'Justice-Involved Individual'

[GURPS]

'Justice-Involved Individual'


Apparently the DOJ has been phasing out the use of the word “criminal” to describe well, criminals. On the DOJ website the newer term, “justice-involved individual,” can be traced back to 2009. However, the term has seen more and more daylight over the last couple of years.

This is from a DOJ release on April 25:

In an effort to help young people involved in the justice system find jobs and housing, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today announced $1.75 million for Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) and nonprofit legal service organizations to address the challenges justice-involved individuals face when trying to find work and a place to call home.​

Even U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch got in on the action:

The future of our nation depends upon the future of our young people – including young people who have become involved with our justice system. By helping justice-involved youth find decent jobs and stable housing after they return home, these critical grants provide a foundation for a fresh start and offer a path towards productivity and purpose. In the months ahead, the Department of Justice will continue helping justice-involved youth enrich their lives and improve our country.​

Lynch can’t even say that youths have broken the law. Instead she uses the phrase, “young people who have become involved with our justice system.”

Didn’t being involved in the justice system used to mean something positive? Young people being involved used to mean that they were positively trying to affect society.

 

[Hijinx]

'Justice-Involved Individual'


Apparently the DOJ has been phasing out the use of the word “criminal” to describe well, criminals. On the DOJ website the newer term, “justice-involved individual,” can be traced back to 2009. However, the term has seen more and more daylight over the last couple of years.

This is from a DOJ release on April 25:

In an effort to help young people involved in the justice system find jobs and housing, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today announced $1.75 million for Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) and nonprofit legal service organizations to address the challenges justice-involved individuals face when trying to find work and a place to call home.​

Even U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch got in on the action:

The future of our nation depends upon the future of our young people – including young people who have become involved with our justice system. By helping justice-involved youth find decent jobs and stable housing after they return home, these critical grants provide a foundation for a fresh start and offer a path towards productivity and purpose. In the months ahead, the Department of Justice will continue helping justice-involved youth enrich their lives and improve our country.​

Lynch can’t even say that youths have broken the law. Instead she uses the phrase, “young people who have become involved with our justice system.”

Didn’t being involved in the justice system used to mean something positive? Young people being involved used to mean that they were positively trying to affect society.

Lynch is a puppet, she dances when Obama pulls the strings.
She is totally a tool.

 

[Tilted]

Well... that terminology does have the advantage of being more honest, at least to the extent that some kind of differentiation (between those being referred to and everyone else) is meant to be inferred.

If we use the term criminal to refer to someone who has been arrested and charged or convicted of some crime particular crime (or crimes), then fair enough. It makes a meaningful (and honest) distinction between the subject and most others. But if we use the term criminal to refer to someone that has committed a crime - whether they've been arrested, charged or convicted or not; meaning we use it to mark them out as the kind of person that would or has committed crimes - then it's mostly a superfluous term. It doesn't make a meaningful (and honest) distinction between the subject and most others. In that sense, almost everyone else is a criminal also. So for the word to have better meaning, it helps to be clear in how we're using it. Referring to someone as justice-involved does just that. They're basically saying, this criminal is one who's been arrested and charged or convicted (I'm not sure which they're using it for) for a crime. In that way they are different than all the other criminals (the hundreds of millions of us) who haven't been arrested and charged or convicted of a crime.

The broader point to me is: Someone being a criminal (in that they've committed crimes, not in that they've been convicted of them) doesn't tell us much about them as a person - whether they're a good person, etc. - without our having taken into consideration what kinds of crimes they've committed. Murdering or thieving or raping or even defrauding is world's different from prostituting or possessing drugs or using a work computer to check our personal email or even failing to report the taxes on something you bought out of state. It matters what the crimes were, not just that someone is a criminal. If just being a criminal makes someone bad, then we're all bad. We've all committed crimes. But we haven't all committed the same kinds of crimes, so we're not - in that regard - all bad as a murderer or thief is.

 

[SamSpade]

It matters what the crimes were, not just that someone is a criminal. If just being a criminal makes someone bad, then we're all bad. We've all committed crimes. But we haven't all committed the same kinds of crimes, so we're not - in that regard - all bad as a murderer or thief is.

?? That's why we have words to describe them additionally as a murderer or thief or rapist or pedophile.

While I get that there's a distinction between serious crime and petty crime, we all know when we cross the line and we all realize we will have to pay for it. If you steal a loaf of bread because you're hungry, you're still taking someone ELSE's loaf of bread. You know when you take it, that it's not right.

If you want to make the comment that we're all bad, you'll get no argument from me, although such judgments probably lie in theological discussions.

We just have a pattern all my life of euphemizing everything so that it's not considered bad. Let's just go with 'bad' and go on from there.

 

[Tilted]

?? That's why we have words to describe them additionally as a murderer or thief or rapist or pedophile.

While I get that there's a distinction between serious crime and petty crime, we all know when we cross the line and we all realize we will have to pay for it. If you steal a loaf of bread because you're hungry, you're still taking someone ELSE's loaf of bread. You know when you take it, that it's not right.

If you want to make the comment that we're all bad, you'll get no argument from me, although such judgments probably lie in theological discussions.

We just have a pattern all my life of euphemizing everything so that it's not considered bad. Let's just go with 'bad' and go on from there.

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't consider many things bad. We should. I draw pretty bright lines myself about what is good or bad and what makes someone a good or bad person.

My point is that many people like to use the notion that someone is a criminal (without regard to what crimes they've broken) to separate them out as bad - as being bad in a way that the person thusly separating them out isn't - and thus deserving of this or that fate. I'm suggesting that's intellectually dishonest and hypocritical as they don't think of themselves as also being bad even though they are also a criminal. People use the idea that others are criminals (again, that singular reality and not necessarily depending on what crimes are at issue) to pretend they themselves are a better person - that they aren't criminals, aren't the kind of person that would break the law. But the reality is that they are that kind of person, they do break the law. So if merely breaking laws makes someone a bad person, then they are themselves bad people. What the laws that someone breaks are matters. The law can define most anything as a crime, that doesn't make most everyone a bad person. Some things actually are bad - evil, whatever - whether they ate defined as such or not. Some people are bad people - worse than others - but that depends on what they've done and what they do, not just on the mere reality that it's one of the countless things we've defined as a crime.

To the extent we use the word criminal to mean actually convicted of something, then yeah it has a distinguishing meaning. But even then it just means this person got caught or someone cared enough to (successfully) prosecute them. It still doesn't mean that they are a worse person than the vast majority of other people who just haven't been convicted of the crimes they've committed. What someone does, what crimes they commit, is what most matters - what distinguishes mostly good people from bad people.


EDIT: I guess part of what I'm saying is that it's of course fine to call people that are criminals criminals. We have all kinds of words with all kinds of meanings and we should use them, it's how we communicate ideas. But in doing so we shouldn't lie to ourselves and others by pretending that we aren't ourselves criminals. Because we are, meaningfully all of us are. Some of us have been convicted of our various crimes and some of us have not, and that mere reality has significant implications. More importantly perhaps, some of us have only committed certain kinds of crimes while others have committed far worse crimes - e.g., done things that really should be crimes and that directly (and improperly) harmed others.

 

[GURPS]

Well... that terminology does have the advantage of being more honest, at least to the extent that some kind of differentiation (between those being referred to and everyone else) is meant to be inferred.

while your treatise has merit ...

... I'll just say I look with a jaundice eye ...
... at anything coming from the Obama Administration - in the days Over Seas Contingency Operations and Undocumented workers . it smacks of triggering and PC Gone Mad

 

[GURPS]

To the extent we use the word criminal to mean actually convicted of something, then yeah it has a distinguishing meaning.

yes Criminal Convection as opposed to losing a civil suit

 

[SamSpade]

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't consider many things bad. We should. I draw pretty bright lines myself about what is good or bad and what makes someone a good or bad person.

My point is that many people like to use the notion that someone is a criminal (without regard to what crimes they've broken) to separate them out as bad - as being bad in a way that the person thusly separating them out isn't - and thus deserving of this or that fate. I'm suggesting that's intellectually dishonest and hypocritical as they don't think of themselves as also being bad even though they are also a criminal. People use the idea that others are criminals (again, that singular reality and not necessarily depending on what crimes are at issue) to pretend they themselves are a better person - that they aren't criminals, aren't the kind of person that would break the law. But the reality is that they are that kind of person, they do break the law. So if merely breaking laws makes someone a bad person, then they are themselves bad people. What the laws that someone breaks are matters. The law can define most anything as a crime, that doesn't make most everyone a bad person. Some things actually are bad - evil, whatever - whether they ate defined as such or not. Some people are bad people - worse than others - but that depends on what they've done and what they do, not just on the mere reality that it's one of the countless things we've defined as a crime.

To the extent we use the word criminal to mean actually convicted of something, then yeah it has a distinguishing meaning. But even then it just means this person got caught or someone cared enough to (successfully) prosecute them. It still doesn't mean that they are a worse person than the vast majority of other people who just haven't been convicted of the crimes they've committed. What someone does, what crimes they commit, is what most matters - what distinguishes mostly good people from bad people.

:shrug:

I think we're all bad people. The only difference is degree - and how much our actions affect others. As I also said, this may be a theological discussion; the concept of ongoing sanctification of an otherwise sinful being.

If you call me a criminal for stealing a candy bar, well mea culpa. Guilty as charged.

In one of C.S. Lewis's books - it might have been "Mere Christianity" - he makes the case that the very acknowledgment of a concept of good and bad create a case for a higher order, a higher being, because we all seem to WANT to be regarded as "good" even if we disagree on what it is. When people argue over good, they try to make the case that THEIR side is good, or at least, justifiably good in lieu of the circumstances - no one tries to make the case that their side is actually wrong or evil or bad. For us to all insist that it nevertheless exists suggests that we intuitively KNOW there's something out there, even if we fail to achieve it

I just don't care much for attempts to water down what we are - bad people trying to be good. I always kind of thought that the PURPOSE of law is to make sure people pay for being bad.

 

[Tilted]

while your treatise has merit ...

... I'll just say I look with a jaundice eye ...
... at anything coming from the Obama Administration - in the days Over Seas Contingency Operations and Undocumented workers . it smacks of triggering and PC Gone Mad

Sure. I don't mean to speak to the motives of those who are, in this context, using that terminology. I wouldn't necessarily give them credit as being motivated wholly by a desire to be honest about these people's situations relative to everyone else's.

But we are so ubiquitously hypocrites - in so many ways, and so often, and so seemingly unawarely - that it doesn't hurt for people to point that out every now and then. We criticize stuff in others and turn around and do the same stuff ourselves, all the freaking time. In politics? That's what 90% of people's criticisms and derisions consist of - criticizing or deriding others doing the same kinds of things that we are ourselves doing. Our collective (and individual) lack of awareness is incredible.

 

[GURPS]

- that it doesn't hurt for people to point that out every now and then.

if you are arrested, charged, tried and found NOT Guilty - you are not a criminal
I see this all as a continuing move by progressives to make excuses for Criminals - like blocking access to information in back ground checks - arrested, convictions etc



little Tyron cannot get a JOB because no one will hire a criminal

 

[Tilted]

:shrug:

I think we're all bad people. The only difference is degree - and how much our actions affect others. As I also said, this may be a theological discussion; the concept of ongoing sanctification of an otherwise sinful being.

If you call me a criminal for stealing a candy bar, well mea culpa. Guilty as charged.

In one of C.S. Lewis's books - it might have been "Mere Christianity" - he makes the case that the very acknowledgment of a concept of good and bad create a case for a higher order, a higher being, because we all seem to WANT to be regarded as "good" even if we disagree on what it is. When people argue over good, they try to make the case that THEIR side is good, or at least, justifiably good in lieu of the circumstances - no one tries to make the case that their side is actually wrong or evil or bad. For us to all insist that it nevertheless exists suggests that we intuitively KNOW there's something out there, even if we fail to achieve it

I just don't care much for attempts to water down what we are - bad people trying to be good. I always kind of thought that the PURPOSE of law is to make sure people pay for being bad.

Sure to the latter part. But I'm not so much talking about different degrees of bad. I'm talking about things that actually do make people bad versus things that mostly just represent our (individual and collective and mutual) desire to control one another. I'm not saying there's a difference in degree of bad between murder and shoplifting, those are both truly bad things. Different degrees, but it's fair to consider people doing either as wrong - not just stupid or whatever, but as having done something wrong and improper to someone else. I'm talking about the difference between someone stealing something and someone doing drugs or frequenting prostitutes or building their house out of 2x2's rather than what the law might require. I might think of people that do the latter kinds of things as being stupid or pathetic or all kinds of other things. But they aren't bad in a societal context. Those things aren't the same as murdering or raping or stealing, and not just by degree - by the nature of them.

 

[Tilted]

if you are arrested, charged, tried and found NOT Guilty - you are not a criminal
I see this all as a continuing move by progressives to make excuses for Criminals - like blocking access to information in back ground checks - arrested, convictions etc



little Tyron cannot get a JOB because no one will hire a criminal

And John? A good guy, helps others. Smart too. Dude can figure anything out. Faithful to his wife and loves his children more than anything. But the government just made it illegal to own AR-15s and he's got several of them. And he isn't going to give them up because he isn't doing anything wrong. The government is wrong. But someone found out and he got caught with ARs in his home and now he's a criminal and no one will hire him.

Is he a bad guy? Should people hold it against him that the government defined something he did - something that wasn't really bad, didn't make him a bad person, something that he should have every right to do - as a crime? Or should we say, that's bull####. It matters what people do - whether it's really a bad thing or not, not just whether it happens to be against the law. Further, should it matter - when it comes to me thinking they are good or bad or when it comes to me deciding to hire them - whether they were convicted of murder rather than just someone who murdered but wasn't convicted? For my part, I don't care if someone has been convicted or not - if they're a rapist I think of them as just as bad as if they were convicted of rape. The conviction or lack there of doesn't make them bad or good. So if some things are against the law and all kinds of people have done them, the reality that some have been convicted and some have not doesn't make the former bad and the latter good.

Little Tyron can't get a job because no one wants to hire a criminal. Okay, you don't have much sympathy for him. But what about John? Do you have any sympathy for him? What if he were you? Didn't do anything wrong to anyone, just broke one of the countless messed up laws we've enacted? Is it okay that you can't get a job because of it? You're a criminal after all, a bad guy. Or is it time to start being honest with ourselves about what is and what isn't really wrong? And stop using the mere notion that someone else broke a law to feed our need to feel morally superior to them, without regard to whether the law in question was itself f'ed up and while remaining in denial that we break such laws ourselves?

 

[GURPS]

would I think John is bad, IMHO, no because I might do the same thing - he is still a criminal in the eyes of his states laws - and anti-gunners while treat him accordingly


Tyron - I did not define a crime for him