The Obama administration has worked over several years to steer the country away from policies that deny tens of millions of people with criminal records jobs, housing, education, consumer credit, professional licenses and the other tools they need to forge viable, productive lives.

The initiative has been driven by the Federal Interagency Reentry Council — a group of more than 20 government agencies — which has focused most closely on eliminating barriers to employment that have become pervasive since employers began using computer-based arrest and conviction records to screen job applicants.

Lately, the administration has also recognized that the vocabulary of incarceration — the permanently stigmatizing way we speak about people who have served time — presents a significant barrier to reintegration. Federal officials have set out to change that lexicon, so that people who have committed crimes have a better chance of being seen not as faceless abstractions, but as human beings worthy of a being back in society.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, for example, gave a speech in Mobile, Ala., two weeks ago on re-entry programs in which she avoided objectifying nouns — like “felons” or “ex-convict” or “ex-offender” — that define people by the worst moment of their lives.