The United States is the global leader in incarceration. Today, more than 1.5 million Americans are incarcerated in state and federal prisons, a figure that has quintupled since 1980. Adding in jails, the number of Americans who are behind bars rises to 2.2 million. One in three U.S. adults has been arrested by age 23. Communities of color; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals; and people with histories of abuse or mental illness are disproportionately affected. As a result, between 70 million and 100 million—or as many as one in three Americans—have some type of criminal record. Having even a minor criminal record, such as a misdemeanor or even an arrest without conviction, can create an array of lifelong barriers that stand in the way of successful re-entry. This has broad implications for individuals’ and families’ economic security, as well as for our national economy. Mass incarceration and hyper-criminalization serve as major drivers of poverty; having a criminal record can present obstacles to employment, housing, public assistance, education, family reunification, building good credit, and more.
We cannot be a nation of “one strike and you’re out.” Understanding that a criminal record can be a lifelong barrier to economic security and mobility—with adverse effects on families, communities, and our entire economy—we must craft policies to ensure that Americans with criminal records have a fair shot at a decent life. We must remove barriers to employment, housing, public assistance, education, and building good credit. In a recent and welcome development, bipartisan momentum appears to be building in support of criminal justice reform, in part due to the skyrocketing costs of mass incarceration, as well as an increased focus on evidence-based approaches to public safety. Failure to address the obstacles associated with criminal records as part of a larger anti-poverty agenda risks missing a major piece of the puzzle in the effort to truly enable shared prosperity for all Americans. Moving forward, we must continue to break down these barriers to economic security and ensure that second chances are within reach for Americans with criminal records. For full source information, see Rebecca Vallas and Sharon Dietrich, “One Strike and You’re Out: How We Can Eliminate Barriers to Economic Security and Mobility for People with Criminal Records” (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2014).
Article taken from http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Americans-with-Criminal-Records-Poverty-and-Opportunity-Profile.pdf
