For those who have already served their time, the burden of a criminal record can last a lifetime. It makes productive re-entry difficult and fuels pain, trauma and high recidivism rates. Formerly incarcerated people face around 45,000 collateral consequences, ranging from legal discrimination in voting, employment, professional licensing, housing, and child custody rights, to the inability to access welfare benefits, student aid and food stamps.
While laws differ from state to state, over 6 million Americans, 2.5% of the US voting age population, are not able to vote due to felony disenfranchisement. Nationally, 13.2% of the Black population is disenfranchised, compared to 1.8% of the non-Black population. In Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, more than 20% of the Black population cannot vote.
Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage in all of the practices we supposedly left behind …Michelle Alexander, Litigator and Legal Scholar
Formerly incarcerated people also struggle to find work: the unemployment rate is 27%, almost 7 times higher than the national average of around 4 percent in 2018. Difficulty finding employment, along with discrimination, have created a housing crisis among the formerly incarcerated, who are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public.
These collateral consequences are at the heart of a system of legal discrimination that litigator and legal scholar Michelle Alexander refers to as the “new Jim Crow” in the United States.
As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.Michelle Alexander, Litigator and Legal Scholar
There are on average 45,000 additional consequences for having a criminal record in the U.S.