Why Advocates Say the Media Narrative around Justice-Impacted People Must Change

On May 30, 2024, former president Donald Trump—the current Republican nominee for the President of the United States—became the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes when a New York jury found him guilty of 34 charges related to payments he made to a porn actor in his attempt to keep her quiet leading up to the 2016 election.

Weeks later, on June 12, Hunter Biden—the oldest child of President Joe Biden and the current Democratic nominee—became the first child of a sitting US president to be convicted of a crime after a jury found him guilty of lying about his substance abuse history on a government background check to purchase a gun in 2018.

“The word felon…allows people to not only dehumanize someone but also become desensitized to their humanity and to the things that they may endure.”

Both presidential candidates were impacted by the criminal justice system in some way—either because they or a family member have been convicted of a crime. These convictions entered the public discussion and were brought up in the first presidential debate, leaving some criminal justice advocates to believe that the media narrative shaping up around justice-impacted people could prove harmful—especially to those with far less political power.

The Longstanding Impact of Incarceration

In Florida, the state where Trump resides, Desmond Meade serves as the president and executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC). In 2018, FRRC successfully mobilized five million people in the state to vote yes on Amendment 4, allowing 1.4 million formerly incarcerated people to have their voting rights restored. For this effort, Meade received a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” was listed among TIME’s 100 most influential people in 2019, and was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Despite all his accomplishments, Meade had to fight to restore his civil rights. In 2021, nearly two decades after serving time in prison, he announced that he could finally run for office, serve on a jury, and take the bar exam to become a lawyer. Meade understands on a personal level that when a person is labeled as a felon, they can be denied their basic civil rights. That is why it stings when he hears that word used so often in the media and even on the presidential debate stage.

“The word felon is a dehumanizing word. And it allows people to not only dehumanize someone but also become desensitized to their humanity and to the things that they may endure. We’ve seen the president use the word during the debate and it was venom in that word. He may have been calling Donald Trump a felon, but I felt it,” Meade said in an interview with NPQ.

Across the country, millions of justice-impacted people are deprived of their right to vote.

Meade references the superpredator myth that spread in the media in the 1990s and had a detrimental impact, particularly on youth of color. “Because it diminished our humanity, the public was not in an uproar about how we were funneling our children from school into the prison system or the conditions that people were living in solitary confinement. We were placing human beings in conditions that if we were to place animals in, it would have been considered animal cruelty,” he said.

As people with political influence, Trump and Biden also played a role in shaping this media narrative. In 1989, Trump—a prominent real estate mogul at the time—spent $85,000 on full-page newspaper ads calling for the executions of five Black and Latinx teenagers who were charged, convicted, and later exonerated of the rape of a jogger in Central Park. Biden, then a United States senator, was the author of the 1994 Crime Bill, which contributed to the mass incarceration crisis.

Though the superpredator myth has largely been debunked, it has had longstanding ramifications. As Meade notes, 20 to 30 years after their incarceration, many people still struggle to find employment, housing, and other opportunities. “They’re still being made to suffer because of the narrative that has been ingrained in people’s heads about who a criminal is or who a person who has been justice impacted is,” Meade said.

“Let’s take this opportunity now to remove barriers to economic mobility and to shift a narrative that has historically been negative about people who have had felony convictions, and let’s try to humanize people more.”

Across the country, millions of justice-impacted people are deprived of their right to vote. Meanwhile, by striking contrast, the Supreme Court recently granted Trump immunity for official acts. Following this ruling, his sentencing for the hush money case was delayed until September—at the earliest—as a judge decides whether he should have been immune in the first place, given the Supreme Court ruling. Though his attorneys are attempting to get the conviction thrown out altogether, even if a sentence is imposed, some experts say it is unlikely he will be incarcerated.

Changing the Narrative

Although recent media attention on people with felony convictions has largely been around Trump—and even Hunter Biden—Meade believes that this current moment offers an opportunity for a broader discussion about the issues affecting the millions of justice-impacted people across the country. He noted that political leaders like Florida governor Ron DeSantis have pledged support for Trump and his ability to run for president, yet make it harder for those with previous felony convictions to access job opportunities. He noted that if Trump wins, he will move into the White House again, yet people across the country face barriers to accessing safe and affordable housing.

Rather than suggesting that Trump should not run because he has been convicted of felonies, Meade said he tells formerly incarcerated people that this should give them something to aspire to—that they should believe they can also hold political office. Meade also said, “Let’s take this opportunity now to remove barriers to economic mobility and to shift a narrative that has historically been negative about people who have had felony convictions, and let’s try to humanize people more.”

Noting that the FRRC advocates for everyone, not just formerly incarcerated people, Meade said he believes that “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” When narratives are put in place that make it harder for justice-impacted people to access democracy and gain economic mobility, society as a whole is weakened.

Meade mentioned how DeSantis recently vetoed a bill that would have allowed incarcerated Floridians to maintain their residency status for tuition purposes, even though access to education has been tied to lower recidivism rates. Meade also cited data from the Center for American Progress, National Employment Law Project, and Community Legal Services of Philadelphia that found that the US economy loses between $78 billion and $87 billion in GDP yearly due to refusing to employ formerly incarcerated people.

Because of the narrative shaped around justice-impacted people, Meade noted, America often spends more money on locking them up than on educating them—and it hurts everyone.

“No matter how much money we continue to pour into law enforcement, we still have that same issue,” he said. “A lot of that stems from this false narrative that has caused people to be dehumanized, and folks just don’t have any kind of compassion for the person that’s been caught up in the criminal justice system unless it’s a family member.”