Prison officials have been told that they must stop calling inmates residents, clients or supervised individuals because it creates the wrong impression of criminals.
Alex Chalk, the prisons minister, told civil servants, prison staff, governors and probation officers that they should stick to using the word prisoner, The Times has learnt.
He said the increasing use of alternative language to refer to and address prisoners was sending mixed messages about how the state and wider society perceived serious criminals.
The use of residents is commonplace in guidance in some prisons across England and Wales.
Probation service manuals have rebranded prisoners as supervised individuals and service users.
Some prison officials even refer to inmates as clients.
The move away from referring to inmates as prisoners is
