The San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted new, sanitized changes to how it refers to criminals and scrapped terms such as “addict” and “offender.”
Convicted felons or inmates released from custody will be called “formerly incarcerated person,” a “justice-involved person,” or simply a “returning resident,” Fox News reported.
For younger criminals, the sanitized language will now refer to juvenile “delinquents” as a “young person with ‘justice system involvement’ or a ‘young person impacted by the juvenile justice system.’”
Drug addicts will be labeled “a person with a history of substance abuse.”
“We don’t want people to be forever labeled for the worst things that they have done. We want them ultimately to become contributing citizens, and referring to them as felons is like a scarlet letter that they can never get away from,” supervisor Matt Haney said of the new criminal guidelines.
The board’s new language is nonbinding, but the district attorney has endorsed the measure. San Francisco Mayor London Breed has not yet endorsed the new terms.
San Francisco has been plagued with issues of homelessness and crime in recent years. The new labels will likely have little effect on those major issues.
