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36 New Eng. J. on Crim. & Civ. Confinement 335 (2010)
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).