Democrat lawmakers in Illinois have passed a bill that seeks to rename criminal offenders as “justice-impacted individuals” in legislation.
Bill HB4409, which passed both houses on May 21, is now headed to the desk of Governor JB Pritzker to be signed into law. The law will amend the Illinois Crime Reduction Act of 2009, and was initially introduced to alter the structure of a state criminal justice oversight board and to establish a grant program “for the allotment of funds to local jurisdictions for local and community-based services.”
The proposed legislation was amended by the house committee to include the change of language and removal of the word “offender.”
Going forward, the Crime Reduction Act “changes references from ‘offenders’ to ‘justice impacted individuals.’” In a video shared on X (formerly Twitter) by popular self-described expose account, a senate lawmaker claims the nomenclature change is a waste of money:
“It might seem like a small thing. Obviously changing a term can have a positive or negative impact when we do that. But I would say that over and over again, we keep changing the names for how we are referring to those who are—who have entered into criminal activity, and each time we make that change, each agency has to make that change on every one of their documents. So right now in the department of corrections there’s multiple changes that have been made—and it’s costing thousands and thousands of dollars just to do a name change. So I would ask: Why is it necessary to make the name change?”
News of the bill is drawing significant ire across social media platforms, with some making comparisons to George Orwell’s 1984 and the current debate over terms associated with womanhood.
“Controlling speech… forbidding people to say men or women, preventing people from expressing their opinions on covid vaccines or masks, changing terms like child predator to minor attracted individuals is not normal. How far are you going to let the Democratic Party to go before you realize you our being led down a path to communism?” commented Instagram user Phil Mancusi.
Curiously, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a billionaire venture capitalist whose family purchased the Hyatt hotel chain, has recently emerged as a major financial backer of the transgender movement. His brother, James Nicholas Pritzker, began self-identifying as a woman in 2013.
