Jail

Of all the strange political things that may occur in what will be one of the stranger political years in history, one possibility stands out as the strangest. Donald Trump, who will almost certainly be the Republican presidential nominee, is also facing the possibility of a racketeering conviction that could send him to prison. So, how exactly do you jail a president? Trump’s most fervent opponents may find themselves disappointed. No one’s going to toss the Donald into some American equivalent of the Black Hole of Calcutta. And as much as people might want to shut him up, no one is going to hold him captive in a bare, dark cell with a Hannibal Lecter mask over his face. On the other hand, Trump’s most fervent supporters could find themselves disappointed as well.

What do you call someone in prison? An inmate? Prisoner? How about a 'resident'? That's how those locked up in Britain's jails are now described by the Ministry of Justice and the Prison Service. Apart from the cringing absurdity of labelling people whom the state has detained as if they had voluntarily checked into the care home from hell, what does this tell us about the culture of the Prison Service? And why does it matter? The Ministry of Justice has form for assaults on the English language. Recent guidance on offenders, still under a prison sentence but being supervised in the community, has cancelled this apparently dangerously oppressive label replacing it with ‘supervised individuals’.