This thesis examines the principle of fair labelling in criminal law. It argues that fair labelling is a principle of justice concerned with the just allocation of blame in offence (i) naming (ii) differentiation, and (iii) persistence or duration. The first two chapters examine the concept of a criminal label and its relationship to punishment. I argue here that criminal labelling is not simply concerned with offence description and categorisation, but also the allocation of a status that alters the rights and duties of an offender. Categorising an offender as having committed a certain offence which is at odds with the blameworthiness they actually deserve is a site of certain kind of injustice - an ontic injustice. This ontic injustice creates a mismatch between the offender’s entitlements (as per critical morality) and the legal categories and duties imposed on them when allocating blame in punishment. I argue that fair labelling is concerned with this specific kind of mismatch when the criminal law allocates blame in offence description and categorisation. I then argue that convictions (best understood as punitive criminal labels) are the paradigmatic case of criminal labelling and so the paradigm case for analysing fair labelling concerns. I then connect convictions to the communicative functions of the criminal law in punishment and explain why criminal conduct specifically concerns the public and community at large.

In the third chapter I defend and justify criminal labelling – especially the important part criminal labels play in punishment as a communal practice concerned with moral education. Here I stress the often-neglected role that civil society plays in criminal punishment. In the fourth chapter, I then analyse the role that fair labelling plays in the allocation of blame when concerned with issues of culpability. I argue that different mens rea requirements ought to be reflected in different offences as a point of departure, taking account of the importance of the interest entailed. This does not mean criminal offences cannot blur these lines, but that such blurring will require justification by appealing to the importance of the interest involved. I also analyse the rule of law implication of properly allocating blame and argue that fair labelling is compatible with, and mutually supported by, the rule of law.

The last two substantive chapters of the thesis are concerned with the persistence of an offence after offenders have served their sentence. I argue here that an offence can persist in a manner that incorrectly treats an offender as an irredeemable moral inferior and so miscategorises them as a second-class citizen. I then argue that the persistence of an offence may also fail to allow an offender to live down a conviction in a manner that creates a mismatch between their label understood as a status and their actual moral entitlements according to critical morality.