The Marshall Project’s Akiba Solomon on how journalists write about incarceration

 The Language Project is a style advisory that talks about The Marshall Project's decision to not only decide that we weren't going to use terms that a significant portion of our audience find to be pejorative … but also to publicly state it, because The Marshall Project has a unique place in reporting and criminal justice reporting.

We're not an advocacy organization, but we are designed to serve not only people outside of correctional facilities but people inside of correctional facilities. And so a shared language was really necessary when we started to think about this group of folks who are directly impacted.

Even before I got to The Marshall Project in December 2019, there had been calls from folks in our audience, many of whom were formerly incarcerated, some who are currently incarcerated, who would have a hard stop at words like "inmate" or "convict" or "felon." And if you're using language where a segment of your audience has a hard stop or a segment of your audience finds it distracting or, again, pejorative, then that's something that you really need to examine.

I think people may have thought that The Language Project was an attempt to locate The Marshall Project politically on one pole or another. But the central argument there is, this is about clear language. This is about the fact that if you have words that a segment of your audience feels is pejorative, you're not actually going to get them to focus on what you're reporting on.

Lawrence Bartley, who is now the publisher of what we call Marshall Project Inside, which includes News Inside, the print publication that goes into prisons, and Inside Story, which is a show on YouTube, had served 27 years in prison. When I got to The Marshall Project as a new colleague, he came to me and said, "We need to talk about ‘inmate.’ We need to talk about the use of these words when I'm out in the field. I have people complaining to me about it. And I have people feeling like this is sort of a mark against our journalism.”

I'd actually never heard it put that way. I'd heard from activist communities that they don't want pejorative terms. They don't want terms that dehumanize people, but I'd never quite put together the fact that you only have a couple of seconds to convey your story to people. And so it's a waste of words if you're going to say something when you don't actually mean it. So he was one of the people [who led to the creation of The Language Project]. 

People were using these words because that was always what people did. And so you have to continually take inventory [of] your language usage and what your policies are to make sure that they match what the public is telling you. 

 The weekly essay series that I edit is called Life Inside, and they are perspectives from people in the criminal justice system. Most of our writers are currently or formerly incarcerated, but we also have folks who have served on parole boards. We talk to corrections officers, we talk to defense attorneys. The idea is to really give people the human stories behind a system that is often dehumanizing to all parties.

One judgment call that The Marshall Project continually makes is that we do actually identify the reason why people are currently incarcerated. We have a bio at the end of those stories. We let people who are writing for us [know] that we are actually going to run what they were convicted of, and that we also want them to add anything about themselves that they would want a reader to know.

 I think since 2021, fewer and fewer local media are using mug shots as a source of income. There are places that would just run whatever mug shots came through that day, and get clicks on those pages. So I've seen some local media making the decision not to do this anymore — likely losing revenue, but understanding that part of journalism, again, is supposed to be about fairness. …

If you write about somebody, and you say, "So-and-so is an inmate at so-and-so jail," and that's the first thing that comes up when somebody searches your name, how is that person supposed to move forward? If that person was not convicted and spent a year in jail, which we know has happened — hello, Kalief Browder — you convicted them with that article. Most journalism is not corrected. It's just part of the record. We've had people write to us and say, "You wrote about me nine years ago when I was in prison. I'm out now. It is very difficult for me to get a job because this is the first thing that comes up." You really have to keep that in mind. …

Oftentimes with The Marshall Project, if we reprint something [and] we find out if that person has been let out since we wrote the story, we'll add a note. Because again, it's important to not suspend people in time [at the moment of] probably the worst thing they've ever done in their life.

 Clarity is really important in storytelling because it also conveys fairness. If your North Star is clarity rather than the number of people who like you or disagree with you … I think that that's the easiest way to instill confidence in readers and viewers who feel really skeptical about what you're bringing to the table.