In the last decade, we have seen a significant shift in what is considered mainstream social norms—from widespread racial justice protests and at-the-time recent recognition of marriage equality by the highest court in the land, to the reality today in which civil rights foundations are being torched. The US is hurtling towards an authoritarian political environment. In that context, language is one of the key underlying dynamics that goes hand in hand with these shifts. For that reason, it is essential for those of us who are working to advance equitable social change—nonprofits, foundations, researchers, social workers, labor unions, teachers, and everyone else who falls into the category of civil society—to be armed with a critical lens when communicating about what is happening and how we must respond. One of the big trends we want to highlight for our readers today is the repetitive use of what we call a criminalization frame. This is not an entirely new frame, and will feel familiar to many, but it is rapidly gaining momentum as a go-to way of talking about policy issues concerning the public good.
Most issues relevant for social change organizations can be, and often are, framed strategically on a spectrum which runs from public policy solutions on one end, to criminalization on the other. Learning to notice when far-right actors, organizations or movements are adopting this framing is essential for nonprofits and other organizations working in the social change space. It is critical because it allows us to move from reactive responses, to strategically reframing the conversation in terms of public policy solutions for our audiences.
This is a dynamic that has long been critically discussed by the prison abolition movement, pointing to the ways that laws—and the discourse used to justify and pass them—have been designed to fabricate Black and brown communities as criminal. Cogently illustrated in Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, those same themes were key in motivating many racial justice protests to call for change after the murder of George Floyd.
However, the use of this frame plays out in other areas as well. An immediately obvious example today is the topic of immigration, which is being framed as about “illegal aliens” who are typified by the “worst of the worst” and “violent thugs.” This frame is attempting to create a widespread belief in an invasion from the southern border, or dangerous criminals in our midst working at Home Depot, or going to immigration court hearings. The language used shifts attention away from the fact that lacking approved documentation is a civil offense under federal law, not a criminal offense, and language such as “criminal aliens” goes one step further than this misinformation; it equates human beings with illegality. This discursive trick is even being used to claim victimization of immigration enforcement officials, and turn upside down the very real public policy good of everyday citizens being able to identify officers of the law and contribute to oversight in the public space.
Another area where we see this discursive trick is in communications about homelessness, which is framed as criminal and leads to efforts to enact vagrancy laws and criminalize sleeping in public spaces. These claims are often bolstered by narratives associated with urban downtown revitalization and safety, which imply lawlessness and criminality of entire populations of unhoused community members.
Today in the US, we are also seeing this intentional criminalization applied to the visibility of transgender community members through a wide range of laws. For example, through forced resignations from the armed services. It is implied that transgender service members are a security threat, and through ambiguously written laws on pornography that are used to demonize transgender people simply for being visible within society.
Clearly, the criminalization of everything labeled DEI is another example of this phenomenon. This has shifted what was once understood as increasing access to educational materials that reflected the lived experiences and cultures of students of color, and the purview of HR teams advancing company and institutional culture, to now painting them as part of a suspect agenda pushing illegal discriminatory preferences. The resultant policy outcomes from that reframing include: judicial decisions ignoring the historical record of racial discrimination; questionable changes from the nonpartisan Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs that experts explain have killed decades of civil rights enforcement; and purges in the federal government that have disproportionately impacted people of color, and specifically Black women.
Our Work Cut Out for Us
Many of the best social change initiatives are not necessarily integrated into public policy mechanisms. However, highlighting how the issues at hand should be understood as related to public health, public safety, public literacy, participatory democracy—all wide-scale public goods—helps to tether the conversation back to individual and community well-being, the value of the commons and public infrastructure, and collectively held rights and freedoms. By doing so, we highlight the humanity of the people being criminalized by the rhetoric of the right, and help uninformed audiences pinpoint why that language is so harmful and runs counter to our collective desire to find lasting solutions to key issues in our—and their—communities.
Taking Action
In the face of this pervasive framing of policy alternatives—and in the extreme cases, framing of people as illegal and criminal, nonprofits must adopt the capacity to identify and aggressively reframe the conversation for key audiences. Practically, what can we do?
You can use this as a theme to run through a Narrative Justice framework, as described in our white paper, Narrative Justice: Ethnographic Approaches to Communications for Social Good (2023), by doing the following:
- Awareness: Track where you are seeing this rhetorical argument being deployed. The better you get at recognizing it, the better you can use alternative frames to adjust the way you are thinking about issues at hand, and how you are sharing insights and analysis with audiences.
- Engagement: Learn more about the issue at hand by seeking the perspectives of people most impacted by the harm being discussed. This ensures you know the ins and outs of how criminalizing narratives are being used, and how people who are themselves directly implicated by those discourses are talking about the issue in subtle or radically different ways.
- Confrontation: Consider this as a lens to think through your own organizational communications. Are there ways that your organization is unintentionally adopting some of the assumptions embedded in the criminalization framing? Address this honestly when it is present, to establish a path forward to recognize the harm and make changes.
- Incorporation: Incorporate your learnings into your own organizational communications and engagement with all kinds of partners in your field. This could range from less to more formal: such as informal learning conversations, sharing information in newsletters, or to more coordinated field-building campaigns.
- Sharing: Consider how you might contribute to strengthening your sector and the ties across issue areas. Share lessons learned or new initiatives that come out of this communications rethink. Building solidarity across networks for mutual accountability and consensus on what civil society is confronting today is a survival skill to bring our sector into the future we want.
Why it Matters
It is essential for all of us to think critically about the ways we can frame the issues to take the wind out of criminalization narratives and reorient attention toward alternative solutions. Those communications must highlight dignity, safety, communal well-being, and demystify why the emotion-laden calls that criminalize are counter to our collective project of a more equitable society. We do not need to rely on the strong arm of the state and should, wherever possible, reject the fear-based narratives that are being pushed. There are many enduring challenges, and more that are emerging daily, but those roadblocks can be addressed through collaborative efforts by civil society and government policy to support and protect our communities and a national interest defined by them.
If you are interested in learning more about how your organization can strategically use communications to counter democratic deterioration and foster protection for your communities, reach out to The Wakeman Agency to schedule a private consultation.