RUTHFULLY YOURS

Understandable. We wouldn’t want to stigmatize murderers, drug dealers, rapists and robbers. Their victims might disagree, but they’re just Crimeaphobic.

Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason, who has headed the Office of Justice Programs since 2013, announces in a guest post that her agency will no longer use words such as “felon” or “convict” to refer to released prisoners.

“Many of the formerly incarcerated men, women, and young people I talk with say that no punishment is harsher than being permanently branded a “felon” or “offender,” Mason writes. “This new policy statement replaces unnecessarily disparaging labels with terms like “person who committed a crime” and “individual who was incarcerated,”

Should go over as well as “man caused disasters” for terrorism. But the side benefits of living inside a Groucho Marx movie set in an Orwellian dystopia is that we get plenty of laughs.

“The labels we affix to those who have served time can drain their sense of self-worth”.

I suppose we could discuss the self-worth of their victims, but that would not be politically correct.