The U.S. Sentencing Commission recently released an eye-popping critique of federal mandatory minimum sentences. The report concluded the laws often were written too broadly and were applied inconsistently from district to district and even within the same district. In many cases, the penalties were excessively severe. One result is that America’s prisons and jails are bursting at the seams.
In another bit of recent news, federal prisons have started releasing hundreds of crack cocaine offenders because Congress sharply reduced the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine. It took more than 20 years and an accumulation of evidence of a racial skew to get over that hump.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an estimated 7.2 million people in 2009 were under some form of correctional supervision — in state and federal prisons and jails, on probation or on parole. More than a half-million inmates are released every year into communities.
The question that arises is this: What do 7.2 million people who have a record of criminal conviction come back to?
A bleak future, for most of them, and a growing headache for everybody else. To start with, studies of state and federal prison populations paint a broad profile. They are more likely than the general population to be poorly educated, unemployed and have few skills and prospects for employment. In addition, a significant percentage have alcohol and substance abuse problems and/or some diagnosable mental disorder or illness.
Add to those strikes the reality known in the justice system as the “collateral consequence” or “collateral sanction.” Call it the unpronounced penalty, the addendum activated after the inmate makes it back out. Talk about collateral damage in war, and you might count on sympathy for the victims. Talk about collateral sanctions, and chances are you will get a shrug and a they-had-it-coming response.
A few years ago, the College of Law at the University of Toledo undertook the Collateral Sanctions Project, compiling nearly 400 statutory and administrative law penalties that apply in Ohio after a convict is released. After they have done their time for felony and some misdemeanor convictions, former convicts walk out into a slew federal and state restrictions that ensure it is doubly difficult for them to put the past behind. The analysis laid to rest the notion that an ex-con can get a fair shake to make a way back to productive life once he or she has served his or her time.
Among its findings, the project reported that many of the collateral sanctions reduce civil and political rights. For example, sexual offenders typically face stringent reporting requirements; ex-felons are disqualified for elective office, public housing and federal student aid; a child who is bound over to adult court and convicted cannot be treated ever again as child in the justice system. The majority of the sanctions, though, are directed at employment rights (72 percent). Worse yet, only about a quarter of collateral penalties provide a process or time frame for restoring those rights.
In short, if work and self-support are the path to dignity in a society, we are making darn sure that it is as hard as possible for ex-cons to dig out of a hole. The law review project noted also that in many cases, there is little correlation between the crime for which a person was convicted and the collateral consequences. It is more than reasonable to bar a child molester from running a day-care center, for instance. But it is hard to see what the gain is when an embalmer is prevented from tending to the dead for at least five years after release. Are neighborhoods safer when an ex-inmate is denied a license to cut hair, conduct an auction, clean teeth or fight fires years after completing a sentence for past crime?
Congress conceded the damaging effects of excessive sentences and the overhang of covert penalties. It passed the Second Chance Act with bipartisan support in 2008. The purpose was to provide funds for state and local agencies and organizations for re-entry programs, including assistance with housing, substance abuse treatment, mentoring, employment training, family supports, to help ease former convicts back into society and reduce the cycle of arrests and imprisonments.
The legislation expired in September 2010. A reauthorization bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Patrick Leahy and Rob Portman, passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee this summer and has gone nowhere since. Funding for the act has dwindled from $100 million to $63 million for fiscal year 2012.
Meanwhile, state governments are straining under tight budgets and trying to thin out prison and jail populations. The trouble is, when they come back, the ex-offenders find many doors are bolted.
No one is asking anybody to hug an ex-con. A couple more statistics, these cited by the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments: In 2009, roughly 2 million children in the U.S. had parents who were incarcerated. The parents of more than 10 million children were under some form of criminal justice supervision at some point in their children’s lives. The truth is we pay, one way or the other, to keep 7.2 million people on the sidelines. We can’t shrug that off.
Ofobike is Beacon Journal chief editorial writer. She can be reached at 330-996-3513 or by email at lofobike@thebeaconjournal.com.
