incarcerated person
Last updatedDefinition
An incarcerated person is someone confined to a prison, mental hospital, or similar institution.
In 2006, Eddie Ellis of the Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions proposed an end to the terms “offender, felon, prisoner, inmate, and convict,” saying they can be dehumanizing.
In 2016, the Justice Department announced that it was changing its language around formerly incarcerated individuals reentering society to refer to “person who committed a crime” or “individual who was incarcerated.” In 2021, The Marshall Project updated its style guide based on research it conducted that found widely used and seemingly neutral terms such as “felon” were seen as stigmatizing and dehumanizing by many groups, especially “given the systemic racism and classism embedded in the U.S. criminal justice system.” The Marshall Project also points out that “inmate” can seem to imply guilt when not all people in prison have committed a crime. That same year, New York State replaced the word “inmate” with “incarcerated individual” across its statutes, and in 2022, New Jersey proposed to do the same.
In general, person-first language, or phrasing such as “X individual, who was convicted of a felony,” puts the focus on the individual rather than on one aspect of their circumstances, especially contrasted with terms such as “ex-con” and “criminal,” which risk defining someone solely by their experience with the criminal legal system. In headlines or in shorthand, the term “prisoner” may be more straightforward and humanizing than a term like “felon” or “convict,” since not all individuals housed in jails and prisons are convicted of crimes, and such terms often imply a sense of guilt to the general public. A colloquialism like “ex-con” primarily identifies an individual by their legal history and may have limited utility in news stories outside of direct quotes.
A prisoner is a person held in jail or prison, either as a sentence for crimes committed or for one awaiting trial. “Jail” and “prison,” though, are not interchangeable: Generally, jail is for those who have just been arrested or are awaiting trial or sentencing, though some serving shorter sentences will do so in jail. Prison is generally for those serving longer sentences.
Additional resources
- What Words We Use — and Avoid — When Covering People and Incarceration (Marshall Project)
- Names Do Hurt: The Case Against Using Derogatory Language to Describe People in Prison (Rewire News Group)
- Words Matter (Fortune Society)
- People First (fwd.us)
Summary
An incarcerated person is someone confined to a prison, mental hospital, or similar institution. In general, person-first language, or phrasing such as “X individual, who was convicted of a felony,” puts the focus on the individual rather than one aspect of their circumstances, especially contrasted with terms such as ex-con, felon, convict, and criminal, which risk defining someone solely by their experience with the criminal legal system. In headlines or in shorthand, the term “prisoner” may be more straightforward and humanizing than a term like “felon” or “convict,” since not all individuals housed in jails and prisons are convicted of crimes, and such terms often imply a sense of guilt to the general public.
The terms jail and prison are not interchangeable: Generally, jail is for those who have just been arrested or are awaiting trial or sentencing, though some serving shorter sentences will do so in jail. Prison is generally for those serving longer sentences.