Books and academic articles

A closer look at racial disparities in California’s automatic record clearing (9/19/2022) - Numerous studies have demonstrated how Black Americans are treated more harshly at every stage of the criminal legal system—from over-policing to overcharging to more punitive sentencing. New research from California shows how eligibility limitations on criminal record relief perpetuate racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and have a disproportionately adverse effect on Black Americans. The study, by Alyssa Mooney, [...]
Racial disparity in clean slate record clearing? California responds (8/25/2022) - Reproduced below is a press release describing new research by three California scholars published in the Law & Society Review, based on California sentencing data, showing how eligibility criteria for automatic record clearing “can inadvertently perpetuate racial inequity within the criminal justice system.” This conclusion seems to us unsurprising, and likely has broader national application for two interrelated reasons: Prosecution [...]
How Europe manages access to criminal records – a model for U.S. reformers (7/27/2022) - We are pleased to republish a book review by CCRC Executive Director Margaret Love of a collection of essays about how European countries manage access to criminal records. The philosophy and values underpinning the EU approach revealed in these essays are so different from our own that their product will make record reformers in the U.S. green with envy. For [...]
“Public opinion and the politics of collateral consequence policies” (1/6/2022) - The title of this post is the title of an intriguing new academic article by Travis Johnston and Kevin H. Wozniak of the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The two find “little evidence that any group of Americans would be mobilized to vote against a legislator who works to reform collateral consequence policies.” Here is the abstract: We analyze data from [...]
“The Future of the President’s Pardon Power” (9/13/2021) - The Collateral Consequences Resource Center is pleased to announce a series of online panels on successive Tuesdays in September, starting on September 14, that will explore in depth the use of the pardon power by President Donald Trump, and how it both reflects recent trends in pardoning and is likely to influence pardoning in the future. The first panel, on [...]
“After Trump: The Future of the President’s Pardon Power” (7/4/2021) - This is the title of the new issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter, which is now available online. As explained by the FSR editors in the issue’s introduction, FSR is continuing its tradition of exploring each president’s pardoning practices at the end of their term: This Issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter shines a light on the state of clemency today, with [...]
New collection of research on sex offense registration (7/1/2021) - Cambridge University Press has just published a new book, edited by Professors Wayne A. Logan and J.J. Prescott, containing chapters from the nation’s leading social science researchers on the many important empirical questions surrounding sex offense registration and community notification (SORN). Since SORN’s origin in the early 1990s, basic questions have existed regarding its effects, including whether it actually achieves [...]
“Tribal Pardons: A Comparative Study” (5/21/2021) - This is the title of a fascinating new working paper by Andrew Novak, Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, about a little-studied issue: collateral consequences of tribal convictions and how they are mitigated or avoided. This is an important topic not currently addressed in our national resources on restoration of rights and record relief. Here [...]
“Certifying Second Chances” (3/24/2021) - This is the title of a provocative new article by Cara Suvall, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, and Director of the Youth Opportunity Clinic. The article, forthcoming in the Cardozo Law Review, catalogues and analyzes the costs and burdens that deter people from accessing certificates intended to enhance employment opportunities. Professor Suvall focuses particular attention on [...]
Study measures gap between availability and delivery of “second chance” relief (3/19/2021) - Professor Colleen V. Chien of Santa Clara University has published a major empirical study in the Michigan Law Review that examines the gap between eligibility for and actual delivery of relief from contact with the criminal justice system, a construct she calls the “second chance gap.” (The term is defined with examples here.) Last week, Chien led a team of [...]
Study: Texas diversion provides dramatic benefits for people facing their first felony (2/23/2021) - Increased use of diversion is a key feature of America’s new age of criminal justice reform. Whether administered informally by prosecutors or under the auspices of courts, diversionary dispositions aim to resolve cases without a conviction—and in so doing, conserve scarce legal resources, provide supportive services, reduce recidivism, and provide defendants with a chance to avoid the lingering stigma of [...]
Online Criminal Records Impose ‘Digital Punishment’ on Millions (2/11/2021) - We are pleased to republish this excellent article by Andrea Cipriano, which describes a new study of online non-conviction records, with permission from The Crime Report. The study concludes that law enforcement records may remain freely available online indefinitely, notwithstanding state laws calling for automatic expungement of such records. (For more information on expungement of non-conviction records, see CCRC’s 50-state [...]
“Trump’s Theater of Pardoning” (12/6/2020) - The piece reprinted below is the first part of Bernadette Meyler’s contribution to a Symposium published by the Stanford Law Review on her book Theaters of Pardoning. It is as cogent a guide to understanding President Trump’s pardoning practices, and how they differ from those of his predecessors, as anything else we have seen. If, as Prof. Meyler argues, the message [...]
The Purgatory of Digital Punishment (8/17/2020) - It doesn’t matter whether they’re accurate—criminal records are all over the internet, where anyone can find them. And everyone does. By SARAH ESTHER LAGESON On a frozen December day in Minneapolis, William walked into a free legal aid seminar, to try to fix his criminal record. Lumbering toward a lawyer, his arms full of paperwork, William tried to explain his situation [...]
How to expand expungement: base it in retribution instead of rehabilitation (6/8/2020) - A thoughtful new article by Brian Murray recommends a new way of conceptualizing expungement that should make it easier for reformers to justify facilitating access to this record relief. In “Retributive Expungement,” forthcoming in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Murray argues that expungement should be seen as a way to end warranted punishment rather than to recognize and incentivize rehabilitation. [...]
Broken records: criminal history errors cost jobs and housing (12/20/2019) - Ariel Nelson of the National Consumer Law Center has authored an important new report, Broken Records Redux, which describes how errors by criminal background check companies harm consumers seeking jobs and housing. In particular, the report shows how background screeners continue to include sealed and expunged records in criminal background check reports, omit disposition information, misclassify offenses, mismatch the subjects of [...]
Model law proposes automatic expungement of non-conviction records (12/11/2019) - An advisory group drawn from across the criminal justice system has completed work on a model law that recommends automatic expungement of most arrests and charges that do not result in conviction. Margaret Love and David Schlussel of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center served as reporters for the model law. It is available in PDF and HTML formats. “Many people may [...]
Algorithms, Race, and Reentry: A Review of Sandra G. Mayson’s Bias In, Bias Out (11/5/2019) - In true Minority Report fashion, state actors are increasingly relying on algorithms to assess the risk a person will commit a future crime. Unlike Minority Report, these algorithms simply estimate the likelihood of rearrests; they do not offer the absolute answer to future criminal behavior that condemned the defendant, Tom Cruise, in the 2002 action film. Still, criminal justice actors [...]
CCRC scholarship round-up – August 2019 (8/7/2019) - Editor’s note: This past year has seen a burgeoning of scholarship dealing with collateral consequences broadly defined, from lawyers, social scientists, and philosophers. CCRC’s good friend Alessandro Corda has selected fifteen notable articles published in 2018-19, with information, links, and abstracts. They are organized into five categories: (1) Legal collateral consequences (2) Collateral consequences and criminal procedure (3) Sex offender registration [...]
Commercializing criminal records and the privatization of punishment (7/12/2019) - The deeply ingrained, indeed, constitutionally protected, U.S. tradition of the public trial and public records has led to a system where there are few restrictions on public access to criminal record information. Europe, by contrast, is more willing to limit the press in service of important goals such as reintegration of people with convictions. Alessandro Corda and Sarah E. Lageson [...]