Last week the Center for Community Alternatives in cooperation with the Education from the Inside Out Coalition released Boxed Out: Criminal History Screening and College Application Attrition. With this new study and report we build upon our 2010 study, The Use of Criminal History Records in College Admissions Reconsidered. The Reconsidered study showed that a growing number of colleges and universities are asking about criminal history information during the application process: two-thirds of the colleges and universities we surveyed reported that they do so. Yet, as we discussed in the Reconsidered study, there is no empirical evidence to indicate that criminal history screening makes college campuses any safer.
Author: CCRC Staff
Editorial staff of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center
Wisconsin attorneys volunteer to help students facing expulsion
Expulsion or suspension from school, not surprisingly, does not bode well for academic success. Students are much less likely to graduate when they miss significant time in school or have to change schools because they have been suspended or expelled.
Incidents at school can have other serious and lasting consequences. In Wisconsin, because 17-year-olds are considered adults when charged with criminal violations, high school students can face probation, jail, or prison, as well as all the adverse collateral consequences associated with a criminal record. One serious consequence unique to students is that alleged misconduct in school can also result in a suspension or expulsion from school.
Putting teeth in Heller’s promise for people with a conviction: Second Amendment litigation round-up
Author, Alan Gura, describes in this post recent efforts to persuade federal courts that people who have lost their firearms rights by virtue of a criminal conviction may be entitled to claim the protections of the Second Amendment. Alan himself has spearheaded this litigation for the Second Amendment Foundation, following up his Supreme Court victories in D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago. While successes have to date involved civil rights actions in behalf of people with dated non-violent convictions, these precedents may eventually find their way into felon-in-possession and related prosecutions. They also may portend, like the cases invalidating retroactive registration requirements, a greater willingness by courts to limit the scope of categorical collateral consequences that are considered unreasonable and unfair. Ed.
Georgia becomes first state in South to ban the box
Job seekers applying for work with the state of Georgia will no longer need to disclose prior criminal convictions on their initial applications.” The order provides that this new policy “will allow returning citizens an opportunity to explain their unique circumstances in person to a potential employer.” Read more
New York certificate scheme found inaccessible and ineffective
The certificate system for restoring rights after conviction in New York no longer serves its intended purposes, according to an investigation by City Limits. The problem is that Certificates of Relief from Disabilities (CRD) are supposed to be a means to rehabilitation for people sentenced to probation, but the judges authorized to issue them see them (in the words of one public defender) “as a gold star, as a thing you get after you’ve been rehabilitated.” The Parole Board appears similarly Read more
Restoration of Firearm Rights After Conviction: A National Survey and Recommendations for Reform (Dec. 2025)
Positive Credentials That Limit Risk: A Report on Certificates of Relief (June 2024)
Advancing Second Chances: Clean Slate and Other Record Reforms in 2023 (Jan. 2024)
Accessing SNAP and TANF Benefits after a Drug Conviction: A Survey of State Laws (Dec. 2023)
The Many Roads from Reentry to Reintegration (March 2022)
The Reintegration Report Card
