The Stigma That Keeps Us in Prison

For seven months last year, I had the honor of serving as First Deputy Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction under then-Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi.

During a recent talk radio segment, a corrections officer called in with an opinion about my being hired for that post. “I hope this isn’t going to come out the wrong way,” he said. “But I can’t ever imagine a police commissioner or a fire commissioner as their first act hiring an ex-arsonist or an ex-bank robber to be a deputy commissioner, and I don’t know why it happened in our department.”

I am not writing this to defend my hiring or tout my qualifications. Instead, I want to call attention to the implicit assumption behind that officer’s comment: that there is some sort of lifetime stigma associated with individuals who have experience on the wrong side of the justice system.

Some of the consequences of that involvement are well-known. They are even enshrined in the law.

A conviction impacts your ability to find housing, including possibly barring you from public housing. It may prevent you from finding a job, or from obtaining necessary professional licenses. It can prevent you from engaging in civic life as a juror or a voter.

And, if you are not a citizen, it may result in your deportation, or prevent you from entering the country. Given that people of color are disproportionately more likely to have criminal records, these consequences produce racial disparities in all of these areas, too.

But here’s what’s less well known:  the insidious lifetime consequences that cannot be undone by certificates of good conduct, testimonials from supervisors, professional advancement or academic degrees.

It’s the consequence of bias, of being forever branded in some people’s minds as an “ex-bank robber” or a “felon” – which translates to “forever less than,” and as unworthy.

Language enshrines certain beliefs and stereotypes. It justifies systemic discrimination.

The Durham Board of County Commissioners in North Carolina recently recognized this impact in passing a resolution requiring the use of what is widely known as “people first” language.

Pejorative language and labels, the Commissioners note, “create societal stigmas, attitudinal barriers, and continued negative stereotypes that affect access to employment, housing, healthcare, professional licensing, travel, support services, and other integral aspects of community life.”

But there is also what these labels do to those of us subjected to them.

To quote the late Brooklyn, NY activist Eddie Ellis from his seminal essay An Open Letter to Our Friends on the Question of Language:

We habitually underestimate the power of language…The worst part of repeatedly hearing your negative definition of me, is that I begin to believe it myself….It follows then, that calling me inmate, convict, prisoner, felon, or offender indicates a lack of understanding of who I am, but more importantly what I can be.  I can be and am much more than an ‘ex-con,’ or an ‘ex-offender,’ or an ‘ex-felon.

Some of us buy into the narrative that we are, in fact, “less than.”

Eddie Ellis

Some of us may have internalized that message from a very young age – either from our families, or from what we saw happening in and to our communities.  Some of us pushed back against being labelled as “less than” by making poor and harmful choices in misguided attempts to prove everyone wrong.

And some of us have spent most of our adult lives trying to convince ourselves that we are worthy of shedding those external labels, that we are worthy of putting our lived experience with the criminal legal system to work in service of making it more humane and thus more effective in keeping all of us safe.

We know, and the evidence shows, that people who have been involved in the criminal legal system play invaluable roles in steering others from the wrong path.  We can also serve as leaders, as I was fortunate to do under then-Commissioner Schiraldi.

As Eddie Ellis said, “if we cannot persuade you to refer to us, and think of us, as people, then all our other efforts and reform and change are seriously compromised.”

That may be the intended purpose behind the use of this language, these “ex-bank robber” labels, which does not acknowledge the possibility of personal growth and individual change.

I believe that is a very sad way of looking at the world, because to believe that some people are not capable of change is to believe that none of us are.  To believe that some people should be defined and labelled by the worst things they have ever done is to believe that everyone should be so defined.

This is not the world that I live in and that I choose to improve with my actions and my example.

I want young Black men who have stumbled, who have harmed others, who have let down their families and communities—and themselves—to see me and see what is possible. I want all of us to understand who we are, and who we can be.

And that includes being leaders in the very systems that confined us.

Stanley Richards is Deputy Chief Executive Officer at The Fortune Society.