Question: Can you change a criminal to become a good person and do you believe that criminals can be different person if there is not a negative stigma associated with them.

Rose Turner answered on 16 Jun 2017:

Great Q! First of all, I think it’s useful to question the premise that a criminal is not a ‘good person’ to begin with. There are many reasons people get involved in crime (and many levels of crime). People who are addicted to drugs and turn to crime, for example, are not ‘bad’ people, though some of their behaviours as a result f their addiction might have been ‘bad’ or law-breaking. (I think it’s helpful to go beyond the idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people and think about all people as very complicated and never completely one or the other!)
I do think negative stigma can be very damaging. There is lots of research that shows that people (and even rats, in one study) tend to fulfil people’s expectations about them – even when they don’t say those expectations out loud. So if we assume someone is ‘bad’ and is likely to reoffend, then that person is more likely to do so. If we stigmatise ex-offenders, it makes it harder for them to get jobs and reintegrate into society, which of course makes it more likely that they will turn back to crime. For me, I would like to see more work being done to rehabilitate prisoners and give them the skills and support they need to live successfully without turning back to crime. I much prefer that approach to the idea that we should simply punish people for what they’ve done. However, there are of course some very serious crimes, and those cases need to be examined very carefully, in order to ensure that the individual will not be a danger to the public if/when they leave prison.
There are lots of ex-prisoners who have gone on to be very upstanding members of society, often using their experiences and knowledge of the justice system to prevent young people from going into crime, so I think ex-offenders can have a very positive impact if given the right support to do so.