Assessing Public Support for Collateral and Other Consequences of Criminal Convictions

Abstract

Amid the growing recognition of the limits of excessive criminal punishment, scholars have begun to assess public support for restrictive and punitive laws and other collateral consequences of a criminal conviction. Building on this work, we analyze data from an original survey of U.S. residents (N = 1,002) to assess support for 23 specific social, legal, and health consequences across 11 life domains, many of which hold important implications for desistance and life-course criminology. Descriptive analyses reveal that support for specific consequences and prohibitions varies greatly, yet it generally follows a similar pattern across conviction types. General linear regression models indicate that those who perceive society as more just, hold more punitive outlooks, and perceive a higher risk of crime victimization are more supportive of social and legal consequences. We discuss the findings’ implications for policy and practice within a society that may be in the beginning stages of a correctional turning point.

Keywords:

• Public opinion
• collateral consequences
• punitiveness
• reentry
• rehabilitation
• criminal justice
• policy

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Bruce Link for his feedback the survey design.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A criminal conviction itself, which is the focus of the present study, can result in various collateral consequences. It should be recognized that some collateral consequences may be substantially exacerbated by incarceration. For example, employment difficulties arising from a criminal conviction may be made worse by a large gap in employment stemming from a period of incarceration.

2 Related evidence of shifting values is a growing “progressive” prosecutor movement seeking to reduce mass incarceration and supervision and address race/ethnic disparities in criminal justice outcomes (Davis, 2019).

3 Each domain is important '‘in its own right, but holistic reentry perspectives also highlight the importance of studying individual health and wellbeing factors as a collective (see Fahmy & Mitchell, 2022)”.

4 Prior to the conclusion of data collection, Qualtrics conducted an internal review of data quality and removed and replaced a few surveys where there was evidence of straight lining (i.e. consistently choosing the same responses), contradictory responses, or failure to correctly answer the attention-check question toward the end of the survey. Any surveys that were completed too quickly (i.e. one half of the median response time or less on a pilot sample of 50 cases) were flagged and replaced with new data. Median response time for the full sample was 13 minutes.

5 Findings were substantively similar when multi-item scales were treated as observed variables (i.e. assumed to have no measurement error).

6 We repeated the analysis using bootstrapped standard errors with 5,000 replications and the results were substantively identical.

7 To improve readability of Figure 1, for domains that have more than one item, we have ordered the means from lowest to highest (from left to right) within these domains (based on the profile of support for collateral consequence for the violent offender).

8 As reported in Table 1, the average public support for collateral consequences across the 23-items was the greatest for those convicted of a violent offense (M = 3.64, SD = 0.90), whereas the average was lowest for those convicted of property offense (M = 3.13, SD = 0.96). Averages were quite similar for those convicted of a drug offense (M = 3.24, SD = 0.98) and a white-collar offense (M = 3.28; SD = 0.89).

9 There was no evidence to suggest multicollinearity was a concern; in a regression model with all variables treated as observed, VIF values were no larger than 1.94.

10 However, this is changing as criminologists have created a new division of the American Society of Criminology that focuses on public opinion and crime.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by a Rutgers Research Council Grant.

Notes on contributors

Nathan W. Link

Nathan W. Link is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, Camden. His research interests span incarceration and corrections, health, and policy.

Jeffrey T. Ward

Jeffrey T. Ward is an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University. His research interests include developmental and life-course criminology, measurement, and quantitative methods.