It is challenging to describe behavior that may be outside of social norms, unethical, or dangerous without entirely stigmatizing the person doing the behavior. The very language itself is designed to describe these behaviors entirely in moral terms. Simplistic reductionism does very little to describe behavior that is often not planned nor intentional, and may be based entirely on desperation, ignorance, or mental health issues which may be beyond the control of the person engaged in the behavior.

For example, while it may be true that someone stealing is simply greedy or malicious, they may instead, or also be, desperate, honestly confused, compelled by forces you cannot perceive, or even, as one OG pointed out about one of their former participants, using a coping mechanism that isn’t working in the setting they are now in.

Language, as discussed previously, shapes perception. When challenging behavior is only spoken about in a moral binary, it becomes difficult to humanize the actor and create a plan for restoration that is  consistent with an individual’s unique behavior or circumstances, a cornerstone of restorative and transformative justice. As a consequence, we struggled for a long time with what language to use to describe this kind of behavior and decided that “policy violations” or “misconduct” were the most neutral words to accurately describe these kinds of behaviors.