The Wall Street Journal has been running a well-researched series by Gary Fields and John Emschwiller on the consequences of mass conviction. The installment last week (“Decades-long arrest wave vexes employers”) describes the dilemma facing employers caught between legal limitations on who they can hire and legal obligations to be fair. Hiring the most capable workers seems a luxury most employers can’t afford.
Author: CCRC Staff
Editorial staff of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center
Q&A with CCRC Director Margaret Love
By Mai P. Tran, Program Associate
Individuals returning home from prison face collateral consequences, or legal and pol
icy restrictions, penalties, and disadvantages that impede their successful reentry and reintegration in their communities. Examples of such consequences include restrictions on employment and licensing, student financial assistance, welfare benefits, and public housing. The following Q & A feature with Margaret Love (pictured right), executive director and editor of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC), provides an overview of the newly launched resource established in 2014 to promote discussion of the collateral consequences of a criminal record, and how to restore legal rights and overcome social barriers.
Indiana’s new expungement law the product of “many, many compromises”
In May of 2013, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed into law what is possibly the most comprehensive and forward-looking restoration of rights statute ever enacted in this country. Under the new law, courts are empowered to “expunge” most criminal records, after waiting periods keyed to the seriousness of the offense. The effect of an expungement order varies to some extent according to the nature of the crime, but its core concept is to restore rights and eliminate discrimination based on criminal record in the workplace and elsewhere. This new law has already resulted in relief for hundreds of individuals, due in large part to the proactive approach of the state courts in facilitating pro se representation.
We r
ecently had a chance to talk to the person primarily responsible for shepherding this law through the Indiana legislature, and his experience should be instructive to reform advocates in other states. Jud McMillin, a conservative former prosecutor who chairs the House Committee on Courts and Criminal Code, might once have been regarded as a rather unusual champion of this unique and progressive legislation. But in an age of bipartisan support for criminal justice reform, apparently anything can happen. Read more
Second Amendment challenges to felon-in-possession laws
Below is another excerpt from the second edition of Love, Roberts & Klingele, Collateral 
Consequences of Criminal Conviction: Law, Policy & Practice (West/NACDL, 2d ed. 2015)(forthcoming), this one about challenges to firearms-related collateral consequences based on the constitutional right to bear arms. Criminal defense lawyers representing clients on felon-in-possession charges, and anyone seeking restoration of firearms rights after conviction, will be interested to know that the government has appealed the district court’s decision in Binderup v. Holder cited in note 8, discussed here a few weeks ago.
Binderup is a civil rights action in which the federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania held that the federal felon-in-possession statute could not constitutionally be applied to an individual convicted of a non-violent sex offense in 1998 and sentenced to probation. This case, the first in which a federal court invalidated a federal statute on Second Amendment grounds, is likely to provide an early opportunity for the court of appeals to consider an issue that most commentators and some courts believe was left unresolved by the Supreme Court in D.C. v. Heller.
Discipline for schoolgirls differs by race and skin tone
The New York Times this morning describes data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights showing that African-American girls tend to face more serious school discipline than white girls. “For all the attention placed on problems that black boys face in terms of school discipline and criminal justice, there is increasing focus on the way those issues affect black girls as well.” Black girls who get in trouble at school are also more frequently referred to the criminal justice system, where they can incur a criminal record that sticks with them into adulthood.
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
