Collateral Consequences Quotes

The U.S. is supposed to be a nation of second chances, but for the 70 million Americans with a criminal record, we're not doing such a great job. Even among those whose crimes were nonviolent and committed long ago, too many still bear a scarlet letter.

In court, judges tell people that their conviction carries a sentence of years, or probation. The truth is far more terrible. People convicted of crimes often become social outcasts for life, finding it difficult or impossible to rent an apartment, get a job, adopt children, access public benefits, serve on juries, or vote.

People return home from prison and face legal discrimination in virtually all areas of social and economic and political life. They are legally discriminated against employment, barred from public housing, and denied other public benefits.

All the old forms of discrimination, the forms of discrimination we supposedly left behind, are now perfectly legal once you've been labeled a felon.

Exacerbating the problem of mass incarceration is that, even after someone is released from prison, the stigma of a misdemeanor or felony conviction makes finding gainful employment difficult, if not impossible.

Discrimination in virtually every aspect of political, economic, and social life is now perfectly legal if you've been labeled a felon.

Once you've acquired a criminal record, you can be discriminated against legally in employment, housing, and access to education and public benefits. You're relegated to a permanent second-class status, forever a 'criminal.' Inflicting this amount of unnecessary pain and suffering is not cheap.

For the rest of their lives, [black men] can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. So many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind during the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again once you've been branded a felon.