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More than sixty years ago in Griffin v. Illinois, Justice Hugo Black opined that equal justice cannot exist as long as “the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.” While Griffin dealt with the limited issue of the inability of a defendant to pay for an appellate transcript, the Supreme Court and legislatures would subsequently extend Black’s equal justice analysis to cases involving other forms of criminal justice debt assessed at trial, appeal, incarceration, and probation. Despite the promise of these judicial and legislative pronouncements, indigent defendants, relative to defendants with financial resources, are still more likely to face difficulty obtaining adequate representation, more likely to be jailed before trial, more likely to plead guilty to avoid continued incarceration, more likely to face difficulty with fees assessed during incarceration, more likely to face continued monetary charges while on probation or parole, and more likely to face incarceration based on inability to pay criminal justice debt. The current two-tiered justice system reflects the concerns expressed by Bryan Stevenson “that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.” This Article describes how the promise of equal justice, as developed in Griffin and extended by the Supreme Court, has gone largely unfulfilled in modern society. It also presents an overview of some reforms and recommendations to help the system restore Justice Hugo Black’s concept of equal justice and address Bryan Stevenson’s concerns over the injustice of poverty.

Collateral consequences faced by sexual offenders have been widely-referenced in the literature. There has yet to be a systematic examination of collateral consequences affecting sexual offenders, however, due measurement inconsistencies and the absence of a psychometrically validated instrument. The current study developed and validated a measure of collateral consequences faced by sexual offenders and linked collateral consequences to important psychosocial outcomes related to recidivism. Specifically, this study investigated 1) the underlying factor structure of collateral consequences commonly endorsed by sexual offenders through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) procedures; 2) the correlational relationships between the developed measure and important psychosocial variables including shame, hopelessness, social integration, perceived stigma, and perceived social support; and 3) whether or not the experience of collateral consequences significantly related to sexual and/or general reoffense. Participants included 218 male registered sexual offenders in the state of Texas. Included in scale development were 66 items representing commonly-referenced collateral consequences, gleaned from prior literature, qualitative interviews with sexual offenders, and consultation with experts. EFA results revealed a two-factor solution measuring both social (i.e., discrimination and harassment experiences) and psychological (i.e., negative affect and avoidance) consequences associated with a sexual offense conviction. Results indicated that both social and psychological collateral consequences were significantly correlated with indicators of social integration, perceived stigma, shame, and hopelessness. Only psychological consequences were significantly associated with perceived support from family, friends, and significant others. Notably, only experiences with social collateral consequences were significantly related to general (nonsexual) reoffending as well as reoffending through probation and parole violations and failure to register offenses. Results highlight the shared yet disparate influence of collateral consequences on psychosocial and behavioral functioning among sexual offenders. Limitations, future research directions, and practical implications of the current findings are discussed.

More than 77 million Americans are subject to collateral consequences that limit, if not strip, a staggering range of political, civil, and social rights. There are 44,788 collateral consequences codified into law in the United States today. Twenty-nine percent of these laws are indefinite collateral sanctions that are automatically enforced without any durational limit. A federal judge recently found that today’s collateral consequences “amount to a form of civil death and send the unequivocal message that ‘they’ [ex- offenders] are no longer part of ‘us.’” These laws disproportionately devastate minority communities, perpetuating inequality by relegating millions of Americans to second class status. Collateral consequences have become one of the most widespread exertions of government power the judicial branch has turned a blind eye to. None of the constitutional limits that are supposed to protect citizens from government deprivations of liberty apply to collateral consequences because they are not considered punishment under the law. Described by Justice Marshall as a “toothless standard [that] applies irrespective of the excessiveness of the restraint or the nature of the right infringed,” the current test for what constitutes a punishment has left collateral consequences entirely unchecked. So long as the restraint has any plausibly rational basis, federal, state, municipal, and agency law makers are free to punish people as much as they please. While constitutional solutions to this problem have become near impossible, there are statutory solutions that would alleviate this harm. The Supreme Court should resolve the current debate between federal courts of appeals by affirming that collateral consequences must be one of the factors considered by a federal judge when determining a “just sentence” under Section 3553(a) of the U.S. Sentencing Code. If federal courts acknowledge the reality of collateral consequences and factor them into a “just sentence,” states will be more likely to do the same. And maybe for the first time in 50 years, there will be a judicial constraint on collateral consequences.

Poor neighborhoods in cities across the United States are characterized by both high rates of incarceration and a dearth of affordable housing, yet not much is known about how a criminal record shapes whether and where people find housing. This dissertation explores the relationship between criminal justice contact and access to housing in three ways. First, I examine how recent reform efforts regarding the use of criminal records in federal housing assistance applications have been implemented. I find that the bulk of local housing authorities have technically complied with federal reform efforts while maintaining the maximum amount of discretion in evaluating applicants. Next, I turn to the private rental market, exploring how criminal records are used by housing providers, whether that association varies by the race or gender of the record-holder, and whether the association varies across different types of neighborhoods. Using a correspondence study to test real-world discriminatory behaviors, I find a strong negative effect of a criminal record on housing opportunity. This effect does not vary according to the race or gender of the applicant but is significantly stronger in gentrifying neighborhoods. In the final empirical chapter, I examine whether criminal justice contact, broadly construed, affects neighborhood attainment for a cohort of young adults coming of age in the era of mass incarceration. I find that the transition from no criminal justice contact to having a record of conviction (without incarceration) is associated with a move to more disadvantaged neighborhoods for all respondents. I also find an association between having a family member incarcerated and moving to a worse neighborhood for white respondents only. These findings contribute to our understanding of how the stigma of a criminal record shapes housing opportunity, necessitating a view of stigma that varies across different contexts and points in the life course. Disentangling the web of disadvantage that follows criminal justice contact is crucial as the effects of the era of mass incarceration continue to accumulate, and housing needs to be central to any conversation about how the criminal justice system both creates and reproduces disadvantage.

This review of The New Criminal Justice Thinking (Sharon Dolovich & Alexandra Natapoff, eds.) tracks the shifting and uncertain contours of “criminal justice” as an object of study and critique. Specifically, I trace two themes in the book: (1) the uncertain boundaries of the “criminal justice system” as a web of laws, actors, and institutions; and (2) the uncertain boundaries of “criminal justice thinking” as a universe of interdisciplinary scholarship, policy discourse, and public engagement. I argue that these two themes speak to critically important questions about the nature of criminal justice scholarship and reform efforts. Without a firm understanding of what constitutes the “criminal justice system,” it is difficult to agree on the proper targets of critique or to determine what legal, social, and political problems are properly the province of “criminal justice thinking.” And, deciding which voices to accept and privilege in these discussions in turn shapes the face of the reform movement and the types of proposals and critiques that are treated as legitimate.

This Article diagnoses a phenomenon, “criminal employment law,” which exists at the nexus of employment law and the criminal justice system. Courts and legislatures discourage employers from hiring workers with criminal records and encourage employers to discipline workers for non-work-related criminal misconduct. In analyzing this phenomenon, my goals are threefold: (1) to examine how criminal employment law works; (2) to hypothesize why criminal employment law has proliferated; and (3) to assess what is wrong with criminal employment law. This Article examines the ways in which the laws that govern the workplace create incentives for employers not to hire individuals with criminal records and to discharge employees based on non-workplace criminal misconduct. In this way, private employers effectively operate as a branch of the criminal legal system. But private employers act without constitutional or significant structural checks. Therefore, I argue that the criminal system has altered the nature of employment, while employment law doctrines have altered the nature of criminal punishment. Employment law scholars should be concerned about the role of criminal records in restricting entry into the formal labor market. And criminal law scholars should be concerned about how employment restrictions extend criminal punishment, shifting punitive authority and decision-making power to unaccountable private employers.

This Article considers firearms prohibitions for domestic violence offenders, in light of recent Supreme Court decisions and the larger, national debate about gun control. Unlike other scholarship in the area, it confronts the costs of ratcheting up the scope and enforcement of such firearms bans and argues that the politicization of safety has come at the expense of a sound approach to gun control in the context of intimate-partner abuse. In doing so, it expands scholarly arguments against mandatory, one-size-fits-all criminal justice responses to domestic violence in a direction that other critics have been reluctant to go, perhaps because of a reflexive, cultural distaste for firearms. Both sides in the gun-control debate rely on starkly contrasting, gendered images: the helpless female victim in need of state protection, including strictly enforced gun laws, and the self-defending woman of the National Rifle Association's "Refuse to be a Victim" campaign. Neither of these images accurately describes the position of many domestic violence victims whose partners have guns, and neither image responds effectively to the heterogeneity of conduct leading to a protection order or a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction that triggers federal and state firearms bans. The emphasis the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun organizations place on a woman's right to carry a firearm in self-defense ignores the most common homicide risks women face, as well as structural inequalities that contribute to gender violence. Yet, significant problems afflict an uncritically anti-gun approach, too. First, gun-control advocates tend to ignore the reality of intimate-partner abuse--a reality in which some women fight back; some family livelihoods depend on jobs for which firearms are required; not all misdemeanants become murderers; and victims have valid reasons for wanting to keep their partners out of prison. Second, to the extent that proponents of strict gun regulation also exhibit distaste for racialized crime-control policies, they fail to acknowledge that zealously enforced gun laws aimed at preventing domestic violence would put more people--including more men and women from vulnerable communities of color--behind bars. The current framing of the argument for tougher firearms laws for abusers is derived from public health research on domestic violence that makes a reduction in intimate homicide rates its chief goal. Yet, since hundreds of thousands of domestic violence misdemeanants are thought to possess illegal guns, reformers should also consider the potential costs to victims and their families of a move to sweeping and rigorous enforcement. Changes in gun laws and their implementation in the context of intimate-partner abuse ought to cure over- and under-breadth problems; provide greater autonomy to abuse victims and protections for those who resist their batterers; reconsider the lack of an exemption to the misdemeanor ban for firearms required on-duty; and include a better mechanism for restoring gun rights to misdemeanants who have shown the capacity to avoid reoffending.

The existence of a criminal record is known to have a deleterious effect on ex-offenders’ efforts to obtain employment, disproportionately affecting African Americans. Social movements that advocate for the removal of criminal history inquiries from employment applications, such as the Ban the Box campaign, are increasingly gaining mainstream support and have been voluntarily adopted by 23 states and a multitude of cities and counties. However, research has yet to examine whether and how place-level characteristics influence the decision to support such policies. Using data from the 2000 and 2010 U.S. Census as well as the 2010 American Community Survey, I conduct a multivariate event history analysis of place level data to evaluate hypotheses drawn from several theories including Blalock's racial threat theory, analyzing how various factors impact support for Ban the Box initiatives. Findings from this study largely support racial threat theory. Policy implications are discussed.

Criminologists have considered the collateral consequences of incarceration, but research has generally focused on adults and has not looked in depth at the mental health implications of coming into contact with the criminal justice system earlier in life. Prior research on juveniles in the criminal justice system also has not considered the long lasting effects of arrest or incarceration. Drawing from a life course perspective, I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine how arrest and incarceration as a juvenile influences early adulthood depressive symptoms in a nationally representative sample (N=11,437). The current study also seeks to explore the mediating mechanisms of this relationship outlined by Pearlin et al.’s (1981) stress process theory. I expect that juveniles who experience the criminal justice system will report higher levels of depressive symptoms in adulthood net of background characteristics. I also expect that personal resources, coping mechanisms, and social support variables will mediate this relationship. The current study finds support for a positive relationship between juvenile criminal justice contact and depressive symptoms in early adulthood. Respondents who were incarcerated as juveniles experienced higher levels of depressive symptoms even after controlling for background risk factors and other sociodemographic characteristics. Mediating mechanisms proposed in the stress process literature only partially account for the relationship between juvenile arrest and depressive symptoms in adulthood.

To date, research concerning children affected by parental incarceration has focused primarily on children that are eighteen years of age and younger. The effects of parental incarceration on adults that are eighteen years of age and older has remained unexamined. The purpose of this exploratory study is to explore the outcomes of young adult college students that have been affected by parental incarceration. A sample of 345 undergraduate college students was surveyed at a sizeable University in the southeastern region of the United States to create a demographic and behavioral profile of college students affected by parental incarceration. It was hypothesized that college students affected by parental incarceration will have lower institutional grade point averages (GPA), higher accounts of criminal involvement, higher likelihoods of substance abuse, and lower levels of self-control than college students that have not been affected by parental incarceration. Results indicated that, the outcomes of college students affected by parental incarceration were comparable to college students not affected by parental incarceration.