintuitive since it is a form of isolation from and punishment by society.
The distinction can be lost on the “residents” in a facility after lockdown. I reminds me of the scene in The Simpsons where the officers corrected Bart on using the right word of “baton” rather than “club:
Bart: Wow! Can I see your club?
Lou: It’s called a baton, son.
Bart: Oh. What’s it for?
Lou: We club people with it.
However, I do not fault the motivation behind the effort. Yet, this could require considerable campaign to change attitudes. After all, Residence Inn has spent millions to prove that “It’s Not A Room, It’s A Residence.”
What I find striking is the singling out of the term “inmate” given its origins and broader meaning.
In the 1500s, the term originally meant someone who was living in a house rented by another. It derives simply from inn and mate (or companion). It referred to people living together and later meant anyone living with many other people in a single dwelling. This is reflected in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1756): “Inmates are those that be admitted to dwell for their money jointly with another man.” Noah Webster’s Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) defined the term as “a lodger, one who lives in the same house.” Merriam-Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language (1864) defined it as “a person who lodges or dwells in the same apartment or house with another; a fellow-lodger.”
Even in the 1960s, it was defined as essentially a shared residency though it had picked up the added prison meaning. Merriam-Webster’s Seventh Collegiate Dictionary (1963) defined it as “one of a family or other group occupying a single residence; esp: a person confined in an asylum, prison, or poorhouse.”
So, if you wanted a term to mean a type of residency, you would use “inmate.”
Besides, do you really want to rewrite Mel Brooks’ hilarious scene in The Producers to feature the production “Residents in Love”?
More cargo cult thinking by our leftist moral bettors. If we just lower standards, change terms, stop prosecuting certain crimes, it means a change has occurred.
“Resident” or “those who are in our care” is just a euphemism for inmate or incarcerated person.
More accurately, these are “involuntary residents” or “involuntary participants in a residential care program.”
Mate means to have sex. To do it outdoors is “outmate”. Indoors is “inmate”. So taking the sex offense name off is good.
Is that a Van Gough or a faux gough?
Word games do nothing but make the instigator feel good. In this case the sheriff is intimidated by the “social justice” activists and afraid he may be ousted. In almost every case of this sort of word game nonsense the capitulation can be traced to employment/self-preservation. What it reveals is a lack of integrity and personal courage that are core values of true leaders worthy of following.
W.R., I love you comment! The sad fact is that many CEOs and Corporations are getting away with their insane CRT “training courses” is because they have a captive audience. How can a person leave a paying job when they have bills, kids, a mortgage or all of the above? These “training courses” of course don’t actually change anyone, teach anyone, or create a “better” person, they only get ignored and laughed at and possibly even cause a reaction that is negative and counter-productive.
Will their jails be rated according to how well the accommodations are kept, house keeping, room service etc.
LOL!! I prefer “yard birds” but whatever.
…the change would give incarcerated individuals “a sense of belonging.”
Huh? They’re having a problem with inmates not feeling the love in their new digs? That’s odd. They took active measures to secure themselves a home with free room and board and for some reason it doesn’t feel like home.
Perhaps the “lanlords” hope this change will soothe the savage beastie boys and everyone will now live in harmony. Ahhh 🤗
Law enforcement should aim to inspire confidence and respect. This Sheriff has only achieved ridicule for himself and his department.
All according to plan:
https://thinkprogress.org/vladimir-yakunin-sanctioned-russian-oligarchs-think-tank-might-expand-to-the-u-s-c2b95d6c2de0/
The insanity that now grips law enforcement and governments makes be think (not quite ready to believe) that it’s time to just accept we’re off the edge now and sliding into the abyss. I hear in my head that old saying about being in a plane before a crash…bend over and kiss your bottom good-bye (obviously, a little cruder than that, but who knows what is correct these days for that part of the anatomy). IMHO, only the survival of SCOTUS and the Federal bench without packing protects us at this point. Venezuela’s supreme court packing is illustrative of what follows…
From a December 2004 Human Rights Watch post:
“Five years ago, President Chávez’s supporters helped to enshrine the principle of judicial independence in a new democratic constitution,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Now, by packing the country’s highest court, they are betraying that principle and degrading Venezuelan democracy.”
The law passed in May expanded the court from 20 to 32 members. In addition to the justices named to the 12 new seats, five justices were named to fill vacancies that had opened in recent months, and 32 more were named as reserve justices for the court. Members and allies of President Chávez’s Fifth Republic Movement (Movimiento V República, or MVR) form a majority in Congress.
But in May, President Chávez signed a court-packing law that allowed his governing coalition in the legislature to obtain an overwhelming majority of seats on the country’s highest court. The 17 new justices (and 32 reserves) were selected yesterday by a simply majority vote of the governing coalition, which did not reveal the names of the nominees to the opposition members of Congress until the time of the vote.””
https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/12/13/venezuela-chavez-allies-pack-supreme-court#
American Psychological Association (APA) – Why call someone by what we don’t want them to
be? The ethics of labeling in forensic/correctional psychology
Gwenda M. Willis
To cite this article: Gwenda M. Willis (2018) Why call someone by what we don’t want them to be?
The ethics of labeling in forensic/correctional psychology, Psychology, Crime & Law, 24:7, 727-743,
DOI: 10.1080/1068316X.2017.1421640
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2017.1421640
Yellowroselady:
Yeah, truth in labeling be damned. I’ll call beer by the more palatable term “milk” now to promote your point. Cheers, kids!
The question that is before us but never discussed is simple…..”When do the People rise up and remove the existing government by force and install a government that follows the Constitution?”. When shall the People have had enough of the corruption in our government and all of its institutions and take action. What shall be the Tipping Point that is the cause of that uprising? How will we split….and how many factions shall coalesce and become players in the outcome?
Black/White, Left/Right, North/South, Major Cities/Country folk, Rich/Poor, Gay/Straight, Right handed/Left Handed, Readers/Phone Addicts, Drug Gangs/Community Watch Groups, Citizens/Illegals, Anarchists/Law and Order folk……it is coming….sure as houses.
The Question is when, why, and how.
Prove me wrong…..I will wait.
I wonder what the “residents” think of all of this.
Really, I would like to know.
I’d rather know what the victims of the inmates think.
Progressives change the name of things to make them sound all hope and changey, but everybody still knows that it won’t make any difference. We KNOW how crazy regressive Progressives are. Are they going to change the name Climate Change again?? I wonder what they will call it next?
We have the State Dept flying rainbow flags over United States Embassies across the globe, as we watch the state dept negotiated withdrawal for Kabul.
The Sec of Defense and the Joint Cheifs of Staff bragging about CRT training and the new woke military that can’t execute an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Our Navy keeps ramming other ships in open waters.
By all means, do spend your limited assets and finite training hours teach our troops valuable word games.
The Military used to represent the very best of race relations, Then the race hustlers got involved and appearances became more important than results
The Military has one mission statement. Deliver maximum destruction of property, and death, upon our enemy. The color of your skin or the contents of you BDU’s is irrelevant.
Well, we all do what we can for the cult…err, I mean the cause!
I guess calling those “residents” convicts is also out
So now at sentencing the judge (or leasee”) will determine the length of the “residents” “lease”?
I’m in Wisconsin and these virtue signaling imbeciles are no longer part of reality. This is nucking futs!