Conviction: Civil Disabilities - Historical Background, The Predicates For Imposing Civil Disabilities, Specific Rights Lost, Private Rights, Punishment And Procedure
probation parole imprisoned felon
When a person leaves prison, or is released from probation or parole, the most long-lasting aspect of his criminal conviction may only be beginning. Every state, to a greater or lesser degree, prohibits an ex-felon from exercising some of the most basic rights of free citizens, ranging from the right to vote to the right to employment by the state. Although some states impose civil disabilities only if the convicted felon has been imprisoned, where this limitation does not exist, "collateral" consequences for the 50 percent of felons who are not imprisoned are anything but collateral; they may well be the most persistent consequences inflicted for crime.
CASES
Hawker v. New York, 170 U.S. 189 (1898).
In re Hatch, 10 Cal. 2d 147, 73 P.2d 885 (1937).
Otsuka v. Hite, 64 Cal. 2d 596, 414 P.2d 412 (1966).
Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24 (1974).
Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163 (1964).
Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958).
Additional Topics
The view that criminals forfeit their rights as citizens is not new. Both the Greeks and Romans imposed on a convicted person the punishment of "infamy," which forbade him to exercise the rights of a free citizen. Early English law followed the same principle: a person convicted of a felony was declared "attainted," losing all his civil rights and forfeiting his propert…
Considerable variation exists among the states as to which civil disabilities are imposed and when they apply. By far the most common basis for imposing civil disabilities is a conviction for a felony. Although the term felony is not always consistently defined, it typically means a crime for which a year or more of imprisonment may be imposed. Thus, the same civil disability is often visited both…
Public rights. Apparently on the premise that violation of the criminal law indicates a general lack of respect for law and for the obligations of citizenship, most states, as well as the federal government, have barred former offenders from participating in a number of public activities normally open to citizens—some of which indeed are considered obligations of citizenship. The right to c…
Family and personal rights. Conviction of a crime may jeopardize the offender's relationship to her family in several ways. Incarceration, of course, severely hampers this relationship. But beyond this, in many states conviction alone, or conviction and imprisonment, may provide the impetus to legal dissolution of family ties. A convict subject to civil death may be forbidden to marry; many…
A significant legal question that permeates all of these disabilities is whether they are punishment,
or civil sanctions. If they are considered punishment, then a number of protections, both procedural and substantive, would surround their imposition. For example, under the Eighth Amendment no punishment may be cruel and unusual; there is no explicit parallel provision for civil sanctions. Sim…
Once a person has lost civil rights as a result of a conviction, he may never be able to regain them. Disfranchisement in many states is lifelong; there is no mechanism for restoring the right to vote. A prospective employer, public or private, may use a decades-old conviction for a minor offense as grounds for denying employment to an applicant. The stigma of conviction lasts long after a sentenc…
Imposition of collateral civil disabilities on those convicted of crime raises perplexing problems
of both policy and law. The major problem encountered in analyzing civil disabilities is the existence of competing views concerning their purpose. If the primary purpose of the criminal justice system is to rehabilitate the offender, no civil disabilities should be imposed on him, at least after …
American Bar Association. "Legal Status of Prisoner Standards." Standards for Criminal Justice. Washington, D.C.: ABA, 1981. National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. Uniform Law Commissioners' Model Sentencing and Correction Act. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. National Institute of Law Enforcement and…
Citing this material
Please include a link to this page if you have found this material useful for research or writing a related article. Content on this website is from high-quality, licensed material originally published in print form. You can always be sure you're reading unbiased, factual, and accurate information.
Highlight the text below, right-click, and select “copy”. Paste the link into your website, email, or any other HTML document.
User Comments