Collateral Consequences Research Articles

,,,“Community Dignity Takings”: Dehumanization and Infantilization of Communities Resulting from the War on Drugs

The half-century long “War on Drugs” and its “tough on crime” policies have wreaked havoc upon both individuals convicted of offenses and their communities. The impact on communities in this figurative war can be as devastating as the aftermath of a literal war, but that impact often goes unconsidered and unmeasured. We should consider this collateral damage a form of taking – a community dignity taking – like many other collateral impacts of policy. Bernadette Atuahene, in her seminal work on the subject, defined a “dignity taking” and included within that definition situations where a community is damaged through the deprivation of the dignity of its members. To date, scholars have typically applied this analysis to situations where real and personal property have been taken from communities, but not to collateral consequences of policy such as social stigma. In previous work, I have applied the concept of a dignity taking to the collateral consequences of conviction on individuals. In this paper, I propose an extension of that analysis to the communities to which those individuals belong. Through this framework, it becomes possible for communities to express the damage done to them through these policies.

From Healthcare to Warfare and Reverse: How Should We Regulate Dual-Use Neurotechnology?

Recent advances in military-funded neurotechnology and novel opportunities for misusing neurodevices show that the problem of dual use is inherent to neuroscience. This paper discusses how the neuroscience community should respond to these dilemmas and delineates a neuroscience-specific biosecurity framework. This neurosecurity framework involves calibrated regulation, (neuro)ethical guidelines, and awareness-raising activities within the scientific community.

Abandoned but Not Forgotten: Improperly Plugged and Orphaned Wells May Pose Serious Concerns for Shale Development

This Article addresses the intersection of oil and gas law and environmental law on a topic that has profound significance for the nation’s oil industry and for the environment. In this regard, the Permian Basin is experiencing a renaissance that has fundamentally impacted oil production in the United States. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing now allow the industry to produce in the Permian Basin’s unconventional shale formations in ways that were unimaginable a decade ago. But, the hot shale plays within the Permian Basin exist above conventional fields that are littered with a century’s worth of abandoned wells. Fracturing new wells near improperly abandoned wells creates a risk of environmental pollution as the fracturing of the shale allows hydrocarbons to migrate within the formation, potentially to an improperly abandoned well. The American Petroleum Institute (API) recognizes the environmental pollution risks associated with hydraulically fracturing close to an abandoned well and has set forth a detailed report on the best practices that an operator could employ to mitigate this risk, but that proposal overly relies on operator discretion and judgment and lacks transparency to potentially affected parties. The Environmental Defense Fund has issued a model regulatory framework, but that report overly relies on operator actions and bright-line standards. A growing number of state agencies in oil producing states around the nation have issued regulations, but there is considerable divergence in the adopted standards. The academic work on this topic is sparse to non-existence. Thus, this Article fills an important void in the literature at an important moment. The goal of any regulatory regime should be to ensure sustainable energy development occurs in a manner that adequately addresses the environmental concerns posed by modern development activities. Because contamination and collateral consequences of pollution can have far-reaching impacts, the public has a vital public policy interest that the regulatory regimes that govern this development require the industry to utilize best practices. The Article proposes that the regulatory agency should use its expertise and operator supplied information to make a fact-based determination of the area of fracturing interest as part of the permitting process for any new well that will be hydraulically fractured. The regulatory agency then would utilize its existing data on well locations to determine what existing wells are sufficiently close to the new well that will be hydraulically fractured and then will set forth requirements for the operator to investigate that well. The regulatory agency can then set forth a remediation proposal for the operator to perform. The Article uses the State of Texas as a model for its suggestions. The framework set forth in this Article also affords operators with an opportunity to provide their solutions to any regulatory concerns, and also provides other affected parties an opportunity to participate in the well permit process. Thus, the proposed regulatory framework sets forth a transparent and objective regime that does not solely rely on the business judgment of operators. Moreover, by requiring this analysis to be done in a scientific manner and by providing an opportunity for notice to be given to affected parties, the proposal also provides an opportunity for potentially affected parties to take precautionary steps on their own wells. Currently, Texas does not have any explicit requirements with respect to investigation of close proximity abandoned wells in its well permitting process, and the failure to require an upfront investigation creates an unnecessary environmental risk that could be mitigated if addressed upfront.

On the Weak Mortality Returns of the Prison Boom: Comparing Infant Mortality and Homicide in the Incarceration Ledger.

The justifications for the dramatic expansion of the prison population in recent decades have focused on public safety. Prior research on the efficacy of incarceration offers support for such claims, suggesting that increased incarceration saves lives by reducing the prevalence of homicide. We challenge this view by arguing that the effects of mass incarceration include collateral infant mortality consequences that call into question the number of lives saved through increased imprisonment. Using an instrumental variable estimation on state-level data from 1978 to 2010, this article simultaneously considers the effects of imprisonment on homicide and infant mortality to examine two of the countervailing mortality consequences of mass incarceration. Results suggest that while incarceration saves lives by lowering homicide rates, these gains are largely offset by the increases in infant mortality. Adjusted figures that count the number of increased infant deaths attributable to incarceration suggest that the mortality benefits of imprisonment over the past three decades are 82% lower than previously thought.

Safeguarding child rights and enhancing caregiver responsibilities among Canadian parents of youth who sexually offend

Research on youth sexual offending has focused primarily on its prevalence. However, recent efforts have begun to consider the collateral consequences for the relatives of offending youth, although little has been done in this regard toward exploring caregiver accountability. This study presents qualitative data on parents’ sense of responsibility in situations where their child engaged in sexual offending behaviour against another child. We analyzed interview data among 16 parents from 10 families in Canada using thematic coding procedures. Findings illustrated the range of responsible actions that caregivers of sexual offending youth undertook with regard to preventing recidivism and accessing appropriate services for all the abuse-affected children. Caregivers reported on the enormous complexities they encountered as they attempted to simultaneously attend to the best interests of both the victim and offending youth. A particularly significant theme was that, despite the overwhelming challenges caregivers faced in dealing with the needs of their offending child, they were also highly attentive to the well-being of the victims. Our findings point to the importance of comprehensive and non-biased support services for both children and caregivers in order to fully uphold the rights of all affected individuals, and to better meet the needs as well as best interests of sexual abuse-affected children.

Deferring felony prosecution: a process evaluation of an innovative Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office program

Purpose The Cook County State Attorneys’ Deferred Prosecution Program (DPP) is a pre-trial diversionary program that accepts first-time, non-violent defendants charged with a felony crime. The purpose of this paper is to document the development, implementation, and program patterns of the DPP to better understand the program’s scope and reach in diverting defendants from traditional criminal prosecution. Design/methodology/approach The approach to evaluating Cook County’s DPP is primarily qualitative. Through interviews with program administrators and current and former participants, the authors document the process of creating and implementing such DPP that aims to avoid a felony conviction altogether. The authors provide program participant patterns to shed light on the program’s scope and reach in diverting defendants from traditional felony prosecution. Findings Using data from staff, administrators, and program participants, the authors found that the DPP was developed and implemented through supportive leadership who instilled a culture of collaboration and buy-in. Expanding the program could include increasing the capacity of DPP to include additional participants or having a DPP incorporated into each branch court, instead of the centralized system under which it currently operates. Increasing the capacity and scope of the program could both further decrease criminal court caseloads and most importantly avoid a higher number of stigmatizing felony convictions for first-time non-violent defendants. Practical implications DPPs are cost effective and can be easily implemented within existing systems. Collaboration and buy-in from all stakeholders are crucial to the program’s success. DPP offers opportunities for expansion. Increasing the capacity and scope of the program could both further decrease criminal court caseloads and most importantly avoid a higher number of stigmatizing felony convictions for first-time non-violent felony defendants. Originality/value The main goals of DPP were two-fold. The first was to minimize the level of resources allocated for non-violent offenders in the criminal justice system by diverting such defendants out of the criminal justice system early in the process and reducing the recidivism rates of program participants. The second aimed to provide an option for eligible defendants to avoid a felony conviction, thereby avoiding the collateral consequences associating with a felony conviction.

“Yes, I can still parent. Until I die, he will always be my son”: Parental responsibility in the wake of child incarceration

This paper examines what parental responsibility means when an adolescent child is sent to prison, where the traditional parenting relationship seemingly ends and parens patriae or penal control comes into full force. Paradoxically, we argue that even in these restricted spaces of contact, parenting continues, albeit in a form which runs into frequent tension with the care/control modalities of the prison itself. Our data further demonstrate the importance of addressing a constellation of social adversities experienced by caregivers, in conjunction with the collateral consequences of offending and incarceration. Data are drawn from interviews with primary caregivers with young men in prison (n = 61).

Examining Criminal Justice Practitioners’ Views on Collateral Consequences Policy

With the recent emphasis on reentry and the reintegration of offenders back into society, both academics and policy makers have voiced concern over both the process of applying collateral consequences in a particular case and the expanding number of collateral restrictions, some of which are quite severe. Many of these restrictions create significant barriers to reintegration for offenders released from incarceration. While reforms have been proposed, there is a lack of research examining the perceptions of criminal justice actors about collateral consequences of conviction. As parties most familiar with the application of consequences in cases, and the burdens they place on involved parties, the present study surveyed practitioners in a large Midwestern state. The findings suggest that judges, defense attorneys, probation and parole supervisors, and prosecutors are troubled by the role of collateral consequences in offender reentry and are not opposed to repealing or reforming some of these policies. Further, there are significant differences between practitioner groups as to reforms that should be implemented within the state’s criminal justice system.

Dispossession by Accumulation: The Impacts of Discretionary Arrests in New York City

Low-income people of color have been shown to experience disproportionate stops, ticketing, and arrests within an order maintenance policing (OMP) approach to urban law enforcement. A small but growing number of studies have begun to explore the complex lived experience of police encounters within this approach—an important task given the significant consequences of such policing for individuals and communities. This article examines qualitative and quantitative data on incidents of discretionary arrest for low-level offenses, with a focus on young people of color. In-depth, semistructured interviews and focus groups, as well as structured interviews outside criminal courts across New York City, were conducted, offering insight into the scope and depth of impact that OMP has on communities of color. The authors’ analysis underscores how OMP can shift relationships to public space in ways that foster fear and social isolation, examines the varied responses of young people to an unwanted criminal identity, and suggests the importance of recognizing the cumulative nature of OMP’s collateral consequences.

When a Sex Offender Comes to Visit: A National Assessment of Travel Restrictions

The present study examines the registration requirements for registered sex offenders traveling from their resident state to another state for business or pleasure. The author contacted each state’s primary Sex Offender Registration and Notification (SORN) office to obtain the required registration requirements for nonresident sex offenders, as well as where and how nonresident sex offenders can obtain this information prior to visiting that state. The findings indicate that registration requirements and residence restrictions vary significantly by state for nonresident registrants. While not surprising given that numerous studies have highlighted that sex offender policies produce unique and severe challenges for all sex offenders in the United States. This study, however, suggests that nonresident sex offender policies are potentially another collateral consequences for registrants. Most notably, there is significant variation in the number of days a registered sex offender has to register in any given ...

Multidrug-Resistant Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Isolates Are Resistant to Antibiotics That Influence Their Swimming and Swarming Motility.

Motile bacteria employ one or more methods for movement, including darting, gliding, sliding, swarming, swimming, and twitching. Multidrug-resistant (MDR) Salmonella carries acquired genes that provide resistance to specific antibiotics, and the goal of our study was to determine how antibiotics influence swimming and swarming in such resistant Salmonella isolates. Differences in motility were examined for six MDR Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium isolates grown on swimming and swarming media containing subinhibitory concentrations of chloramphenicol, kanamycin, streptomycin, or tetracycline. Chloramphenicol and tetracycline reduced both swimming and swarming, though the effect was more pronounced for swimming than for swarming at the same antibiotic and concentration. Swimming was limited by kanamycin and streptomycin, but these antibiotics had much less influence on decreasing swarming. Interestingly, kanamycin significantly increased swarming in one of the isolates. Removal of the aphA1 kanamycin resistance gene and complementation with either the aphA1 or aphA2 kanamycin resistance gene revealed that aphA1, along with an unidentified Salmonella genetic factor, was required for the kanamycin-enhanced swarming phenotype. Screening of 25 additional kanamycin-resistant isolates identified two that also had significantly increased swarming motility in the presence of kanamycin. This study demonstrated that many variables influence how antibiotics impact swimming and swarming motility in MDR S.Typhimurium, including antibiotic type, antibiotic concentration, antibiotic resistance gene, and isolate-specific factors. Identifying these isolate-specific factors and how they interact will be important to better understand how antibiotics influence MDR Salmonella motility. IMPORTANCESalmonella is one of the most common causes of bacterial foodborne infections in the United States, and the Centers for Disease Control consider multidrug-resistant (MDR) Salmonella a "Serious Threat Level pathogen." Because MDR Salmonella can lead to more severe disease in patients than that caused by antibiotic-sensitive strains, it is important to identify the role that antibiotics may play in enhancing Salmonella virulence. The current study examined several MDR Salmonella isolates and determined the effect that various antibiotics had on Salmonella motility, an important virulence-associated factor. While most antibiotics had a neutral or negative effect on motility, we found that kanamycin actually enhanced MDR Salmonella swarming in some isolates. Subsequent experiments showed this phenotype as being dependent on a combination of several different genetic factors. Understanding the influence that antibiotics have on MDR Salmonella motility is critical to the proper selection and prudent use of antibiotics for efficacious treatment while minimizing potential collateral consequences.

Criminalization and the Collateral Consequences of Conviction

Convicted offenders face a host of so-called “collateral” consequences: formal measures such as legal restrictions on voting, employment, housing, or public assistance, as well as informal consequences such as stigma, family tensions, and financial insecurity. These consequences extend well beyond an offender’s criminal sentence itself and are frequently more burdensome than the sentence. This essay considers two respects in which collateral consequences may be relevant to the question of what the state should, or may, criminalize. First, they may be relevant according to specific accounts of criminalization, including plausible versions of the harm principle and legal moralism. Second, they may be relevant to the legitimacy of state criminalization more generally. Thus for legal theorists concerned with the issue of legitimate criminalization, normative questions raised by collateral consequences are of central importance.

Invisible Punishment is Wrong – But Why? The Normative Basis of Criticism of Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction

AbstractThis article is concerned with the way in which criminal justice systems cause harms that go well beyond the ‘headline’ punishment announced at sentencing. This is the phenomenon of ‘collateral consequences of criminal conviction’. This phenomenon has been widely criticised in recent criminological literature. However, the critics do not normally explore or defend the normative basis of their claims – as they need to if their arguments are to strike home against sceptics. I argue that the normative basis of the critics’ position should be seen as involving important normative claims about the responsibilities that societies have towards those who break the law. Some important strands of criticism, I claim, rest on the view that we have associative duties towards offenders (and their dependants and communities) as fellow participants in a collective democratic enterprise, duties that are violated when states impose, or allow, harms that go significantly beyond the sentence.

Paternal Incarceration and Children’s Schooling Contexts: Intersecting Inequalities of Educational Opportunity

Research on the collateral consequences of mass imprisonment has focused on the interactions that families and communities have with the criminal justice system. Less attention is paid to interactions that children of the incarcerated have with another important social institution: schools. This article describes the types of schools that children with incarcerated fathers attend. Using newly available data on children’s early elementary environments from a longitudinal birth-cohort sample of urban families, the analyses show that children of the incarcerated are more often in disadvantaged schools and in schools with climates worse than the schools of same-age peers with no histories of paternal incarceration. I offer a first exploratory step toward understanding the interplay among three of America’s most powerful social institutions—families, schools, and the criminal justice system—and the ways that they interact to structure the educational trajectories of what scholars are calling “children of the prison boom.”

The community corrections perspective toward sex offender management policies and collateral consequences: does contact with sex offenders matter?

Since the 1990s, numerous policies have been enacted aimed at managing sex offenders in the community. Two of the most prominent management policies are registries for sex offenders and residence restrictions. Community corrections professionals are tasked with enforcing these policies and yet little is known about their perceptions toward sex offenders and the policies in place to manage them. Prior research has suggested that contact with sex offenders may place a significant role in shaping the attitudes of community corrections professionals toward sex offender management policies and collateral consequences. The current study investigates the effect of contact with sex offenders on the perceptions of community corrections professionals (n = 209) toward sex offender management policies and collateral consequences faced by sex offenders. Findings suggest that contact with sex offenders does not influence the attitudes of community corrections professionals, but several other significant factors were revealed including parental status, political orientation, race, tenure, sex, and age.

The fiscal and human costs of immigrant detention and deportation in the United States

AbstractAn extensive body of literature has analyzed the individual impacts and collateral consequences of mass incarceration. However, few studies explore the consequences of a parallel and overlapping system: mass immigration detention and deportation. The last 30 years witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of noncitizens detained in and deported from the United States. Individuals detained under immigration laws are held pending adjudication, often mandatorily, and without many basic constitutional protections. Immigrant detention and deportation impose severe burdens on immigrants and their households and levy significant costs to society—financially, as well as in terms of social capital and community well‐being. Chiefly due to the difficulty in accessing noncitizens in the process of detention and deportation, this system has largely escaped sociological inquiry. This article provides a background for understanding the growth and consequences of detention and deportation in the United States. It reviews the literature on these immigration law enforcement programs and suggests topical and methodological directions for future research.

A Life of Grief: an Exploration of Disenfranchised Grief in Sex Offender Significant Others

In criminal justice, researchers have identified disenfranchised grief, or the denial of empathy and social support during the grieving process, in family members who have lost relatives through imprisonment and execution. Although both of these situations involve the physical removal of the offender from the family members’ lives, non-physical losses may also prompt the grieving process. One of these non-physical losses is a psychosocial loss, in which the person the family members knew is now gone. Given the public stigma of the label “sex offender” and the collateral consequences that occur as a result of that label, it is possible that sex offender significant others experience a psychosocial loss. The current research is an exploratory study that used qualitative interviews with 29 spouses and significant others of convicted sex offenders to explore if and how disenfranchised grief impacts sex offender partners. Findings support both the existence of and the detrimental impact of disenfranchised grief on sex offender partners.

Sentencing in light of collateral consequences: Does age matter?

PurposeMost sentencing studies control for offender age, but we know little about how age influences alternative sentencing outcomes, especially those that can mitigate the collateral consequences of conviction. Theories predict varying effects of age based on the focal concerns issues of blameworthiness, community protection, and practical constraints, and prior findings on main and interactive age effects are mixed. MethodsThis study draws on Florida sentencing data (N=240,844) spanning 2000–2006 to examine how offender age influences the avoidance of a felony label by the withholding of adjudication, for defendants convicted of a felony and sentenced to probation. Logistic regression and heterogeneous choice models are used to examine the effects of age on the predicted log-odds of having adjudication withheld. ResultsThe results demonstrate a curvilinear age relationship with adjudication withheld, protecting youthful and, to a lesser extent, older offenders from felony labels. This non-linear relationship is robust to interactions with gender, race/ethnicity, and offense type, illustrating the importance of age and the need for additional research to examine its effects more fully. ConclusionsThe evidence suggests that age plays an important role in decisions to utilize alternative sanctions in the criminal justice system. The youngest and oldest offenders benefit the most, while adults face the harshest consequences and are less likely for consideration of alternative sentencing options. These results hold important policy implications in light of criminogenic trajectories for youthful offenders, systems burdened with aging prisoner populations and theoretical perspectives on age, sentencing and collateral consequences.

The Context for Legal Cynicism

Research and public discourse on urban policing and the collateral consequences of mass incarceration often center on the experiences of young males, particularly young Black and brown men who live in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods. Consequently, less is known about how young women are policed in these contexts; and whether their experiences and dispositions toward police vary across racial and ethnic groups. Drawing on 70 in-depth interviews with low-income Black, Latina, and White young women between the ages of 14 and 24, in the City of Philadelphia, the current research explores the differences and similarities in their experiences with and perceptions of police, and the social contexts that influence those interactions. A comparative analysis reveals important nuances in young women’s direct and indirect experiences with police by race and ethnicity. The findings indicate that, within disadvantaged neighborhoods, particularly among young Black and Latina women, direct and vicarious experiences with policing contribute to expressions of legal cynicism.

Paternal Incarceration and Adolescent Social Network Disadvantage.

Previous research has suggested that adolescent peers influence behavior and provide social support during a critical developmental period, but few studies have addressed the antecedents of adolescent social networks. Research on the collateral consequences of incarceration has explored the implications of parental incarceration for children's behavioral problems, academic achievement, health, and housing stability, but not their social networks. Using network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I find that adolescents with recently incarcerated fathers are in socially marginal positions in their schools and befriend more-marginal peers than other adolescents: their friends are less advantaged, less academically successful, and more delinquent than other adolescents' friends. Differences in network outcomes are robust to a variety of specifications and are consistent across race and gender subgroups. This study advances the social networks literature by exploring how familial characteristics can shape adolescent social networks and contributes to the collateral consequences of incarceration literature by using network analysis to consider how mass incarceration may promote intergenerational social marginalization.