From Criminal Confinement to Social Confinement: Helping Ex-Offenders Obtain Public Housing with a Certificate or Rehabilitation
![handle is hein.journals/nejccc36 and id is 339 raw text is: From Criminal Confinement
to Social Confinement: Helping
Ex-Offenders Obtain Public Housing
with a Certificate of Rehabilitation
I. INTRODUCTION
A reality of the American criminal justice system is that an individual
convicted of a crime faces court-ordered punishment as well as invisible
punishments called collateral consequences. Re-entry literature defines
collateral consequences as burdens that follow [an ex-offender] from
conviction, in addition to any prison sentence, probation, or fine imposed
by a court.1 In addition, collateral consequences are described as
invisible punishments because they are imposed by operation of law
rather than by decision of the sentencing judge and are not considered part
of the ex-offender's sentence.2 Some of the most prevalent collateral
consequences for ex-offenders include barriers to obtaining employment,
public housing, and welfare benefits.3 Focus on these collateral
consequences has increased in the last two decades as the government has
formulated public policies4 and shifted its philosophy of punishment from
rehabilitation to retribution.5 As a consequence, ex-offenders suffer from
unreasonable invisible punishments that exceed the confines of a fixed
1. STANLEY CLEAN SLATE PROJECT, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF
LAW, ACCESSIBILITY OF HOUSING AND BARRIERS TO RE-ENTRY FOR EX-OFFENDERS IN
MASSACHUSETTS 27 (2004), available at http://cleanslateproject.org/NUReport4-2004.pdf.
2. Jeremy Travis, Invisible Punishment: An Instrument of Social Exclusion, in
INVISIBLE PUNISHMENT: THE COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES OF MASS IMPRISONMENT 15, 15-
16 (Marc Mauer & Meda Chesney-Lind eds., 2002).
3. The Sentencing Project, Collateral Consequences, http://www.sentencingproject.
org/template/page.cfm?id=l43 (last visited Jan. 3, 2010).
4. See MARC MAUER & MEDA CHESNEY-LIND, Introduction to MARC MAUER &
MEDA CHESNEY-LIND, INVISIBLE PUNISHMENT: THE COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES OF
MASS IMPRISONMENT 5-6 (Marc Mauer & Meda Chesney-Lind eds., 2002).
5. Angela F. Davis, Incarceration and the Imbalance of Power, in INVISIBLE
PUNISHMENT: THE COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES OF MASS IMPRISONMENT 61, 61 (Marc
Mauer & Meda Chesney-Lind eds., 2002).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/nejccc36&div=21&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most