Webster’s Dictionary defines “obfuscation” as: “The action of making something obscure, unclear, or unintelligible”. Obfuscation is quickly replacing English as the common language of our society.
That was clear again this week as the Green Bay City Council heard the results of a study on the causes of an increase in gun violence in the city over the past three years. David Muhammed, Executive Director of the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (which was hired by the city to conduct the study) presented the following ‘information” to Alders:
“75 percent of suspects were known to the criminal justice system, with 44 percent having previously been incarcerated. Between 42 and 61 percent of the shootings involved groups. The study also identified 11 specific groups as actively involved in the city’s gun violence. Some of them are more structured crews that have been around for a while and are connected to outside areas.”
So based on that, I ask you, who is responsible for the vast majority of gun violence in Green Bay?
The clear answer is in that statement, you just need to “translate” it back into words that the vast majority of people actually understand. 75% of the shooting suspects have criminal records–that’s what “known to the criminal justice system” means. 44% have already spent time in prison–that is the definition of “having previously been incarcerated”. Between 42 and 61% are members of gangs or drug rings–and there are 11 identified gangs or drug rings operating in Green Bay. Those would be what are now referred to as “groups”, “specific groups”, and “structured crews that have been around for a while and are connected to outside areas”.
So why doesn’t the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform use the common terms so everyone listening can understand what is going on? Well they are part of an effort to “change the language” of the criminal justice system to “eliminate the stigma” of being involved in criminal activity. The state Department of Corrections is now under orders to refer to “those known to the criminal justice system” as “people in our care”. Are our prisons full of inmates or survivors of a plane crash or natural disaster? You really can’t tell from that language. “People in our care” someday hope to become “people under our supervision”–which means to become parolees or be on probation.
Law enforcement is also getting in on this. We in the media are often given the term “Person of interest” by investigators actively looking for someone. And when we ask “Is he a suspect in the crime?”, they re-iterate, “He’s a ‘person of interest'”. What I find interesting is that in cases where someone who would be considered a “person of interest” is not actually a suspect–they are instead referred to as a “witness”.
This push to “re-label” crime and justice is moving into the media as well. I receive regular emails from the Poynter Institute (which used to be the go-to source for media literacy and journalism ethics) encouraging us to use the same language when writing our stories for listeners and viewers. And it does stimulate some conversation in the newsroom on one key point: Is it our job to “reduce stigma”, or is it our job to “present information in as clear and concise a manner as possible for our audience”? Personally, I lean toward the latter.
Besides, the more we use terms like “people known to the justice system”, “people having been previously incarcerated”, “groups”, “specific groups”, “structured crews that have been around for a while and are connected to outside areas” and “people in the care of the Department of Corrections” the sooner people will associate them with their previous terms: “convicts”, “gangs”, “drug rings”, and “inmates”. And then the obfuscators will have to come up with entirely new terms to confuse people for a while.
