Conviction: Civil Disabilities

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.