Author: CCRC Staff

Editorial staff of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center

Managing collateral consequences in the sentencing process

A new paper by CCRC editor Margaret Love describes how the newly revised sentencing articles of the Model Penal Code manage collateral collateral consequences by integrating them into the sentencing process.  The article, published in the Wisconsin Law Review, compares the new MPC provisions with the collateral consequences provisions of the original 1962 Code.  Here is the abstract: The debased legal status that results from a criminal conviction makes possible a regime of restrictions and exclusions that feels like punishment to those who are subject to it and looks like punishment to the community.  Policy makers are beginning to understand that the goal of reintegrating criminal offenders into society is not well served by a legal system that makes them permanently ineligible for many of its benefits and opportunities and effectively marks them as social outcasts.  Because courts have failed to address issues of severity and proportionality raised by punitive mandatory collateral penalties, and because legislatures have been unwilling to dial them back in any meaningful fashion, reformers have turned to the sentencing system to restore collateral consequences to an appropriate regulatory role.     One such reform proposal is the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code: Sentencing (MPC), which integrates […]

Read more

Why shouldn’t everybody with a felony conviction be allowed to vote?

The editors of the New York Times are critical of Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s recent veto of a law that would have allowed anyone with a felony conviction to vote if they are living in the free community.  See “A Bad Voting Ban,” June 1, 2015.  Maryland’s law now disenfranchises anyone convicted of a “felony and . . . actually serving a court-ordered sentence of imprisonment, including any term of parole or probation, for the conviction.” The Times editorial points out that Maryland changed its law to restore voting rights automatically upon completion of sentence in 2007, and that disenfranchisement based upon conviction is generally a punitive relic of slavery. So if felony disenfranchisement laws are punitive relics, why should they be applied to anyone, even people who are still in prison?   The logic of the Times editors’ position would seem to support voting by prisoners, as happens in Vermont and Maine and in many parts of Europe.  An argument against voting by prisoners based on disenfranchisement as an integral part of court-imposed punishment would apply equally to probationers and parolees. The notion that prisoners no longer have a connection to their communities is a self-fulfilling prophecy that runs […]

Read more

Lawsuit challenges Pennsylvania bar to nursing home employment

An effective NPR piece tells the story of Tyrone Peake, a Pennsylvania man whose 1981 conviction for attempted theft barred him from employment as a caregiver in a nursing home, despite training and certification that qualified him for the job.  The state law making people with a felony record absolutely ineligible for employment in any health care facility in the state was was held unconstitutional by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court 15 years ago on equal protection grounds.  However, it remains on the books and enforced despite repeated rulings by lower courts invalidating it in particular cases.  Now another lawsuit has been filed, with Mr. Peake as one of the plaintiffs, that seeks to put an end to this broad and unfair collateral sanction once and for all.  The lawsuit is described in the following article from the website of Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, one of the law’s challengers.  

Read more

Obama clemency process reportedly “more backlogged than it was before”

USA Today reports that unexpected administrative complications continue to delay the clemency initiative launched by the Obama administration last year.  More than a year after the Justice Department sought assistance from private organizations in identifying federal prisoners deserving of sentence commutation, that ancillary process has submitted only 31 cases for favorable presidential action.  In light of the fact that more than 1500 volunteer lawyers have been working since last fall on cases assigned by Clemency Project 2014, this modest number is surprising. Lawyers involved in the effort say the year-old clemency initiative has been hampered by the complexity of the cases and questions about the eligibility criteria, which may still be too strict to help most of the prison population. The result is a system that appears even more backlogged than it was before the initiative began.

Read more

The real experts in criminal justice reform

The following piece by CCRC board member Glenn Martin first appeared on May 18 in the blog of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency For me, exiting a New York state prison in 2000 after serving six years was a rebirth. As a lifelong New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, my mission started to crystallize. I wanted to be a voice for the countless intelligent, earnest, and genuinely good people that I was leaving behind. Reflecting on the 2.3 million people in US prisons and jails and another 5.6 million under correctional supervision—mostly young black and brown men and women—I kept asking myself, “If prison is where we send bad people who do bad things, where do we send good people who do bad things?” I was first bound by handcuffs in 1995, and though I haven’t known their debilitating grip for years, the hypocrisy and destructiveness of our criminal justice system has remained with me ever since.

Read more