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Collateral consequences (CCs) of criminal convictions such as disenfranchisement, occupational restrictions, exclusions from public housing, and loss of welfare benefits represent one of the salient yet hidden features of the contemporary American penal state. This chapter explores, from a comparative and historical perspective, the rise of the many indirect “regulatory” sanctions flowing from a conviction and discusses some of the unique challenges they pose for legal and policy reform. US jurisprudence and policies are contrasted with the more stringent approach adopted by European legal systems and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in safeguarding the often blurred line between criminal punishments and formally civil sanctions. The aim of this chapter is twofold: (1) to contribute to a better understanding of the overreliance of the US criminal justice systems on CCs as a device of social exclusion and control, and (2) to put forward constructive and viable reform proposals aimed at reinventing the role and operation of collateral restrictions flowing from criminal convictions.

Introduction. This study examined the association between self-rated physical and oral health, cigarette smoking, and history of criminal justice contact (i.e., never arrested; arrested, but never incarcerated; or incarcerated in reform school, detention, jail, or prison) among African American men and women. Methods. We conducted descriptive statistical, linear regression, and multinomial regression analyses of the African American subsample (n = 3,570) from the National Survey of American Life (2001–2003). Results. Overall, African American women reported lower arrest rates and histories of incarceration than African American men. Additionally, we found that criminal justice contact was associated with lower self-rated physical health and oral health and higher levels of smoking for both men and women. African American women who had been arrested and detained in facilities other than jail had more chronic health problems than their male counterparts. Furthermore, having been arrested or spent time in a reform school, detention center, jail, or prison significantly increased the odds of African American men being a current smoker. Lastly, among African American women, those who had any level of criminal justice contact were likely to be current smokers and former smokers compared to those without a history of criminal justice contact. Conclusion. Addressing the health of African Americans with criminal justice contact is a critical step in reducing health disparities and improving the overall health and well-being of African American men and women. Furthermore, attention to differences by gender and specific types of criminal justice contact are important for a more precise understanding of these relationships.

This chapter presents four theories that hypothesize race/ethnicity disparities in sentence outcomes. Empirical studies assessing the relationship between defendant’s race/ethnicity and sentence severity are discussed.

I focus on federal sentencing in terms of support or non-support of the theoretical perspectives.

Sentence disparity linked to defendant’s race/ethnicity are observed as net main effects, as a component in joint-conditioning effects with other extralegal defendant characteristics, and as a variable that conditions the effect of process-related mechanism of discretion, and legally relevant case characteristics, and as indirect effects.

Theories share substantial conceptual overlap in specifying the relationship between defendant’s race/ethnicity and predictions of the effect of defendant’s race/ethnicity on sentence severity.

This study set out to advance knowledge on the reporting of police shootings in print media. Media is the main source of information on criminal justice issues for most citizens. Thus, understanding the presentation of police-involved shooting incidents is important for determining the manner in which media might shape the opinions of readers.

The current study content analyzed relevant newspaper articles gathered from a large database of journalistic documents compiled by Lexis Nexis. Articles pertaining to police shootings published between January 1, 2014 and April 30, 2015, were identified and coded to document various dimensions of how these encounters are portrayed in print media.

Results indicate that explicit racialization of the stories was limited, which is contrary to what was expected. Neither the race of the suspect or officer was mentioned in most stories, making it difficult to assess explicit reporting bias of these incidents. However, results indicate that implicit bias might play a role in shaping the content portrayed in print news accounts of police-involved shootings.

The current study represents one of the first – if not the first – content analysis of news stories centered on police-involved shootings. Given the significant role media plays in delivering information about crime and justice topics to the citizenry, a working knowledge about the media’s portrayal of these events is important for understanding how media consumption may shape citizens’ opinions about police-involved shootings.