Ministers looking to remove "offender" tag after sentence served

People with criminal convictions who have served their sentences should no longer be referred to as "offenders", the Scottish Government believes.

Under the new National Strategy for Community Justice, published last week, which sets out approaches to supporting reintegration of offenders into the community and preventing reoffending, the preferred designation proposed is "person with convictions" or "person with an offending history".

The paper states: "After people have been released from custody or completed community sentences, it is vital that we support them to reintegrate into society. We must be aware of the power of language to facilitate or inhibit this process."

Defining people as "offenders" for the rest of their lives, it adds, "will not help to change their behaviours, or shift attitudes within wider society".

However the change of language should go with "taking care to use language that is sensitive to victims of crime".

Pete White, chief executive of Positive Prison, Positive Futures, said on BBC radio: "If we're going to do something, even just one small thing, to reduce offending in Scotland, then if we can help people to realise that they can move forward and are not always going to be stuck in the past, then that's a thing that we can all do."

However, former probation officer Mike Nellis, now Emeritus Professor of Criminal and Community Justice at Strathclyde University, said the move "could back-fire terribly on the Government because there are lots of people out there in society and in the tabloid press who use much worse words like 'villain', 'thug' or 'crook'".

He added: "The word 'offender' is a descriptive neutral word that does not imply bad character. It means that a person has offended against the law. It is a useful word."