6

A criminal record outweighs individual effort: stigma restricts employment, housing, and benefits regardless of what a person has achieved.

Participants who did everything the system asked of them, earning certifications and degrees during incarceration and after release, reported that a background check set all of it aside. Credentials “not mean a damn thing,” apartment applications are denied one after another, and benefits systems treat the record itself as disqualifying. This is the documented pattern of collateral consequences, in which involvement in the criminal legal system creates barriers in education, employment, and housing that persist long after a sentence has ended. Two things follow for this study. Because employment and housing are themselves conditions of supervision, exclusion on the basis of a record returns individuals to the violation risk described in Finding 5. And because employment, housing, and benefits are also what determine who is able to prepare for and recover from a disaster, a criminal record operates as a form of social vulnerability in its own right.