NACDL - Race + Criminal Legal System: Collateral Consequences Part I

Race + Criminal Legal System: Collateral Consequences Part I

In celebration of Second Chance Month in April, NACDL hosts the first of two discussions on race and collateral consequences. Panelists discuss the long-term impacts of criminal convictions, the specific harm that collateral consequences have caused to communities of color, and what it will take to meaningfully change this system.

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As Michelle Alexander observed in The New Jim Crow, “It is legal today to discriminate against individuals with criminal records in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of education opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly legal."

Much like the Jim Crow Laws that relegated African Americans to a permanent and multi-generational underclass, collateral consequences stemming from criminal convictions have decimated entire communities. The vast array of consequences imposed on those with criminal records has hit communities of color the hardest, largely due to disproportionate policing and prosecutorial practices within the criminal legal system.

Second Chance Month

This webinar features Cynthia W. Roseberry, Deputy Director for the National Policy Advocacy Department for the ACLU (moderator); Rob DeLeon, Vice President of Programs for The Fortune Society; David Singleton, Executive Director for the Ohio Justice & Policy Center; and Quintin Williams, Program Officer for the Gun Violence Prevention and Justice Reform Program at The Joyce Foundation.