“Incarceration strips people of their dignity and humanity, and brings them into a culture that says they aren’t deserving of anything.”
While these are the words of one formerly incarcerated community leader, this sentiment speaks to the lived experience of hundreds of thousands of people re-entering society after incarceration. This stigma is embedded in how we think about, treat, and talk about formerly incarcerated people.
Mainstream culture has normalized dehumanizing language like “felon,” “ex-con,” and “offender,” defining people by their experience with the criminal justice system rather than their humanity. Groups like the Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network (FICGN) have worked to counter this stigma by empowering formerly incarcerated people through education, advocacy, and leadership development.
Since its launch in 2014, FICGN has been involved in efforts to change the narrative about people affected by the justice system. Led by Executive Director Terrell Blount, FICGN represents more than 1,300 members across 48 states. In 2016, FICGN collaborated with the Vera Institute on the Reimagining Prison Project, an initiative where corrections leaders, formerly incarcerated people, academics, and members of the public came together to imagine a prison system centered on dignity and humanity while acknowledging the racial oppression and dehumanization embedded in the current system. FICGN’s advocacy contributed to the broader momentum behind the Associated Press’s 2024 update to its Stylebook to include guidance on person-first language in covering criminal justice.
This January, FICGN launched the ‘Change the Narrative’ initiative, calling on those working in higher education, corrections, workforce development, and advocacy to pledge to use person-first language. The initiative emphasizes “the individual first, rather than their legal status or past actions, to restore dignity and humanity to those who have been devalued by the system.”
As part of this work, FICGN partnered with us to develop a narrative and messaging guide to help advocates, organizers, and institutions communicate more intentionally about incarceration, reentry, and opportunity. The guide emerged from narrative research conducted with members of the FICGN network and was designed to support a broader shift away from punitive and dehumanizing language toward narratives rooted in dignity, equity, and humanity.
Narrative change work requires more than isolated language shifts. It requires a shared framework for understanding how language shapes public perception, policy, and relationship to community. Narrative frameworks help organizations articulate their vision, values, and orientation to an issue in a way that can guide storytelling, messaging, organizing, and advocacy across different audiences and campaigns. For example, Liberation Ventures created a “Narrative House” that functions as an organizing and storytelling schema for their work in the reparations movement. Rural Democracy Initiative has the “Winning Jobs Narrative Project,” a messaging framework to communicate about economic issues across race and geography.
Narratives help people make sense of the world, bridge shared realities, and build solidarity. More than that, narratives are vehicles of hope, imagination, and possibility. While language shifts may seem superficial or like “splitting hairs,” changing a phrase like “Second Chance Month” to “Fair Chance Month” carries broader cultural implications about who deserves opportunity and humanity.
In interviews with members of the FICGN network, we heard pressing concerns about the limitations of “second chance” framing. Here’s a snapshot of what was said:
- Many participants shared that the language reinforces the idea that opportunities are limited and conditional, implying that some people become undeserving of future opportunities once they have made a mistake.
As one participant explained, “When you say ‘second chance,’ you are giving people the opportunity to start counting — to say, ‘we’re not going to give you another chance or use our resources on you because we already did that and you messed up.’”
- Others shared that many people never had a fair chance to begin with. Structural barriers such as poverty, economic hardship, family instability, and unequal access to resources often contribute to incarceration in the first place.
- Many participants shared that fair chance language acknowledges the humanity of people impacted by incarceration and recognizes that dignity and opportunity should not be conditional.
One person shared, “Because when we see them as human beings, we can begin to treat them in that manner and see that they deserve fair opportunities — not just for one moment, but throughout their entire lives.”
- Research participants also spoke about how “second chance” language can reinforce the idea that an incarceration record functions as a lifelong punishment and that a person’s “debt to society” can never truly be repaid.
The current reality is that, even after someone leaves prison, completes probation, or is arrested without further involvement with the criminal justice system, barriers often remain: background checks that automatically disqualify applicants, licensing restrictions that close career pathways, and the lasting stigma attached to having a record. For many, these systems reinforce the feeling that formerly incarcerated people are viewed as permanently irredeemable.
FICGN’s narrative change efforts seek to reframe this conversation. Rather than focusing on whether someone is on their “second,” “fourth,” or “fifth” chance, the shift toward fair chance language opens the door to advocating for systems where everyone has equitable opportunities throughout their lives. A fair chance means investing in communities and affirming that all people deserve dignity, humanity, and opportunity in every aspect of their lives.
Read the narrative and messaging guide here.
New to narrative change? Check out our resources on How building alignment on a shared worldview can strengthen movements and How to Narrate Towards Action.
