Felony Convictions Research Articles

The association between time incarcerated and employment success: Comparing traditional vocational services with a hybrid supported employment program for veterans.

Objective : This study evaluates the effects of time incarcerated on employment outcomes between a manualized vocational program, the About Face Vocational Program (AFVP), and a hybrid program of the AFVP and Individualized Placement and Support, Supported Employment (AFVP + IPS-SE). Method : Eighty-four veterans with the histories of felony convictions and a mental illness or a substance use disorder were randomly assigned to the AFVP or AFVP + IPS-SE conditions and followed for 6 months. The associations between time to employment and months incarcerated were evaluated using nonparametric tests. Findings : The number of months incarcerated was positively associated with time to employment in the hybrid AFVP + IPS-SE condition but not the AFVP condition. In addition, significant differences were found between employment rates of the groups at lower number of months incarcerated, with higher rates of employment in the hybrid AFVP + IPS-SE condition, becoming similar as months incarcerated increased. Conclusion and Implications for Practice : Number of months incarcerated may have a deleterious effect on employment rates when using IPS-SE. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Traumatic Brain Injury in Community Corrections: Prevalence and Differences in Compliance and Long-Term Outcomes Among Men and Women on Probation

There are 4.5 million adults in community corrections (e.g., probation and parole), nearly twice the number of people incarcerated in jails and prisons combined. Research suggests that more than half of men in jail have experienced at least one traumatic brain injury (TBI). Very little is known about TBI history in probation. This study reviewed TBI history, cognitive and psychosocial data, and judicial records. Results showed that 47% of persons on probation report TBI. People on probation with TBI also had comorbid behavioral health conditions like mental illness, substance abuse, trauma history, and attempted suicide. They were more likely to be determined to be high risk by probation officers, had a higher rate of felony convictions, had lower rates of successful probation completion, and were significantly more likely to re-offend. Attention to responsivity factors like TBI may help probation provide accommodations that support successful engagement in probation and treatment.

Turnout and Amendment Four: Mobilizing Eligible Voters Close to Formerly Incarcerated Floridians

Recent scholarship shows that eligible voters in neighborhoods home to many arrested and incarcerated individuals vote at lower rates than those in less-affected neighborhoods. Little work, however, has investigated how this turnout gap might be counteracted. This paper uses Amendment Four, a 2018 Florida ballot initiative that promised to re-enfranchise most individuals whose voting rights had been revoked due to a felony conviction to investigate whether this turnout disparity can be narrowed by a ballot initiative of particular significance to communities most affected by incarceration. Using prison release records, I identify the neighborhoods and households where formerly incarcerated individuals live and assess the voting history of their neighbors and housemates. I find no evidence that Amendment Four increased these voters’ turnout in 2018 relative to other voters. While ending felony disenfranchisement is necessary, closing the turnout gap resulting from histories of policing and incarceration will require greater investment and engagement.

Tales of the Living Dead: Dealing with Doubt in Medieval English Law

This paper focuses on the narrow issue of proof of death to open up a broader discussion of several interrelated themes regarding early common-law development: the fashioning of specialized writs and legal processes to deal with doubtful deaths in criminal and civil cases alike, the cross-fertilization of ideas about proof in canon law and the common law, litigants’ strategies in responding to and taking advantage of problems of proof, and the common law’s reliance on a combination of strict proceduralism and equitable flexibility to reduce the likelihood of false felony convictions or illegitimate outcomes in cases involving the right to possession of land. From the few records I have found thus far in the plea rolls, I tentatively conclude that felony homicide cases were not likely to proceed to trial and conviction where doubt existed as to whether a homicide had actually occurred. Beyond the criminal context, however, doubt about a death underlying a claim to landed property did not preclude adjudication on the merits. Drawing such insights from frequently terse legal records, this paper also highlights the problems of proof faced by medieval historians in making sense of our source materials.

Armed and prohibited: characteristics of unlawful owners of legally purchased firearms

BackgroundA substantial proportion of individuals who lawfully purchase firearms later become unlawful owners ('prohibited firearm owners'), usually following events associated with an increased risk for future violence. This high-risk population...

A BETTER WAY

A BETTER WAY

Digitizing and Disclosing Personal Data: The Proliferation of State Criminal Records on the Internet

Digitization and the release of public records on the Internet have expanded the reach and uses of criminal record data in the United States. This study analyzes the types and volume of personally identifiable data released on the Internet via two hundred public governmental websites for law enforcement, criminal courts, corrections, and criminal record repositories in each state. We find that public disclosures often include information valuable to the personal data economy, including the full name, birthdate, home address, and physical characteristics of arrestees, detainees, and defendants. Using administrative data, we also estimate the volume of data disclosed online. Our findings highlight the mass dissemination of pre-conviction data: every year, over ten million arrests, 4.5 million mug shots, and 14.7 million criminal court proceedings are digitally released at no cost. Post-conviction, approximately 6.5 million current and former prisoners and 12.5 million people with a felony conviction have a record on the Internet. While justified through public records laws, such broad disclosures reveal an imbalance between the “transparency” of data releases that facilitate monitoring of state action and those that facilitate monitoring individual people. The results show how the criminal legal system increasingly distributes Internet privacy violations and community surveillance as part of contemporary punishment.

Opioid-preferring participants in drug court: examining participant characteristics and during-program factors associated with program completion

ABSTRACT Drug courts are a community-based rehabilitation program for individuals with substance use and criminal justice system involvement. Building on preliminary research with this Kentucky Specialty Court sample, the study objective was to understand factors associated with drug court completion among opioid-preferring participants. Secondary data, including the participant assessment, Management Information System, and conviction information from a state database, were examined for a sample of opioid-preferring drug court participants (N = 267). Two variables were associated with increased program completion: increasing age and living with partner and children. Four variables were significantly associated with reduced odds of completion: living with partner only, increasing number of pre-drug court felony convictions, receiving a failure-to-appear warrant, and incarceration sanctions/responses. Focused attention on opioid-preferring participants is necessary in order to increase program completion rates and address individualized risks/needs as well as to provide more effective services to such individuals.

SNAP Restrictions that Punish People Formerly and Currently Under Correctional Supervision.

Millions of Americans are formerly or currently under correctional supervision and their involvement with the correctional system imposes collateral consequences beyond sentencing times. We explore the creation of extended punishment through the intersection of correctional system involvement, food insecurity, and two Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) policies. Given the high prevalence of food insecurity, individuals with correctional supervision involvement are likely to need assistance from SNAP; however, they face more barriers accessing SNAP benefits than the general population. We highlight two policies in particular: the restrictions for individuals with drug felony convictions and the able-bodied adults without dependents work requirement. Due to challenges with securing gainful employment and the need for SNAP benefits, these two policies create disparities with participation in the program and increase risk for food insecurity and other poor health outcomes among this population.

Food Insecurity and Collateral Consequences of Punishment Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Bipartisan governmental representatives and the public support investment in health care, housing, education, and nutrition programs, plus resources for people leaving prison and jail (Halpin, 2018; Johnson & Beletsky, 2020; USCCR, 2019). The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 banned people with felony drug convictions from receiving food stamps or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. Food insecurity, recidivism, and poor mental and physical health outcomes are associated with such bans. Several states have overturned SNAP benefit bans, yet individuals with criminal convictions are still denied benefits due to eligibility criteria modifications. COVID‐19 has impaired lower‐income, food‐insecure communities, which disproportionately absorb people released from prison and jail. Reentry support is sorely lacking. Meanwhile, COVID‐19 introduces immediate novel health risks, economic insecurity, and jail and prison population reductions and early release. Thirty to 50 percent of people in prisons and jails, which are COVID‐19 hotspots, have been released early (Flagg & Neff, 2020; New York Times, 2020; Vera, 2020). The Families First Coronavirus Response Act increases flexibility in providing emergency SNAP supplements and easing program administration during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recommends eliminating SNAP benefit restrictions based on criminal convictions, which fail to prevent recidivism, promote public safety, or relate to underlying crimes. Policy improvements, administrative flexibility, and cross‐sector collaboration can facilitate SNAP benefit access, plus safer, healthier transitioning from jail or prison to the community.

Carceral Citizenship as Strength: Formerly Incarcerated Activists, Civic Engagement and Criminal Justice Transformation.

During the era of mass incarceration, a history of felony convictions and imprisonment imposes legal and extra-legal sanctions that strip individuals of rights—what Miller and Alexander (2016) call “carceral citizenship.” Despite the wide-reaching structural constraints that accompany the identity of being formerly incarcerated, many individuals enact their agency with civic engagement to reshape boundaries around individual and collective identity. Building from past convict criminology research (e.g., Ross and Richards 2003), we address the gap of including formerly incarcerated people into policymaking and community organizing around penal system reform. We offer expanded conceptualization of “carceral citizenship” and provide a framework for the transformation of practices that constitute carceral systems. As Goodman and colleagues (2017) demonstrate, the reformation of penal systems is not simply a result of the mechanical swing of a pendulum. Instead, the ongoing contestation between different stakeholders shapes criminal justice. Borrowing foundational theoretical concepts from multiple critical criminology perspectives, we frame the role of “carceral citizenship” within the transformation of the penal system reform.

The Odious Intellectual Company of Authority Restricting Second Amendment Rights to the 'Virtuous'

To the woes of the victims of American over-criminalization, we can add deprivation of the suitable tools for self-defense during national emergency and civil unrest. Federal law disarms “unlawful users” of controlled substances (including medical marijuana), and imposes a permanent firearms ban on substantially all those with prior felony convictions. A notable exception is made for white-collar criminals with felony violations of antitrust and certain business practice statutes. The constitutionality of these restrictions typically is founded on the view that one is tainted as “non-virtuous” for any serious criminal conviction, which includes any felony conviction. Using extensive sampling, this article shows that reliance on this theory is discredited outside the context of the Second Amendment. Modern reliance on the theory, outside the context of firearms rights, has been very infrequent and has been used to validate odious statutes, in cases no longer good law. The unsound judicial effort to derive the validation of these firearms bans from Founding-Era firearms restrictions builds on erroneous premises. The Founding-Era restrictions, detailed in this article, were tailored to the circumstances and do not provide a foundation for the broad, essentially permanent bans that federal law provides and that courts typically validate.

A Dyadic Analysis of Criminal Justice Involvement and Sexual HIV Risk Behaviors Among Drug-Involved Men in Community Corrections and Their Intimate Partners in New York City: Implications for Prevention, Treatment and Policies.

People in community corrections have rates of HIV and sexual risk behaviors that are much higher than the general population. Prior literature suggests that criminal justice involvement is associated with increased sexual risk behaviors, yet these studies focus on incarceration and use one-sided study designs that only collect data from one partner. To address gaps in the literature, this study used the Actor Partner-Interdependence Model with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), to perform a dyadic analysis estimating individual (actor-only) partner-only, and dyadic patterns (actor-partner) of criminal justice involvement and greater sexual risks in a sample of 227 men on probation and their intimate partners in New York City, United States. Standard errors were bootstrapped with 10,000 replications to reduce bias in the significance tests. Goodness of fit indices suggested adequate or better model fit for all the models. Significant actor-only relationships included associations between exposures to arrest, misdemeanor convictions, time spent in jail or prison, felony convictions, lifetime number of incarceration events, prior conviction for disorderly conduct and increased sexual risk behaviors. Partner only effects included significant associations between male partners conviction for a violent crime and their female partners' sexual risk behaviors. Men's encounters with police and number of prior misdemeanors were associated with their own and intimate partners' sexual risk behaviors. Women's prior arrest was associated with their own and intimate partners' sexual risk behaviors. The results from the present study suggest that men on probation and their intimate partners' criminal justice involvement are associated with increased engagement in sexual risk behaviors. It is necessary to conduct greater research into developing dyadic sexual risk reduction and HIV/STI prevention interventions for people who are involved in the criminal justice system.

State supervision, punishment and poverty: The case of drug bans on welfare receipt

This article explores the relationship between supervisory approaches to governance, punishment, and poverty among people with drug convictions. Tying government assistance to supervision could improve employment and economic outcomes. However, if experienced as punishment, recipients may forgo financial assistance and be more likely to experience poverty. Using information on policies that restrict access to welfare for people with drug felony convictions in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Programs (SNAP), this paper makes two contributions. First, it documents state variation in the balance between supervision and punishment in these bans. Second, using data from NLSY97, it estimates how individuals’ likelihood of being in poverty is related to state SNAP drug ban policies. States have shifted away from overtly punitive policies denying access to welfare toward policies that increase supervisory requirements, especially for SNAP. This shows that punitiveness extends beyond work activation programs like TANF. Additionally, poverty among people with drug convictions is almost half in no ban states compared to those in full ban states. While poverty is lower in states that include supervisory requirements than in those for which a drug conviction fully blocks access to welfare, this difference was not statistically significant.

Giving a Voice to Those with Felony Convictions: A Call to Action

Giving a Voice to Those with Felony Convictions: A Call to Action

They’re just different: the bifurcation of public attitudes toward felon-jurors convicted of violent offenses

Increasingly, criminal justice policies have become bifurcated, categorizing and separating those who commit violent offenses from those who commit non-violent offenses. Such bifurcation is evident in recent reform efforts targeting the civic marginalization of those with a felony conviction and is also characteristic of public opinion toward those convicted of a felony criminal offense. Along those lines, this study examines how felon-jurors’ conviction type shapes public sentiment. Utilizing originally collected survey data from 815 Californians, we examine support for felon-jurors generally and by crime type (violent and non-violent). Results reveal far less support for felon-jurors convicted of violent offenses than for felon-jurors generally and felon-jurors convicted of non-violent offenses. In addition, we find that crime-type concerns vary considerably across ideological groups, with conservatives (and to a lesser extent moderates) being significantly less likely than liberals to support jury service for those convicted of violent crimes. Findings align with prior literature suggesting that the public tends to harbor more punitive views toward those who commit violent offenses, and that these views are especially pronounced among conservatives. As the first survey investigating the intersecting dynamics of crime-type and felon-juror exclusion, this study expands our understanding of public attitudes toward those convicted of a felony criminal offense and their involvement in democratic processes.

Review: Convicted and Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry, by Keesha M. Middlemass

Review: Convicted and Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry, by Keesha M. Middlemass

Criminal Justice System-Impacted Faculty: Motivations, Barriers, and Successes on the Academic Job Market

US higher education institutions strive to build diverse faculties, yet institutions put up significant barriers to hiring scholars who have been impacted by the criminal justice system ( system-impacted). Because of the demographics of the system-impacted population, these faculty candidates are more likely to be people of color. In addition, system-impacted faculty offer unique benefits to institutions and deserve equal consideration among peers on the academic job market. We argue that making the hiring process fairer for system-impacted candidates is an important strategy for diversifying the college faculty. To understand the challenges they face, we conducted semi-structured interviews of seven faculty with prior felony convictions to explore their motivations for pursuing faculty careers and how they navigated the academic job market. By sharing their stories, this article raises awareness of a marginalized population of faculty and offers new insights into their motivations, barriers, and successes in getting hired. Importantly, we found that deciding when and how to disclose their criminal histories was the most complicated part of the process for our participants, in part because of ambiguous criminal background check policies. To ensure equal opportunity and to form a more diverse faculty, we propose that higher education institutions eliminate the use of criminal history information in college admissions and faculty hiring processes or implement fairer, more transparent background check policies based in best practices.

Diversion in the Criminal Justice System

AbstractThis article provides the first causal estimates on the popular, cost-saving practice of diversion in the criminal justice system, an intervention that provides offenders with a second chance to avoid a criminal record. We exploit two natural experiments in Harris County, Texas where first-time felony defendants faced abrupt changes in the probability of diversion. Using administrative data and regression discontinuity methods, we find robust evidence across both experiments that diversion cuts reoffending rates in half and grows quarterly employment rates by nearly 50% over 10 years. The change in trajectory persists even 20 years out and is concentrated among young black men. An investigation of mechanisms strongly suggests that stigma associated with a felony conviction plays a key role in generating these results. Other possible mechanisms including changes in incarceration, other universal adjustments in policy or practice, and differences in criminal processing are ruled out empirically.

Increasing Pretrial Releases and Reducing Felony Convictions for Defendants: Implications for Desistance from Crime

The bulk of the desistance literature has focused on social/contextual factors (marriage, employment, peers) and their criminogenic consequences. Less attention has been devoted to the role of criminal justice system involvement in the desistance process, and most of the existing research indicates that system involvement tends to inhibit or delay desistance from crime. One recent effort to combat that pattern was implemented with the Responsive Interventions for Change (RIC) Docket in Harris County, Texas, in 2016. The RIC Docket was intended to increase defendants’ access to a pretrial release bond and to reduce rates of felony convictions, thus lowering the risk of disrupting important prosocial ties and avoiding potentially stigmatizing labels. In the present study, we use case processing data on rates of pretrial release and felony convictions from one year prior to (N = 6,792) and three years following (N = 12,152) the implementation of the RIC Docket. Results show that those processed through the RIC Docket were 24% more likely to have access to pretrial release and 45% less likely to have their cases result in a conviction. We conclude by discussing the importance of policy changes intended to reduce barriers to the successful desistance process for individuals involved in the justice system.