I recently got some blunt, if not friendly, advice to "stay in my lane" in terms of what I comment on. Well I have been defending so-called "criminals" for 16 years, so I figured I talk about so-called "criminals" a bit.
Crime is not a status but an act; there are criminal acts but not there are no "criminals." It is vitally important to recognize that the bulk of crimes actually committed are misdemeanors and are crimes that were not known to English common law.
English common law had certain defined felonies (murder, larceny, burglary, rape, robbery, etc.), the commission of which could get the felon potentially executed and thereafter his estate forfeited to the Crown. This concept of forfeiture concept the "deodand" (Latin, that which is to be given to G-d, i.e. the Crown) persists as a recessive gene in our law, justifying in civil forfeiture levies upon goods and real estate today in our drug, gambling and prostitution laws. Today there are cases in my home state of Maryland with catchy names like "State of Maryland v. 156 Gaming Devices"; the cases are technically civil and against the object itself for constituting the proceeds or facilitating means of a drug crime or a gambling crime. Neither drugs nor gambling nor prostitution were felonies, however, in English common law.
Today's criminal law is engaged primarily in the drug war. One does see the occasional "real crime" in court and many non-drug crimes don't get successfully prosecuted. Shoplifting is endemic; almost every merchant needs to make allowances for deadweight losses from inventory shrinkage. I recall representing a graduate student from Korea early in my career who was successfully prosecuted for stealing a lot of merchandise out of Nordstrom's; Nordstrom's has a high enough mark-up per square foot of floor space to justify high-dollar security and loss prevention measures. It's hard to feel sympathy for underwear thieves when the underwear cost Nordstrom prices. But most of criminal court deals with petty crimes like shoplifting, the occasional assault, disorderly conduct (i.e. plucking some cop's last nerve) and above all drug possession, especially marijuana.
Traffic court in my home state is divided into jailable and non-jailable crimes. Non-jailable traffic crimes include the most common violation of the law: exceeding the posted speed limit, which I admit I committed earlier today and probably every judge on the Maryland bench has committed daily throughout her or his career on the bench. The average speed on most roads is illegal; doing 55 on the Baltimore Beltway will get you cussed out for impeding traffic much of the time if the weather is decent and traffic is moderate. Jailable offenses include driving while suspended (usually due to missing a prior court date), driving an uninsured vehicle (very common in hard time when motorists cannot get their insurance paid), driving under the influence/impaired (a real scourge), hit and run and fleeing/eluding a officer. All of these offenses did not exist at common law; they are all the result of either the speed of internal combustion vehicles, the regulatory infrastructure for those vehicles or both, none of which existed at common law.
There are truly outrageous crimes that scream to heaven for vengeance. Predatory sex crimes come to mind, though some non-predatory sex crimes arguably don't deserve criminal jurisprudence at all (e.g. prostitution, maintaining a bawdy house, consensual sex between adults or near-adults, etc. arguably should be lawful or merely regulated by health or social service authorities.) Certainly the taking of human life deserves the severest response, especially when neither accident nor legitimate self-defense or reasonable mistake are not present. And professional thieves - not someone stealing bread for his table but someone stealing inventory for profitable resale or pawning - and those who steal non-necessities like up-market underwear deserve little sympathy. But most "crime" involves administrative and regulatory compliance issues, vice, public health regulation or a moment's obnoxious overreaction; most "crime" is dumb or risky, but not evil.
When we look at "crimes" rather than at the concept of "criminals" to describe human beings, we are able to humanize more of our fellow citizens who violate the law. This is not to encourage anarchy or disrespect for the law, but to encourage restraint, moderation, proportionality and reasonableness. We have no business pretending that a rapist and some habitual pot-smoker deserve the same label. I am a proud member of the NORML National Legal Committee, but you don't have to be a NORML advocate, a bleeding heart or Tommy Chong to think that sexual predation and car theft deserve the highest law enforcement and marijuana the lowest. Many of the same people who claim "the law is the law" the loudest can be found tooling at illegally high rates of speed in their SUVs, talking about how proud they are not to be "criminals."
I do not like the word "felon" either because it has gotten so watered down that someone who commits a rape and someone makes a one-rock transfer of crack cocaine bear the same label (for the felony of "distribution of CDS"). It makes it harder to be hard on truly predatory crimes when felonies become so obscenely inflated beyond their common law limits. In my home state, a rapist can ask for a pardon after 10 years under gubernatorial pardon regs, but someone convicted of distribution of CDS must wait 20 years; only a crackhead would think that crack is a bigger deal than rape.
In a way, you could say that this is a "conservative" position: let's not turn every damn offense against the state or public order into a "felony", but get it back to where the English common law stood on Independence Day, July 4, 1776. At a minimum, we should have grades of "felons" and "felonies" - intermediate for dealing CDS and severe for murder, rape and carjacking. The lifetime disenfranchisement of millions of poor people as "felons" for non-predatory crimes - more likely to be unable to hire a good defense attorney to fight and negotiate from a position of strength - has a direct impact on how poor peoples' needs get heard in Congress and state houses. In Canada, one of the first things that happens to a felon upon release from prison is voter registration: if you are free, you can vote. Not here, though things are improving.
I don't fear "criminals" at all and I don't fear most "crime" - in part because I am male and big and look like a terrible target for a mugging, in part because I make a good enough living to live in a suburb with low-moderate crime rates, in part because I drive a high-mileage car with dents and in part because I know that most "crime" is victimless. I respectfully urge that the word "criminal" be purged from discourse and be replaced with discussions of actual crimes, with an emphasis on those crimes that actually victimize the bodies or property of real human beings, rather than merely the ego and control-freak natures of legislators whose first belch and hiccup are "there ought to be a law." No, Wilbur, most of the time, there oughtn't be.