BY: Lissa Griffin & Lucie Olejnikova

As attention is drawn to the social impact of excessive sentences, supermax detention, and overcriminalization, it makes sense to look at the same time at the social impact of collateral consequences. What purposes do collateral consequences actually serve? Not allowing someone who has served a sentence or fulfilled a punishment for criminal conduct to vote, drive, get benefits, get work without revealing a conviction, work in human services or other select industries, live in an affordable area, and the like not only holds the convict back from successful reintegration, but also prevents communities from moving on.

The ABA has created and launched the NICCC database (National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Convictions) that collects the law on collateral consequences in the Federal system and each of the fifty states. For review of the database, click here.

Related Readings:

News

• Frank Thurston Green, Certificate Confusion Puts Focus on Convictions’ Consequences, City Limits.org (Feb. 17 2015) (certificate of relief program).
• Rachel Black & Aleta Sprague, Give the Unemployed Second Chance, CNN (Feb. 4, 2015).
• K. Reiter, J. Selbin & E. Hersh, Op-Ed, Should a Shoplifting Conviction be an Indelible Scarlet Letter? Not in California, LA Times (Dec. 28 2014).
• Gary Fields & John R. Emshwiller, Fighting to Forget: Long After Arrests, Criminal Records Live On, Wall Street Journal (Dec 25, 2014).
• Monica Haymond, Should a Criminal Record Come with Collateral Consequences?, NPR (Dec. 6, 2014).
• Editorial Board, In Search of Second Chances, The New York Times (May 31, 2014).
• Sarah B. Berson, Beyond the Sentence – Understanding Collateral Consequences, National Institute of Justice – Office of Justice Programs (May 2013).
•  Owen Bowcott, New Law Means Job Applicants Cannot Be Forced to Reveal Spent Convictions, The Guardian UK (Mar. 10, 2015). 
  

Articles

• National HIRE Network Newsletter, Relief from the Collateral Consequences of Convictions (Nov. 2005 – May 2006).
• Lisa Hale Rose, Community College Students with Criminal Justice Histories and Human Services Education: Glass Ceiling, Brick Wall or a Pathway to Success, 39 Community C. J. Res. & Prac. 584 (2015) (suggesting that students with criminal records at community colleges intending to pursue human services education may face obstructed pathways).
• Heather R. Hlavka, Darren Wheelock & Jennifer E. Cossyleon, Narratives of Commitment: Looking for Work with a Criminal Record, The Soc. Q.  (Jan. 23, 2015) (unemployment being the most cited barrier to reentry).
• Amy P. Meek, Street Vendors, Taxicabs, and Exclusion Zones: The Impact of Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions at the Local Level, 75 Ohio St. L.J. 1 (2014) (available at HeinOnline).

Governmental Publication

• Erin L. Bauer et al., Evaluation of the New York City Justice Corps: Final Outcome Report, (July 2014) (evaluation report of the community based programs aimed to help juveniles to reenter).