Brennan Center for Justice, Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings, 2020
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research report BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings How Involvement with the Criminal Justice System Deepens Inequality By Terry-Ann Craigie, Ames Grawert, and Cameron Kimble With a foreword by Joseph E. Stiglitz PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 15, 2020 Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law Black people with no criminal record earn less than socioeconomically similar white people with a record. LOST EARNINGS BY THE NUMBERS Annual Lost Earnings $ 55.2 billion FORMERLY IMPRISONED AMERICANS Black people without a record - $39,000 White people with a record $49,000 CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM INVOLVEMENT $ 372.3 billion AMERICANS IMPACTED BY CONVICTION OR IMPRISONMENT 51.7% Imprisonment Average earnings loss varies by level of criminal justice involvement. 21.7% Felony conviction without imprisonment 45 MILLION+ have been convicted of a misdemeanor 7 MILLION+ have been imprisoned 12 MILLION+ have been convicted of a felony without imprisonment 16.0% Misdemeanor conviction People who were imprisoned early in their lives earn about half as much annually as socioeconomically similar people untouched by the criminal justice system. RACIAL DISPARITIES PERSIST AFTER RELEASE FROM PRISON U.S. POPULATION And thus struggle to achieve financial stability LOST INDIVIDUAL WAGES People experiencing poverty are more likely to be imprisoned FORMERLY IMPRISONED WHITE 61% 34% 12% 35% 18% 30% BLACK ONE IN FIVE AMERICANS WHO HAVE A CRIMINAL RECORD OF SOME KIND People who have been to prison are frequently overlooked by employers LATINO LOSS FOR COMMUNITY OTHER 9% Source: Brennan Center analysis. 1% Table of Contents Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 ABOUT THE BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 I. The Scope of America’s Criminal Justice System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 A. Formerly Imprisoned People. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 B. People with a Felony Conviction Not Sentenced to Imprisonment . . . . . . . 11 C. People with a Misdemeanor Conviction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 II. The Effect of Conviction and Imprisonment on Annual Earnings. . . . . . 14 A. Formerly Imprisoned People. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 B. People with a Felony Conviction Not Sentenced to Imprisonment . . . . . . 14 C. People with a Misdemeanor Conviction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 D. Aggregate Annual Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 III. The Effect of Conviction and Imprisonment on Lifetime Earnings. . . . . 17 The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that works to reform, revitalize — and when necessary defend — our country’s systems of democracy and justice. The Brennan Center is dedicated to protecting the rule of law and the values of constitutional democracy. We focus on voting rights, campaign finance reform, ending mass incarceration, and preserving our liberties while also maintaining our national security. Part think tank, part advocacy group, part cuttingedge communications hub, we start with rigorous research. We craft innovative policies. And we fight for them — in Congress and the states, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion. A. Consequences for Poverty and Income Inequality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 B. Consequences for Racial Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 ABOUT THE BRENNAN CENTER’S JUSTICE PROGRAM IV. Policy Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Appendix A: Literature Review. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Appendix B: Methodology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Endnotes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 The Brennan Center’s Justice Program seeks to secure our nation’s promise of equal justice for all by creating a rational, effective, and fair justice system. Its priority focus is to reduce mass incarceration while keeping down crime. The program melds law, policy, and economics to produce new empirical analyses and innovative policy solutions to advance this critical goal. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 S TAY C O N N E C T E D T O THE BRENNAN CENTER Visit our website at www.brennancenter.org © 2020. This paper is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license. It may be reproduced in its entirety as long as the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is credited, a link to the Center’s web pages is provided, and no charge is imposed. The paper may not be reproduced in part or in altered form, or if a fee is charged, without the Center’s permission. Please let the Center know if you reprint. 3 Brennan Center for Justice Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings Foreword A merica is approaching a breaking point. For more than four decades, economic inequality has risen inexorably, stunting productivity, weakening our democracy, and leaving tens of millions struggling to get by in the world’s most prosperous country. The crises that have rocked the United States since the spring — the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting mass unemployment, and a nationwide uprising for racial justice — have made the inequities plaguing American society more glaring than ever. This year’s intertwined emergencies have also driven home a reality that some would rather ignore: that the growing gap between rich and poor is a result not just of the market’s invisible hand but of a set of deeply misguided policy choices. Among them, this groundbreaking report reveals, is our entrenched system of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration reflects and exacerbates so many dimensions of this country’s divides — in income and health, in voice and power, in access to justice, and most importantly, over race. The number of people incarcerated in America today is more than four times larger than it was in 1980, when wages began to stagnate and the social safety net began to be rolled back. We’ve long known that people involved in the criminal justice system — a group that’s disproportionately poor and Black — face economic barriers in the form of hiring discrimination and lost job opportunities, among other factors. This report demonstrates that more people than previously believed have been caught up in the system, and it quantifies the enormous financial loss they sustain as a result; those who spend time in prison miss out on more than half the future income they might otherwise have earned. Ascertaining through careful statistical analyses just how costly the mass incarceration system has been to the people ensnared by it is a major achievement. These findings reframe our understanding of the issue: As a perpetual drag on the earning potential of tens of millions of Americans, these costs are not only borne by individuals, their families, and their communities. They are also system-wide drivers of inequality and are so large as to have macroeconomic consequences. That insight is vital today. The unprecedented economic contraction triggered by the pandemic, and the federal government’s botched response, appears to be falling hardest on those who were already struggling, just like in past slumps. When employers cut back, employees with criminal records are all too often the first to be furloughed and the last to be rehired. And while major corporations get billions of dollars in relief, millions of the jobless are being largely left in the cold. 4 Brennan Center for Justice These costs come on top of other enormous costs imposed on society by our mass incarceration system. Some states have spent as much on prisons as on universities. The pandemic will make public funds even scarcer. More money spent on incarcerating more people will weaken our future, while the same money spent on expanding our universities will lead to a stronger 21st century economy. Mass incarceration has been a key instrument in voter suppression, because people with criminal records are deprived of the right to vote in some states, and in many states former prisoners are responsible for re-registering once they are released. This undermines democracy: since poor and Black people suffer from mass incarceration disproportionately, they will be underrepresented in our electorate. Meanwhile, a nationwide reckoning over deep-rooted racial injustice is forcing our country to come to terms with the ways in which these injustices have been perpetuated in the century and a half since the end of slavery. For the past four decades, mass incarceration — with the deprivation of political voice and economic opportunity that is so often associated with it — has been at the center. It renders economic mobility for so many Black Americans nearly impossible. And yet this moment also brings a historic opportunity. By laying bare the grotesque inequities that undergird our society, the upheavals of 2020 have given us the needed room to profoundly change our course. An ambitious, democratically driven movement to create a fundamentally fairer and more resilient economy, based on a renewed and strengthened social contract, is at last gaining traction. But true progress will not occur until economic mobility is possible for our most marginalized and most vulnerable citizens. The urgent policies advocated here are a step toward ending that injustice and building a more prosperous and equal society. This report shows what needs to be done to stop mass incarceration. Equally important, it shows how to deal with its legacy: the large number of American citizens with criminal records. It was wrong that they lost so many of their formative years, often for minor infractions. It is doubly wrong that they suffer Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings for the rest of their lives from the stigma associated with imprisonment. For them, and for our entire society, we need to minimize the consequences of that stigma. There is much that has to be done if our society is to fully come to terms with our long history of racial injustice. Stopping mass incarceration is an easy place 5 Brennan Center for Justice to begin. This report makes a compelling case for the enormous economic benefits to be derived from doing so. Joseph E. Stiglitz University Professor Columbia University Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings Introduction A merica’s 400-year history of racial injustice continues to produce profound economic inequalities — a reality our society must no longer ignore. The net worth of a typical white family, for example, is 10 times that of a typical Black 1 family. Shockingly, despite the successes of the civil rights movement, this racial wealth gap has barely changed in the last half century.2 At the same time, as we are all too aware, the criminal justice system subjects Americans to profoundly unequal treatment. A century ago, a Black man was four times as likely as a white man to be incarcerated. In 1980, around the height of the “war on drugs,” he was 11 times as likely.3 Black men and women are also jailed at more than triple the rate of white men and women. And nearly half of all people serving effective life sentences are Black.4 Disparate enforcement is one reason; for example, the majority of people stopped in New York City’s controversial stopand-frisk program were Black.5 Perhaps most disturbingly, Black men and women are far more likely to be the victims of police use of force.6 The protests that erupted in the spring of 2020, catalyzed by the Black Lives Matter movement, revealed and reinforced a growing public understanding of these systemic racial disparities in the criminal justice system.7 Those two points are not unrelated. In fact, the staggering racial disparities in our criminal justice system flow directly into economic inequality. These consequences are magnified and reinforced throughout a lifetime of discrimination in employment and access to economic opportunity.8 They are felt by individuals, of course, but also by families and communities. And they are felt in such large numbers, and in such a systemic way, that they constitute a major structural factor in economic inequality. This report examines the long-term economic effects of conviction and imprisonment. It demonstrates that people involved in the criminal justice system tend to earn significantly less over the course of their lives than otherwise would be the case. Among other factors, missed opportunities, inadequate reentry services, and social stigma contribute to this link between imprisonment and poverty. The consequences, at both an individual and a systemic level, are dire. To reach these conclusions, the report starts by identifying how many of the more than 70 million people with criminal records have become involved with the criminal justice system in each of three discrete ways: through imprisonment, conviction of a felony without subsequent imprisonment, and conviction of a misdemeanor. Then it assesses how each interaction depresses individuals’ earnings. Last, the report uses an innovative method to illustrate how the reduction in earnings persists over a lifetime, deepening poverty — particularly for Black and Latino people. 6 Brennan Center for Justice Specifically, this report finds the following: Conviction and imprisonment affect more people, in more serious ways, than was previously realized. Using data through 2017, this report concludes that about 7.7 million living Americans have at some point been imprisoned, about 12.1 million have been convicted of a felony without being imprisoned for it, and about 45 million have been convicted of at least one misdemeanor. (Due to data limitations, some overlap may exist between these categories.) Conviction and imprisonment experienced early in life lower individuals’ annual earnings. ¡ People who have spent time in prison suffer the greatest losses, with their subsequent annual earnings reduced by an average of 52 percent. ¡ People convicted of a felony but not imprisoned for it see their annual earnings reduced by an average of 22 percent. ¡ People convicted of a misdemeanor see their annual earnings reduced by an average of 16 percent. These earnings losses entrench poverty. The reduced earnings compound over the course of a lifetime. On average, formerly imprisoned people earn nearly half a million dollars less over their careers than they might have otherwise. These losses are borne disproportionately by people already living in poverty, and they help perpetuate it. These earnings losses worsen economic disparities between Black, Latino, and white communities. White people who have a prison record see their earnings trend upwards, while formerly imprisoned Black and Latino people experience a relatively flat earnings trajectory. Because Black and Latino people are also overrepresented in the criminal justice system, these economic effects are concentrated in their communities and exacerbate the racial wealth gap. Throughout this report, estimates of the effects of criminal justice involvement were produced by comparing people who have experienced imprisonment, felony conviction without prison, or misdemeanor conviction with people who have had no such experience but other- Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings TABLE 1 Lost Earning Potential Due to Involvement in the Criminal Justice System (2017) NUMBER OF PEOPLE ANNUAL AVERAGE EARNINGS LOSS AVERAGE LIFETIME EARNINGS LOSS AGGREGATE ANNUAL EARNINGS LOSS Formerly imprisoned people 7.7 million 52% $484,400 $55.2 billion White 2.7 million — $267,000 — Black 2.7 million — $358,900 — Latino 2.3 million — $511,500 — People convicted but not imprisoned $98,800* Felonies 12.1 million 22% — $77.1 billion Misdemeanors 46.8 million 16% — $240.0 billion Total $372.3 billion † * In this table, $98,800 represents lifetime earnings lost due to a conviction in general, whether for a felony, a misdemeanor, or another offense. Because of data limitations, this report is not able to offer a more precise estimate. † Because of potential overlap between categories, the actual annual aggregate loss may be smaller than $372.3 billion. wise closely resemble them. Members of these comparison groups are referred to intermittently as “similarly situated people” or “peers” of justice-involved people. Table 1 summarizes this report’s quantitative findings. The average annual wage loss experienced by each group is multiplied by the size of its population to demonstrate the aggregate effect of conviction and imprisonment. As this table shows, the losses reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars, but even that likely underestimates the true economic impact of the criminal justice system, for two reasons. First, this report does not study the effect of jail on earnings. Reliable information on the jail population is hard to find, but the jail system’s sprawling size makes the issue an important area for future research. Second, this report does not quantify the secondary costs of involvement in the criminal justice system, such as the earnings lost to a family when a parent must leave a job to care for a child during a partner’s incarceration, transportation costs to visit loved ones in prison, money sent to commissary accounts or 7 Brennan Center for Justice spent on phone and video calls during a loved one’s incarceration, money spent on court costs and criminal justice debt, or the cost of a private attorney, to name just a few. (A full cost-benefit analysis of current criminal justice policies is beyond the scope of this report.) Given the devastating financial consequences of contact with the criminal justice system, policymakers should, first and foremost, shrink its overall size and reduce the use of conviction and imprisonment. For those who are subjected to either sanction, steps to counter discrimination and bolster the social safety net can mitigate subsequent harm to their livelihoods. Specifically, the authors recommend the following policy changes to confront the devastating and inequitable consequences of conviction and incarceration: Jurisdictions should reclassify some felonies as misdemeanors and decriminalize other offenses. This step would reduce the prevalence of all three criminal sanctions explored in this report. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings Policymakers should invest in paths away from arrest and prosecution, such as programs that provide people at risk of arrest with drug or mental health treatment. Similar programs could allow criminal charges that have already been filed to be dismissed and sealed upon completion. Aside from reducing convictions, these changes could reduce the risk of violent interactions with police. States and the federal government should invest in alternatives to incarceration. Probation, community service, or other sanctions are more appropriate than prison in many cases and would reduce the harms experienced by people with convictions. Policymakers should expand opportunities for justice-involved people to secure well-paying jobs. First, they should reduce barriers to employment, such as occupational licensing rules that exclude people with criminal records. Second, jurisdictions that have yet to do so should adopt “ban-the-box” rules for job applications. These rules, which defer inquiries about a criminal record in the hiring process, expand employment opportunities and reduce the long-term consequences of a criminal record. The private sector can 8 Brennan Center for Justice also help: Businesses should expand their hiring of people with criminal records by, among other things, limiting the scope of criminal background checks. Jurisdictions should prevent employment and housing discrimination based on criminal history. People returning from prison often find themselves turned away from jobs and housing without a second look. While criminal records may be relevant to some inquiries, they need not operate as automatic disqualifications. Policymakers should strengthen the social safety net to help keep people with a criminal record out of poverty, despair, and recidivism. For one thing, cities should remove barriers to public housing and help families living in such communities reunite after a family member’s incarceration. Relatedly, the federal government should repeal barriers to government benefits. Until Congress does so, states can act on their own to blunt the impact of these punitive rules. And finally, correctional administrators should connect people leaving incarceration with government benefits. This can help prevent hunger and recidivism in the first days after release. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings I. The Scope of America’s Criminal Justice System T his analysis starts by estimating the number of people who have been affected by the criminal justice system in each of three distinct ways: previous imprisonment, conviction of a felony that did not result in imprisonment, and conviction of a misdemeanor. Each of these sanctions is highly likely to reduce earnings, making it important to understand how widespread they are. There are many other ways that people can encounter the criminal justice system. According to the FBI, more than 70 million people in the United States have a criminal record of some kind, meaning they have at least been arrested.9 Millions of people cycle through American jails annually. And tens of millions of people have a family member who has been involved in the criminal justice system in some way.10 All of these interactions may disrupt earnings and result in other long-lasting, serious harms. This report’s focus on conviction and imprisonment should not be read as trivializing or ignoring the costs of these other types of criminal justice involvement. Previous analyses have studied the impact of incarceration on subsequent earnings but have examined the effect of conviction only rarely. Few analyses have attempted to disaggregate the effect of conviction from the effect of incarceration, or the impact of being convicted of a felony from that of a misdemeanor conviction. This report aims to fill those research gaps. Modeling the Number of Formerly Imprisoned People >> The size of each of the three populations studied in this report was derived from data on the number of people affected by each part of the criminal justice system in a given year, reducing that figure to account for recidivism and mortality, and then repeating the process for all subsequent years for which there is available data. authors calculated the likelihood that someone released that year would have returned to prison by 2017. Estimates were calculated using data from the National Corrections Reporting Program, drawing on previous research in the field.13 Mortality data. Prisons are uniquely damaging to the >> For formerly imprisoned people, the model starts with the following data points: People leaving incarceration. Data on people released from prison for the years 1965 through 2017 was obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).11 This report’s model starts at 1965 because — due to high rates of mortality among the imprisoned population and the average age at which people are incarcerated — the number of formerly imprisoned people released before 1965 and still alive today was found to be negligible. Recidivism data. Government reports normally provide recidivism data based on how many people are rearrested, reconvicted, or reincarcerated within a certain period (e.g., five years).12 What is relevant to this report, though, is the likelihood that someone has returned to prison at any point up to 2017, the end of this report’s study period. Rather than using conventional recidivism rates, then, for each year studied, the 9 Brennan Center for Justice physical and mental health of people incarcerated there.14 Therefore, the authors made the sobering assumption that formerly imprisoned people suffer higher mortality rates than the general population.15 >> For each year, the model then matches annual releases with that year’s corresponding mortality and recidivism estimates. >> To visualize this process, start with a representative year, 2005. In that year, 701,632 people were released from prison. The authors estimated that, given 12 years to recidivate before 2017, 63 percent would return to prison. Of the 37 percent of people who did not return to prison — 259,899 people — the authors estimated that 90 percent have survived to the current day. As a result, of the people released from prison in 2005 who did not return, an estimated 234,914 are alive today. >> The results from each year were then added together. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings A. Formerly Imprisoned People Estimate: 7.7 million Since no government source tracks the number of formerly imprisoned people, the authors devised a model to calculate an estimate. The authors started by entering (or interpolating, where necessary to bridge data gaps) the number of people released from prison in each year in the study period. Next, these totals were adjusted for recidivism rates to ensure that the model did not double count people who, according to the dataset, later returned to prison. Last, the data was adjusted for mortality rates to remove the number of formerly imprisoned people who likely have not survived to the present day. This process broadly conforms to the structure of previous research but includes more recent data. According to this process, an estimated 7.7 million people alive today — a little less than the population of Virginia — have been to prison at some point in their lives.16 Interestingly, more than 75 percent of these people were released in 2000 or later, meaning their prison terms likely began in the late 1990s.17 Therefore, while it may be tempting to attribute the size of the formerly imprisoned population to archaic policies that have since been repealed, that does not appear to be entirely accurate. This estimate is broadly consistent with prior research. Some smaller estimates cover just the working-age population or are now out of date.18 More recent research has estimated that in 2010 there were roughly 7.3 million currently or formerly imprisoned people in the United States.19 Because this report’s estimate uses data from 1965 through 2017 — sufficient data on 2018 was not yet available at the time of publication — a higher estimate is to be expected here. This report’s estimate would be even higher but for the relatively high mortality estimates used here.20 As shown in table 2, men vastly outnumber women among the formerly imprisoned population. Black and Latino people also make up a majority of the formerly TABLE 2 Demographics of the Formerly Imprisoned Population (2017) TOTAL MEN WOMEN White 2,660,000 2,280,000 380,000 Black 2,690,000 2,410,000 280,000 Latino 2,300,000 2,130,000 160,000 Other 78,000 — — Total 7,730,000 — — Source: Brennan Center analysis. FIGURE 1 Racial Disparities Persist After Release from Prison (2017) U.S. population Formerly imprisoned population White 61% 34% Black 12% 35% Latino 18% 30% Other 9% 1% Source: Brennan Center analysis. 10 Brennan Center for Justice Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings imprisoned population, with formerly imprisoned Black men and women outnumbering their white peers. As depicted in figure 1, that is wildly out of proportion with the general population. But the disproportionate representation of Black and Latino people in the formerly imprisoned population should not be surprising, given the well-documented, continued existence of racial disparities in prison populations.21 Indeed, according to the most recently available data, the number of Black men and women behind bars continues to exceed the number of imprisoned white men and women.22 It would be surprising if these persistent disparities were not reflected in the formerly imprisoned population. B. People with a Felony Conviction Not Sentenced to Imprisonment Estimate: 12.1 million While imprisonment is a serious sanction, formerly imprisoned people represent just a small slice of the justice-involved population. Those who have been to prison or are currently imprisoned — around 10 million people in total — compose just 15 percent of the estimated 70 million Americans with a criminal record of some kind.23 Felony convictions are on their own a serious sanction likely to impact earning potential. Understanding their prevalence and effect is vital to developing a full picture of the economic impact of the criminal justice system. However, isolating the number of people with felony records who have not been sentenced to imprisonment is difficult, as many people convicted of felonies do spend time in prison.24 Most people convicted of felonies are sentenced to prison, probation (a form of supervised release generally imposed as an alternative to incarceration), or a split sentence combining the two.25 To estimate the number of people who have been convicted of a felony but not sentenced to prison, then, this report starts with data on the annual number of people entering probation every year. As in the last section, this data was then adjusted to account for recidivism and mortality. Recidivism data was drawn from reports on people put on probation in the federal system. 26 For mortality estimates, the authors assumed that people convicted of felonies but not sentenced to prison face mortality risks higher than the general population’s but lower than the formerly imprisoned population’s. The authors also added other variables to ensure, to the extent possible, that the model captured only people who were sentenced to probation without having also been imprisoned. The total number of probationers was then reduced by half because, according to BJS data, half of people sentenced to probation receive that sentence for a misdemeanor conviction.27 11 Brennan Center for Justice Repeating this process for each year’s cohort of people entering probation, the authors estimate that approximately 12.1 million people alive today have been convicted of a felony offense without being imprisoned for it. Unfortunately, BJS does not track the racial breakdown of people entering or exiting probation.28 As a result, it is not possible to estimate the demographic makeup of this population. There is a risk that this figure is an overestimate, since it may include some people who have spent time in prison. For example, someone who entered prison for a separate offense after probation was terminated would be counted in both groups. The patchwork nature of criminal justice data makes it impossible to fully eliminate such a risk. However, two additional limitations suggest that this model might produce an underestimate. First, the data necessary for this method goes back only as far as 1980, so this model covers a shorter period than the model for the formerly imprisoned population. Second, many people convicted of felonies are sentenced to incarceration in local jails, a population that neither this model nor the previous section’s analysis captures.29 As a rough estimate, though, this method helps develop a broader understanding of the justice-involved population. C. People with a Misdemeanor Conviction Estimate: 45 million Though less severe than felonies, misdemeanors also have a long-term impact on earning potential. Convictions for these generally lower-level crimes may show up on background checks, disqualify someone from holding a professional license, or come with other burdensome conditions. Any estimate of the prevalence of a criminal conviction and its effects must reckon with the sprawling misdemeanor justice system. Most Americans are familiar from popular culture with the classic model of the criminal case: refereed by a judge, the prosecutor and defense attorney present evidence and examine and cross-examine witnesses, with guilt or innocence decided by an impartial jury. But this model describes only a vanishingly small percentage of cases.30 It fails to capture the reality of the misdemeanor system. People accused of such crimes face a streamlined and, in many cases, stripped-down form of justice.31 While this field of study is an evolving one, researchers have documented more than 13 million annual misdemeanor cases in recent years.32 However, estimating the number of people with a misdemeanor conviction is a difficult task. Conviction rates and even the meaning of a misdemeanor conviction vary from state to state. Some lower-level offenses will qualify as a misdemeanor in some states but not in others.33 Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings To estimate annual misdemeanor convictions, then, this report employs a novel method that starts with FBI arrest data and then calculates how many of those arrests ended in conviction, using conviction rates estimated from a longitudinal survey. Next, to avoid double counting people, the authors sought to estimate misdemeanor recidivism. But recidivism poses its own challenge: unlike felony sentences and prison terms, people routinely receive multiple misdemeanor convictions within a single year.34 To solve this problem, repeat jail admissions were used as a proxy for intra-year misdemeanor recidivism.35 That figure — suggesting that the average person admitted to a majorcity jail is admitted roughly 1.4 times per year — was then used to estimate how many unique people were convicted of a misdemeanor in a given year. As in the preceding sections, estimated inter-year recidivism and mortality rates were then applied. Following this method, the authors estimate that nearly 46.8 million currently living people — one in seven Americans — have a misdemeanor conviction and, therefore, a nontrivial criminal record. This estimate comes with some limitations. For one thing, it likely includes people already counted in previ- ous sections. That is, some of the 46.8 million people identified using this model may have also spent time in prison, or been convicted of a felony, before or after incurring their misdemeanor conviction. This double counting risk is unavoidable. This model’s recidivism metrics theoretically guard against double counting people who have been convicted of two misdemeanors but cannot, given the limits of existing data, eliminate people who have recidivated in other ways. Furthermore, the authors were able to obtain enough data to run this model over only 23 years, from 1995 through 2017. Rates of actual intra-year recidivism may also be higher than indicated by the limited research that was available to build this model. These limitations cannot be overcome given the significant gaps in data on the criminal justice system. Extensive original research, including large-scale data collection, would be necessary to develop a more precise understanding of the number of people who have been convicted of a misdemeanor. Given these limitations, it might be better to understand the total offered in this report as a rough estimate, rather than a precise one: around 45 million people, rather than precisely 46.8 million people, have been convicted of a misdemeanor. Jail Incarceration’s Vast Reach >> One significant group goes uncounted in this analysis: people who have been detained or incarcerated in a jail. Because jails process more than 10 million admissions annually, the number of people who have been to jail at some point must be vast.36 >> It is difficult to estimate the size of this population, however. Part of the problem is that jails serve two purposes: they detain people for short periods as they wait for trial, and they incarcerate people who have already been convicted of a crime — typically a low-level one. Generally, though, jail recidivism data tracks only the latter group.37 Without a solid understanding of the rate at which people return to jail for any reason, a reasonable estimate of the formerly jailed population is impossible. This is especially true given that 54 percent of the jail population turns over every week, magnifying the impact of any error in estimating recidivism.38 >> The length of a jail stay also varies sharply. While the average jail stay is just 26 days, it is longer in larger jurisdictions such as New York City.39 And years-long jail stays are well documented.40 As a result, it is difficult to say that everyone who spends time in jail is affected in a similar way. Earnings loss and even job loss are certainly common 12 Brennan Center for Justice experiences.41 But longer-term effects and how they are distributed are more complicated questions. >> Research conducted for this report did allow the authors to conclude, on the basis of one important case, that the number of people affected by jails is very large indeed. Before the coronavirus pandemic, the New York City Department of Correction — which oversees the Rikers Island jail complex — held an average daily population of around 8,000 people and admitted around 40,000 annually, down from more than 120,000 in fiscal year (FY) 2001.42 That means it held roughly 1 percent of the average daily population of all the jails in America.43 >> According to data obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request, New York City’s Department of Correction admitted 949,919 individuals into custody between 1983 and June 14, 2019.44 (A forthcoming study by a team of sociologists will explore the lifetime risk of jail incarceration for New Yorkers of different demographic groups.) If New York City alone jailed nearly 1 million unique people over a 36-year period, then the number of people who have ever been incarcerated in any jail must run into the tens of millions. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings How Conviction and Imprisonment May Affect Earnings >> America’s sprawling criminal justice system can affect someone’s life, directly or indirectly, in any number of ways. This report focuses on misdemeanor convictions, felony convictions, and imprisonment, presuming that these interactions are likely to affect someone’s long-term earnings. Why, though, do conviction and imprisonment affect earnings? And why does imprisonment have a particularly strong effect? Researchers have suggested the following theories, among others: Stigma. A criminal record may deter employers from making a job offer or even conducting an interview. According to one 2018 survey, 95 percent of employers conduct some form of background check on job candidates.45 Perhaps as a result, applicants with a criminal record are around 50 percent less likely to receive a callback interview, depriving them of even the chance to explain their history.46 Some research suggests that the type of criminal conviction determines the severity of the stigma.47 Even so, conviction or incarceration no matter the cause may contribute to extended periods of joblessness, resulting in a high unemployment rate among the justice-involved population (estimated at 27 percent for formerly imprisoned people).48 They may also lead people to accept jobs that pay less or offer fewer advancement opportunities than positions they might have otherwise found.49 Legal barriers to work. As explored in more detail below, some jobs require occupational licenses, and thousands of rules limit access to licenses for people That said, none of these caveats undercut this central finding: a surprisingly large number of Americans have a misdemeanor conviction, with (as this report will show) serious consequences. Even if the misdemeanor population were half as high as is estimated here — in the 20 million range, for example, due to a higher than expected rate of intra-year recidivism — the total would remain shocking, and the policy implications would be unchanged. Research on the misdemeanor system is in its earliest phases. Hopefully, this estimate will lead people to undertake the data collection efforts needed to support further research and will be refined in future studies. 13 Brennan Center for Justice with a criminal record.50 These rules may prevent formerly justice-involved people from securing work in lucrative fields and in fields where they have expertise. For example, California trains imprisoned people to be elite firefighters, but legal restrictions bar many from joining that profession upon release.51 Missed opportunities. The preceding two factors describe challenges faced by anyone with a criminal record. But people returning from prison or prolonged jail incarceration encounter additional hurdles. For one, time spent incarcerated means time out of the workforce and time not spent accumulating the skills or social connections needed to find or succeed in a job (what economists call “human capital”).52 And those effects stack over time: according to one analysis, each additional year of imprisonment reduces by nearly 4 percentage points the likelihood that a person will find post-release employment.53 While research in this field tends to focus on the effects of prison, one new study suggests that jails may have similarly damaging effects.54 Mental and physical health. Incarceration jeopardizes health and well-being.55 People who need health care while in prison, for example, may not receive high-quality treatment or any treatment at all.56 Health conditions and problems often persist after release, making it that much harder to find and keep a stable job.57 The dehumanizing experience of prison itself, and the behaviors people must adopt to survive, may also make it difficult to succeed in the workforce.58 ¡ ¡ ¡ This analysis offers a way of understanding the scale of mass incarceration in the United States that is more detailed than past research. Of the more than 70 million people with a criminal record today, tens of millions have experienced some of the most severe sanctions known to the criminal justice system — imprisonment or conviction of a felony. And tens of millions more must contend with the stigma of a misdemeanor conviction, which, while less severe, still harms one’s ability to find a stable job. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings II. The Effect of Conviction and Imprisonment on Annual Earnings T his report now evaluates how the earnings of these three populations are affected by involvement with the criminal justice system. Drawing on survey data, it finds that misdemeanor convictions are associated with a small earnings reduction, felony convictions are associated with a moderate reduction, and imprisonment is associated with a severe one.59 Many researchers have studied the effect of incarceration on earnings. This report adds to that understanding by also estimating the effect of felony and misdemeanor convictions. First, this section estimates the effect of conviction and imprisonment on annual earnings. The next section explores how these effects add up over a lifetime. How This Report Estimates Lost Earnings >> To produce these estimates, the authors drew on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth’s 1979 and 1997 cohorts (NLSY79 and NLSY97, respectively). They then used a statistical technique called propensity-score matching (PSM) to match people who have become involved with the criminal justice system with people who are comparable to them in terms of certain key traits. Given a close enough match, the earnings differential between justice-involved people and this comparison group can be attributed to the effect of criminal justice involvement. >> Specifically, for this report, people who became involved with the criminal justice system in early adulthood (on average, in their late teens or early twenties) were compared with people who had no such history but were similar in demographic characteristics (age, gender, race-ethnicity, and education) and regional indicators (unemployment and poverty rates).60 The gap between the two groups’ annual earnings could then be explored. >> Any study of the criminal justice system’s effects must reckon with the risk that there are deeper, unobserved differences between those who become convicted or incarcerated and those who do not. Indeed, research suggests that people who enter prison earned significantly less than their peers prior to incarceration.61 To limit the effect of these unobserved traits, this report’s results were validated using additional statistical techniques. For details on these approaches, see appendix B. 14 Brennan Center for Justice A. Formerly Imprisoned People Estimate: 52 percent reduction This report estimates that formerly imprisoned people earn around $6,700 annually, while their peers earn around $13,800. The latter figure is slightly less than what a full-time worker earning the federal minimum wage would earn over the course of a year.62 The disparity between the two groups translates to an annual income reduction of around 52 percent. B. People with a Felony Conviction Not Sentenced to Imprisonment Estimate: 22 percent reduction Felony convictions imply serious crimes and have a significant effect on earning potential. But without imprisonment, the effect may be very different from the one felt by people returning home from prison. Therefore, this report presents a new model to estimate how a felony conviction, even without imprisonment, affects earnings. Here the authors used the NLSY97, which specifically asked participants whether they had been convicted of a felony.63 Studying this group of people using the PSM method (described in appendix B) suggests that felony convictions without imprisonment also have a significant effect on annual earnings: about a 22 percent reduction. The large effect identified here is consistent with theories about how a criminal record affects earning capacity. People convicted of felonies may also be more likely to have spent time in pretrial detention. As a result, it is possible that the 22 percent estimate described here includes the effect of pretrial detention, which has also been linked to reduced earnings.64 C. People with a Misdemeanor Conviction Estimate: 16 percent reduction Based on the same methodology, a non-felony conviction — assumed for the purposes of this analysis to be a misdemeanor conviction — reduces annual earnings by about 16 percent. As in the previous section, time spent in pretrial detention may partially account for this effect. It may seem surprising that a misdemeanor conviction would have such a significant impact on earnings. But research suggests that even misdemeanor arrests may lead to reduced employment.65 Misdemeanor charges Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings TABLE 3 Aggregate Annual Earnings Lost Due to Criminal Justice System Involvement (2017) FORMERLY IMPRISONED PEOPLE PEOPLE WITH FELONY CONVICTIONS PEOPLE WITH MISDEMEANOR CONVICTIONS Average earnings $6,700 $23,000 $26,900 Average earnings of peers $13,800 $29,400 $32,000 Earnings effect –51.7% –21.7% –16.0% Size of group 7.7 million 12.1 million 46.8 million Annual earnings lost $55.2 billion $77.1 billion $240.0 billion Note: All data points were computed from unrounded estimates. Source: Brennan Center analysis. often entail pretrial detention. Misdemeanor prosecutions also increase the risk of future conviction and justice involvement, even when they do not end in conviction. According to one scholar, even when a case ends in dismissal it allows prosecutors to begin building a file that will inform future interactions with law enforcement. Thus, being charged with a misdemeanor, even if it does not end with conviction, may single someone out — or “mark” them — for closer scrutiny during subsequent prosecutions, potentially increasing the risk of conviction and, by extension, lowering earnings.66 Taken together, these factors make it unsurprising that a misdemeanor conviction has some effect on earnings. The nebulous nature of the misdemeanor category means that the misdemeanor effect likely varies significantly from person to person and from charge to charge. For example, a conviction for driving while intoxicated likely affects someone’s earnings differently from a conviction for simple assault — even though both are misdemeanors under New York State law.67 But the average effect described here helps develop our understanding of the effects of lower-level criminal justice involvement. D. Aggregate Annual Effects Each of the estimates above describes annual earnings lost by an average member of each group. These effects 15 Brennan Center for Justice are keenly felt by formerly imprisoned or convicted people, their families, and their communities. As the next section will demonstrate, these effects do not fade with time. They are experienced by people at all phases of their lives and careers. Even in a single year, these lost earnings, in the aggregate, constitute an enormous sum of money. To quantify that loss, table 3 presents each annual earnings loss estimate from the preceding section, in dollars, and multiplies it by the size of the group, as identified in section I. For example, the average formerly imprisoned person will earn 52 percent less than a similarly situated person who was never imprisoned. From the previous section, we know there are at least 7.7 million formerly imprisoned people in the United States. Applying the average earnings penalty to this entire group suggests that, in the aggregate, formerly imprisoned people lose out on an estimated $55.2 billion annually. Assuming that people are not counted twice in separate categories, then underemployment related to imprisonment or conviction reduces people’s wages by as much as $372.3 billion annually. Because incarceration and criminal justice involvement already disproportionately ensnare poor communities, this sum represents money that largely goes unearned and uninvested in communities that need it most. For context, consider what $372.3 billion would be enough to do: Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings close New York City’s poverty gap 60 times over;68 give every homeless person in the United States a house worth $500,000, outright, with money to spare;69 fund NASA for roughly 15 years at the level NASA believes would put it on track to return to the moon by 2024;70 or fund the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services — which supports community policing initiatives — at FY 2020 levels for more than 1,000 years.71 The losses described in this report are, first and foremost, felt by impacted individuals and their communities. But given the scale of these losses, there are macroeconomic implications as well. Indeed, other researchers, using different methods and studying different metrics, have argued that mass incarceration has a broad economic impact. For example, according to sociologists Bruce Western and Becky Pettit, much of the damage caused by overincarceration “is invisible in standard data sources” because “prison and jail inmates have no status in official employment statistics.” In a 2000 study, they attempted to correct this omission and found that accounting for incarcerated persons reduced the employment-to-population ratio of Black men more than white men.72 Building on their findings, in 2016 the Washington Post reported that, after accounting for incarceration, the unemployment rate for Black working-age men in 2014 was 7.2 percentage points higher than officially reported.73 This report adds to the evidence of mass incarceration’s society-wide collateral costs. 16 Brennan Center for Justice Does Prison Labor Offset This Earnings Loss? No. >> Theoretically, the economic impact of imprisonment might be mitigated by opportunities to work while imprisoned. Skills learned through prison labor might offset the loss of what economists call “human capital” behind bars, and earnings might help people amass savings to help them begin new lives after release. >> The reality is very different. First, wages from prison labor do not come anywhere close to replacing what people can earn outside of prison. If any pay is offered at all, it is generally low — around $1 per hour.74 Many jurisdictions then deduct costs from that paycheck, whether to satisfy court fees and fines or to pay fees associated with imprisonment, such as room and board (that is, the cost of someone’s own incarceration).75 Some prisons also recoup the wages they pay through marked-up commissary products.76 Prison programming could help people retain and develop skills, but there is little evidence that current programs provide those benefits.77 The findings here suggest that imprisonment remains a major driver of economic loss, severely depressing the earnings of those affected by it. But it is not the only factor. Roughly two-thirds of the aggregate $372.3 billion loss identified here is the result of misdemeanor convictions. The repercussions of even a relatively minor criminal record represent a serious drain on earnings, and top-to-bottom reform is necessary to blunt this effect. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings III. The Effect of Conviction and Imprisonment on Lifetime Earnings A nnual lost earnings are a helpful metric for analyzing the macroeconomic impact of mass incarceration. But for people living through the effects of a criminal conviction or incarceration, these losses are most notable for how they compound annually. Building on the last section’s analysis of annual lost earnings, this section presents a lifetime analysis, showing that formerly imprisoned people earn less than half of what their peers earn over their careers. As shown in figure 2, the value of these lost earnings for formerly imprisoned people approaches half a million dollars per person, an amount that could easily make the difference between escapable and inescapable poverty. PSM was again used to produce these findings. People with involvement in the justice system were again matched with highly similar people who had no such experience. This section’s analysis defines the cohort’s prime working years as running from their twenties to fifties, because earnings growth is typically most stable over this period. For simplicity, when describing results, this 30-year period is divided into three stages, based on the average age of NLSY participants in the sample in each stage: early career (ages 25–34), mid career (35–44), and late career (45+). Due to data limitations, this section does not distinguish between misdemeanor and felony convictions.78 The damage done by conviction alone is significant. Over the course of a lifetime, cumulative earnings losses reach nearly $100,000 for the average person with a conviction. These results pale in comparison to the effect of imprisonment, however. By the end of a career, someone who was imprisoned as a young adult — regardless of what offense led to incarceration — suffers an average of about $484,400 in lost earnings. FIGURE 2 People Who Have Been Convicted or Imprisoned Lose Up to Half a Million Dollars in Earnings Over the Course of a Career Lost earnings (cumulative) $500,000 400,000 300,000 Early career (25–34) Mid career (35–44) Late career (45+) 200,000 100,000 0 25 27 29 31 Imprisonment Conviction 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 Source: Brennan Center analysis. 17 Brennan Center for Justice Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings A. Consequences for Poverty and Income Inequality Some researchers have argued that the effects of a criminal record are “eternal,” due to the prevalence of law enforcement and screening databases.79 This report’s findings provide strong support for that claim. Over the long term, the effect of incarceration on earnings appears to grow as justice-involved people miss out on the wage growth their peers benefit from — a surprising and troubling conclusion. As shown in figure 3, average formerly imprisoned people will start their careers earning roughly $7,100 less than their peers annually, and end them trailing their peers by more than $20,000 annually. Socioeconomic disadvantage tends to compound itself, and that principle appears to be at work here.80 Generally, as people progress in their career and gain experience, they make more money, peaking in their late forties or early fifties.81 Several mechanisms likely impede that growth for formerly imprisoned people. For one, a criminal history may make their career prospects more fragile. Jobs available to them will often provide fewer opportunities for earnings growth and career advancement; they may also be more vulnerable to layoffs. Opportunities for licensure or credentialing (and the higher income both can bring) are also limited and may provide weaker returns on investment. Some professional licenses and credentials are off-limits to people who have spent time in prison; in other cases, since jobs in general are harder to come by for formerly justice-involved people, those credentials do not always translate to higher pay. Previous research provides strong evidence that these mechanisms are at work. First, 45 percent of formerly imprisoned people are unemployed during the entire year following their release.82 Unemployment becomes a spiral, depriving people of opportunities to develop skills and weakening their connections to potential employers.83 Additionally, when work is secured, it is often temporary, part-time, and low paying; in one study of people released from Indiana prisons, about half of those who did find post-release employment had an annual income of less than $5,000.84 Such low-wage jobs tend to be characterized by less upward mobility and a higher risk of future unemployment.85 Criminal records, in other words, trap formerly imprisoned people in low-paying work, which in turn places them on a lower incomegrowth trajectory. Notably, these findings suggest that earnings losses among the formerly imprisoned population may not be due entirely to the prison experience itself or the time spent removed from the workforce. Instead, at least part of the earnings gap can be ascribed to the shadow that imprisonment casts over subsequent economic opportunities. This distinction has serious consequences for policymakers, which are discussed in section IV. This report’s results are also consistent with research on intractable “deep poverty,” a chronic form of poverty FIGURE 3 Formerly Imprisoned People Experience Little Earnings Growth Annual earnings (average) $40,000 35,000 30,000 25,000 20,000 Early career (age 25–34) Late career (age 45+) Mid career (age 35–44) 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 25 27 29 31 Formerly imprisoned person 33 35 37 39 41 Peer (no justice involvement) 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 Federal poverty threshold (two-person household) Source: Brennan Center analysis. 18 Brennan Center for Justice Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings that tends to persist generation after generation.86 As shown in figure 3, above, the average early-career wages of formerly imprisoned people hover at around half of the federal poverty threshold for a family of two. Indeed, they never exceed it.87 The lifetime effects of this earnings loss are staggering. The roughly half-million dollars lost by the average formerly imprisoned person is more than the entire lifetime earnings of someone who spends his or her life at the poverty line ($382,000).88 And this loss does not account for missed opportunities for additional wealth generation, from Social Security benefits to accrued interest on retirement accounts to forgone investment opportunities. These factors, taken together, demonstrate that imprisonment sets up people who are already disadvantaged for a profound loss of wealth and closes off pathways to upward economic mobility. B. Consequences for Racial Inequality This report has already shown that Black and Latino people are overrepresented in the formerly imprisoned population. It appears that their long-term earning potential is also more deeply affected by imprisonment. As shown in figure 4, white people who have experienced prison earn significantly more annually than Black or Latino people with similar histories. Formerly imprisoned Black and Latino people suffer greater lifetime earnings losses — $358,900 and $511,500, respectively — than their white counterparts, whose losses amount to $267,000. Given the overrepresentation of Black and Latino people among the formerly imprisoned population, these findings suggest that the American prison system has a profoundly negative impact on Black and Latino wealth. Of course, there is already a vast racial wealth gap that has persisted with little change over the past 50 years.89 In 2016, the median wealth of white families ($171,000) exceeded the median wealth of Black families ($17,409) and Latino families ($20,920) by factors of around 10 and 8, respectively.90 Continued disparities in yearly earning power — like the ones identified in this report — likely exacerbate that gap.91 Other research suggests that low wealth is itself associated with an increase in imprisonment, potentially setting up a vicious cycle in which criminal justice involvement perpetuates wealth disparity, which in turn raises the risk of imprisonment.92 FIGURE 4 Racial Disparities in Post-prison Earnings Are Severe and Grow Over Time Average earnings $30,000 Early career (age 25–34) 25,000 Mid career (age 35–44) 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 25 Black 27 White 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 Latino Source: Brennan Center analysis. 19 Brennan Center for Justice Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings FIGURE 5 Black People with No Criminal Record Earn Less Annually than Socioeconomically Similar White People with a Record With conviction $37,000 $49,000 Without conviction $39,000 $52,000 ■ Black ■ White Source: Brennan Center analysis. Last, this report’s estimates suggest that, for those who are otherwise socioeconomically similar, Black men and women with no history of conviction or imprisonment earn less than white men and women with a conviction record. By the end of a career, as shown in figure 5, white men and women with a conviction earn about $49,000 a year on average, eclipsing the $39,000 a year that Black people with no conviction earn over the same period. These findings corroborate conclusions first drawn by 20 Brennan Center for Justice sociologist Devah Pager. As she wrote, “race continues to play a dominant role in shaping employment opportunities, equal to or greater than the impact of a criminal record.”93 Apart from the effects of justice involvement, racial discrimination in general continues to contribute to earnings disparities. While ending mass incarceration is critically important to rectifying these disparities, it cannot by itself resolve them. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings IV. Policy Recommendations T his report demonstrates that the effects of conviction and imprisonment persist for decades, entrenching inequality and perpetuating poverty. Even people convicted of minor offenses see their earning potential reduced. Because poor people are more likely to become involved in the criminal justice system in the first place, conviction and incarceration can all too easily become poverty traps. Policy interventions are needed to help break that cycle — and to effect transformative change. A. States should reduce penalties, reclassify some felonies as misdemeanors, and decriminalize other offenses altogether. Even minor convictions appear to entail long-term economic harm. Confronting this problem requires shrinking every aspect of the criminal justice system — from prisons to misdemeanor courts. Some states have made progress toward this goal through felony reclassification, reducing some felony crimes to misdemeanors.94 Other offenses can be safely decriminalized entirely, meaning that they would be handled (if at all) outside the criminal justice system.95 The Covid-19 public health crisis has already inspired many police departments to temporarily rethink who is arrested and why.96 Looking beyond the pandemic, broader decriminalization efforts — targeting misdemeanors and infractions for resolution outside the criminal justice system or, at a minimum, eliminating arrests and jail time for them — can preserve public safety while reducing the collateral costs this report identifies.97 B. Jurisdictions should invest in paths away from arrest and prosecution. Providing early off-ramps from the criminal justice system can spare people the effects of incarceration and conviction and shrink the size of the justice system. Pre-arrest diversion programs accomplish these goals by identifying people who might be arrested and intervening in other ways, such as by connecting them with drug or mental health treatment.98 Some such programs embed social workers or clinicians with police so that these professionals can respond immediately where necessary.99 Other diversion programs work by identifying people who may be charged with certain types of crimes, offering alternative resolution options and dismissing criminal charges upon their successful completion.100 Expanding these programs would help reduce the number of people with conviction records of any type. Critically, policymakers should also ensure that successfully completing a diversion program seals or expunges all record of the interaction, since even dismissed cases can, in some circumstances, remain a part of someone’s court records and encourage prosecutors and judges to be less lenient in future cases.101 21 Brennan Center for Justice C. Policymakers should expand the use of alternatives to incarceration. Imprisonment creates and deepens economic disadvantage. Judges and prosecutors should be given tools that allow them to impose noncarceral sanctions that better meet the needs of people who enter their courtrooms. Probation, drug treatment, community service, counseling, and even fines tailored to a person’s ability to pay are more appropriate than prison in many situations and allow people to avoid the long-term consequences of imprisonment.102 But all such alternatives to incarceration (ATIs) must be implemented with care. Some diversion programs come with a price tag, trapping defendants who are unable to pay in the very cycle of poverty and incarceration that ATIs are designed to prevent.103 Furthermore, people sentenced to an ATI generally still exit the courtroom with a criminal conviction, a serious sanction that will still depress their earning potential. D. States should eliminate unnecessary barriers to employment. Nearly 30 percent of workers need a state license to practice their occupations. These policies hinder job growth and limit opportunities for people with criminal records.104 States have imposed at least 12,000 licensing restrictions on individuals with a felony record, and 6,000 on people with a misdemeanor record.105 By removing these barriers, occupational licensing reform would open up a broader array of jobs to people with criminal records. First, blanket bans — automatic disqualification for individuals with a criminal record — should be repealed.106 Second, policymakers and licensing bodies should remove vague and overbroad standards, such as “good moral character,” from qualification lists.107 And third, regulators should provide clear guides to applicants about potential barriers to licensure.108 E. The private and public sectors should expand opportunities for people returning to the workforce after conviction. Job applications frequently ask about an applicant’s criminal record up front, allowing employers to screen out Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings people with a record without meeting them or considering their qualifications. Ban-the-box policies require employers to remove such conviction inquiries from initial job applications. Records are disclosed later in the hiring process — before a final decision is made, but after applicants have had a chance to advocate for themselves and explain their past. These policies encourage hiring managers to look at someone’s application holistically. Many companies — including some of the country’s largest employers — have banned the box on their own initiative.109 Cities, states, and the federal government have adopted similar policies for their own hiring and in some cases require it of the private sector as well.110 Early evidence is promising, showing, for example, increased hiring in high-crime neighborhoods and increased public-sector hiring of people with criminal records. Other jurisdictions should adopt or expand ban-the-box policies.111 F. Cities and states should prevent landlords and employers from discriminating against people with criminal records. Even in ban-the-box jurisdictions, some employers will automatically reject applicants once they learn of a criminal record. States should repeal laws that permit the blanket denial of jobs to people with a criminal record.112 They should also consider adopting rules, like those in New York State, that make it illegal for employers to turn away job applicants based solely on their criminal record.113 Under New York’s law, employers may still consider criminal history, but only as part of a holistic inquiry, and they may only reject an applicant on the basis of a conviction for a specific, enumerated reason — such as if the conviction has a direct relationship to the job, presents a licensing concern, or suggests a risk to the general public.114 Some landlords will also automatically deny a lease to people with a criminal record, contributing to an increased risk of homelessness among formerly justice-involved people.115 As with employment, states and municipalities should pass laws to prohibit such discrimination. Seattle’s Fair Chance Housing legislation of 2017, for example, prevents landlords from unfairly rejecting applicants based on justice involvement and prohibits the use in advertising of language that categorically excludes formerly justice-involved individuals.116 G. Public housing authorities should relax or eliminate rules that exclude people with a criminal record. Public housing is often the only affordable option for people returning from prison, but many public housing authorities (PHAs), taking a cue from federal laws, exclude people with a criminal record. These rules often separate 22 Brennan Center for Justice families and make it impossible for people to return home.117 PHAs should relax these rules. Some have begun doing so, with promising results. Following a pilot program that saw low recidivism and a majority of participants successfully reaching other milestones, the New York City Housing Authority now partners with reentry organizations to help people with conviction records transition into housing.118 Similarly, due to a recent policy change, a criminal conviction is no longer an automatic disqualification for public housing in New Orleans.119 H. Corrections authorities should proactively connect people to health-care benefits. Justice-involved people experience chronic health conditions, including substance-use disorders and mental illness, at higher rates than the general population.120 Poor health increases the risk of job loss and unemployment — effects surely felt by the justice-involved population.121 Therefore, corrections officials should ensure that people being released from jail or prison understand how to make use of services available to them, including federal benefits and state-sponsored health insurance.122 Before their release, individuals should be provided with all the documentation necessary to access health-care benefits.123 I. State and federal policymakers should expand the social safety net. Government assistance programs are proven and effective means of reducing poverty.124 They may also reduce recidivism by keeping people out of poverty and despair.125 A 1990s federal welfare reform law permits states to deny important food and cash assistance benefits to people convicted of some drug offenses.126 This provision is an outdated and unnecessarily punitive relic of the “war on drugs,” and Congress should repeal it outright. Until Congress is poised to act, states should, as a stopgap measure, exercise their statutory right to opt out of the exclusion.127 Many have already done so, but around half still exclude some formerly justice-involved people from benefits.128 All states should opt out of the provision in its entirety. Correctional administrators should also work with all levels of government to ensure that people being released from incarceration are connected immediately with anti-poverty programs and benefits. As one example, New York City preemptively enrolls people in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) as they approach their release from city jails, ensuring that they do not wait an unnecessarily long time for food benefits. More jurisdictions should do the same.129 Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings V. Conclusion M ore than 70 million Americans have a criminal record of some kind. This report is the first to demonstrate that more than half of them have at least one conviction for a misdemeanor or a more serious crime. Nearly 8 million of them have been imprisoned at some point in their lives, testament to the sprawling reach of incarceration. This exposure to the criminal justice system, however long or however brief, carries consequences that extend far beyond a guilty plea, trial verdict, or release from prison. People who have been convicted of a crime can expect to earn at least 16 percent less, on average, than their peers. And those who have been to prison will lose around half of their earning potential. Over the course of a lifetime, that loss, on average, approaches half a million dollars — easily the difference between escapable and inescapable poverty. 23 Brennan Center for Justice These lost wages, in aggregate, cost people touched by the criminal justice system more than $372 billion annually. And this loss is not evenly distributed. It is felt most keenly by Black and Latino communities, which disproportionately lose their members and their wealth to incarceration and its effects. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that ending mass incarceration is an economic imperative as much as a moral one. It is a vital step toward restoring prosperity to underserved communities across the country, and toward closing the racial wealth gap. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings Appendix A: Literature Review I. Estimates of Population Size Formerly Imprisoned People Scholars have repeatedly attempted to estimate the number of people who have been to prison. The government does not publicly track this information. However, data available from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and its National Prisoner Statistics Program generally provides a solid starting point for estimating the size of this population. Historically, scholars approached the task by collecting data on annual prison releases, adding them up over the study period, and then controlling for mortality and recidivism. Findings from some of the most recent studies, shown in table 4, suggest that around 5 to 7 million people in the United States who are alive today were imprisoned at some point in their lives.130 People with Felony Convictions BJS has not reported the number of felony convictions entered annually since 2007, significantly complicating any effort to estimate the number of people with a felony conviction today.131 Previous BJS data suggests that around 2 million felony convictions occur annually.132 To bridge this gap in the data, researchers have developed creative techniques. Perhaps the best-known papers in this field were produced by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in 2010 and 2016. The first, by economist John Schmitt and researcher Kris Warner, started with BJS estimates of the number of people entering and leaving prison and then used data on the ratio of felony convictions to prison sentences to extrapolate the number of felony offenders convicted annually. Estimates of recidivism and mortality were then applied.133 Researchers Cherrie Bucknor and Alan Barber updated this paper in 2016, following the same methodology.134 A 2017 study by sociologist Sarah Shannon and colleagues, building on a 2011 paper, followed a similar methodology and incorporated a broader set of data.135 As shown in table 4, all four studies concluded that more than 10 million living people in the United States have a felony record. TABLE4 Previous Studies of the Justice-Involved Population AUTHORS DATA THROUGH ESTIMATE OF FORMERLY IMPRISONED PEOPLE ESTIMATE OF PEOPLE WITH A FELONY CONVICTION Schmitt and Warner (2010) 2008 5.4-6.1 million 12.3-13.9 million Shannon et al. (2011) 2010 4.9 million 19.8 million 2014 6.1-6.9 million 14.0-15.8 million 2010* 7.3 million 19.0 million Bucknor and Barber (2016) Shannon et al. (2017) *Totals include those subject to correctional correctional control control during during the the survey survey year. year. John Schmitt Schmitt and and Kris Kris Warner, Warner,Ex-offenders Ex-offendersand andthe theLabor LaborMarket, Market,Center Centerfor forEconomic Economicand andPolicy PolicyResearch, Research, Source: John 2010, http:/ /cepr.net/documents/publications/ex-offenders-2010-11.pdf; Sarah 2010, http://cepr.net/documents/publications/ex-offenders-2010-11.pdf; SarahShannon Shannonet etal., al.,“Growth "Growthininthe theU.S. U.S. Ex Ex-felon Ex-prisoner Population, 1948 2010” (conference paper, 2011), http://paa2011.princeton.edu/papers/111687; felon andand Ex-prisoner Population, 1948 to to 2010" (conference paper, 2011), http://paa2011.princeton.edu/papers/111687; Cherrie Bucknor Bucknor and and Alan Alan Barber, Price We Pay: Economic Economic Costs Costs of of Barriers Barriers to to Employment Employment for for Former Former Prisoners Prisoners and and Cherrie Barber, The The Price We Pay: People Convicted of Felonies, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2016, 1, https://cepr.net/report/the-price-we-payPeople Convicted of Felonies, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2016, 1, https://cepr.net/report/the-price economic-costs-of-barriers-to-employment-for-former-prisoners-and-people-convicted-of-felonies; Sarah Shannon et al., we-pay-economic-costs-of-barriers-to-employment-for-former-prisoners-and-people-convicted-of-felonies; Sarah “The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People with Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010,” Demography Shannon et al., "T1804–5 he Growth, Scope,1. and Spatial Distribution of People with Felony Records in the United States, 194854, no. 5 (2017): and table 2010," Demography 54, no. 5 (2017): 1804-5 and table 1. 24 Brennan Center for Justice Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings Significantly, though, none of these papers sought to identify the number of people who were convicted of a felony but not imprisoned. Imprisonment is, of course, a more severe sanction than conviction alone. It is also far less common. Attempting to differentiate among the various levels of criminal justice involvement is one of this paper’s major contributions. People with Misdemeanor Convictions National information on misdemeanor cases is difficult to obtain for a number of reasons. For one, some jurisdictions do not keep track of the number of minor cases.136 Further, the term misdemeanor is an amorphous one; the definition differs among states, making it that much harder to study in the aggregate.137 Early efforts to fill this gap struggled with incomplete data.138 But misdemeanor data availability is improving. The National Center for State Courts (NCSC), a repository of information that relies on individual states to provide their caseload data, began reporting detailed information on state court dockets online in 2012. Not all states participate in the NCSC every year; for those that do not, data can often be found online in state annual reports.139 Drawing on these resources, scholars have come closer to estimating the number of misdemeanor cases filed annually — around 13 million. Researchers Megan Stevenson and Sandra Mayson used publicly available caseload statistics from 45 states — imputing missing data based on misdemeanor case-filing rates in states that had similar characteristics — to calculate that there were 13.2 million misdemeanor cases filed in 2016.140 Law professor Alexandra Natapoff, using a related methodology, arrived at a similar estimate for misdemeanor cases filed in 2015.141 These figures exceed the number of all arrests made in those years.142 Estimating the number of those cases that result in convictions proves more difficult. Conviction rates appear highly variable from one state to the next. BJS briefly reported these figures; national misdemeanor conviction rates for state prosecutors, according to one report series, were 77 percent in 1996 and 88.7 percent in 2001.143 Law professors Nancy King and Michael Heise have also estimated misdemeanor conviction rates for 25 states. They estimated a national rate of 73 percent. Calculation methods for each state, however, differed significantly, and fewer than half of all states had enough available data from which to derive an estimate.144 State-by-state canvassing of available criminal justice records is not adequate to fill gaps in this data, however, as some jurisdictions do not report misdemeanor conviction rates in any form. 25 Brennan Center for Justice II. Estimates of Wage Effects People in Prisons Relatively few studies have identified what people in prison could have earned but for their incarceration. This report does not directly analyze what wages are “lost” during someone’s incarceration. But research in this area provides helpful context, underscoring that people who become imprisoned — and those who are highly similar to them — tend to have preexisting disadvantages. In 1999, economist David A. Anderson offered one estimate of this figure as part of a broader study aimed at quantifying the total economic cost of crime. While previous researchers had found that incarcerating a single person “costs society $5,700 in lost productivity per year,” he wrote, that estimate was “based on the observation that many prisoners did not work in the legal market prior to their offense.” Moving past that assumption, and assuming instead that people in prison could have earned about as much as the average hourly worker, Anderson found that “the average incarcerated worker is estimated to represent $23,286 in lost productivity per year.”145 Subsequent researchers have built on Anderson’s work to calculate their own estimates of the wages that people in prison miss out on while incarcerated. In 2006, economist Jens Ludwig used Anderson’s research in testimony on the “costs of crime” before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The “lost productivity associated with time that incarcerated criminals spend behind bars,” he concluded, was around $35 billion annually.146 Updating Anderson’s work to 2014 dollars, a 2016 study by economists at Washington University in St. Louis found that people lose just over $33,000 per year while imprisoned. Over the length of an average prison term (roughly 2.25 years in this paper), the study concluded, those entering prison in 2014 could expect to lose a total of $70.5 billion during their incarceration.147 Another study, by health economists Kathryn E. McCollister, Michael T. French, and Hai Fang, employed a different method to calculate lost wages. Using data on prison populations and assuming that each incarcerated person could earn at least the minimum wage, McCollister’s team found that the average person convicted of murder would face around $150,000 in lost wages while incarcerated, while the average person convicted of larceny would lose less than $200.148 (Significantly, their calculations accounted only for time spent in prison, not time spent in jail, where many larceny defendants will serve their sentences.) Formerly Imprisoned People Economists and sociologists have consistently shown that time behind bars decreases both the likelihood of being employed post-release and the wages earned. This problem was dramatically illustrated by the late sociologist Devah Pager in a series of real-world experiments. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings In the first, published in 2003, job candidates applied for actual positions in Milwaukee using résumés indicating a drug conviction and an 18-month prison term. Pager’s findings showed that even this relatively short prison term presented “a major barrier” to employment, especially for Black applicants.149 She repeated the study in New York City in 2009, with similar results.150 Some researchers have used novel study designs to evaluate the impact of prison on earnings. Criminologist Naomi Sugie, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, explored this topic in a 2014 dissertation. She followed 156 recently released parolees via smartphones, finding that returning citizens faced “a reentry period characterized by very short-term, irregular, and poor-quality work.” Sugie suggested that stigma and “low social connectivity and low emotional wellbeing about searching” were jointly to blame and that this situation tended to make illegitimate (criminal) earning opportunities more attractive for those who feel shut out of the conventional labor market.151 The U.S. Department of Labor does not track the unemployment rate for the formerly incarcerated, but it appears to be high. Around 40 percent of formerly imprisoned people released from Indiana state prisons in 2005 reported being unemployed in the years following their release, according to the director of education of the Indiana Department of Correction, John M. Nally, and coauthors, writing in the Journal of Correctional Education in 2011. According to the study, that figure rose to roughly 65 percent in the late 2000s, potentially due to worsening economic conditions.152 Putting a dollar value to this lost productivity, as this report seeks to do, is another matter. In a 2001 paper, sociologist Bruce Western, along with economists David Weiman and Jeffrey R. Kling, found that prison time had a significant negative effect on subsequent earnings, on the order of a 10 to 30 percent reduction. But they stopped short of separating this effect into individual causes of reduced job prospects — such as arrest, conviction, and time served behind bars — finding that more data was needed and that “studying the effects of contact with the criminal justice system is a hard scientific problem.”153 In a 2002 paper, Western reached a similar result, writing that incarceration disrupts key “life transitions,” causing slow wage growth among returning citizens and leading to a 10 to 20 percent reduction in wages.154 One might expect this effect to be proportional with the length of sentence, if time behind bars conveys more than a stigma — for example, if prison causes people to lose some of the skills necessary for success in the workplace or prevents them from gaining new skills. In fact, one recent paper by economist Michael Mueller-Smith concluded that formerly incarcerated people do earn less after release, and that the effect increases based on how 26 Brennan Center for Justice long the person spent behind bars. Mueller-Smith used administrative data from both Harris County and the state of Texas to compare the economic outcomes for defendants who, despite being similarly situated, were randomly assigned to different judges in Houston. This method revealed that each additional year of incarceration reduced the likelihood of future employment by 3.6 percentage points. He wrote that “among felony defendants with stable pre-charge income incarcerated for one or more years, reemployment drops by at least 24 percent in the 5 years after being released.”155 Many other researchers have used longitudinal data — studies that track a group of individuals over time — to examine how incarceration affects earnings over the long term. Sociologists Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett in 1999,156 Western again in a 2006 book,157 sociologist Amanda Geller and coauthors in 2006,158 economist Steven Raphael in 2007,159 and the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2010160 all used this research method, finding a significant negative employment effect. People with a Felony Conviction While there is little doubt that incarceration negatively impacts lifetime earnings, researchers have yet to determine how much of this impact is due to imprisonment — which entails prolonged separation from the job market and (research shows) a severe social stigma — and how much stems from the stigmatizing effect of a criminal conviction alone. This is an important question because, as noted above, previous research showed that the number of people with a felony conviction is likely to be very large. While several scholars have used longitudinal data to study the effect of imprisonment, few have done the same to estimate the effect of conviction. The authors of this study found only one such study, by economist Richard B. Freeman in 1991. Freeman estimated that a criminal conviction translates to a 10–15 percent reduction in weeks worked annually, compared with 25–30 percent for incarceration.161 Other studies have simply assumed that conviction and imprisonment affect someone equally. The CEPR studies discussed in the previous section also reviewed the literature to find an average penalty paid by formerly incarcerated workers and then, assuming that people with a conviction alone would face the same penalty, applied it to the entire justice-involved population. Ultimately, CEPR’s 2010 report estimated that conviction and incarceration lowered male employment by more than 1.5 percentage points and resulted in a loss to the U.S. economy of $57–$65 billion in economic output.162 The 2016 update, working under the same assumption, found that incarceration reduced the labor pool by 1.7 to 1.9 million workers in 2014, translating to $78–$87 billion in annual lost economic output.163 Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings People with a Misdemeanor Conviction The authors of this report found no study specifically analyzing the effect of a misdemeanor conviction. However, some studies have found that even a minor criminal record can have profound employment implications. In one 2014 paper, sociologist and legal scholar Christopher Uggen concluded that there is a “much broader range of impropriety” that can impact employment opportunities. Uggen identified a 4 percentage point reduction in employer callbacks for people with only a minor arrest record. Uggen also observed that the effect of conviction alone was an understudied problem in sociology.164 Even today, few researchers have investigated these “lesser boundaries of stigma.”165 Where they have, the results suggest a wide variety of experiences. A study by criminologist and statistician Daniel Nagin and economist Joel Waldfogel, for example, tied labor outcomes to 27 Brennan Center for Justice the type of conviction, concluding that fraud convictions, which imply a breach of trust, create serious economic consequences, while convictions implying no breach of trust may not.166 All told, this makes the effect of a misdemeanor conviction an important area for analysis. Other developing research investigates whether an arrest has its own effect on wages, potentially explaining misdemeanor effects on wages or confounding attempts to analyze them. Uggen’s research, mentioned above, suggested that people with an arrest record were slightly less likely to receive callback interviews.167 Using longitudinal data, one recent paper by economist Amanda Sheely argues that arrest, rather than conviction or incarceration, is in fact what drives economic loss.168 However, others disagree, finding that “entry-level contacts in the form of arrest are largely uncorrelated with wages.”169 Another paper, forthcoming from Mueller-Smith, also explores this issue using U.S. Census Bureau data.170 Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings Appendix B: Methodology A ll models of population size relied on data on the number of people who interact with each level of the criminal justice system, combined with internally developed models of recidivism and mortality. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) was used to supplement data gaps on misdemeanors. NLSY data also underpins this report’s analyses of the earnings effects of justice involvement; as described below, the authors used a propensity-score matching model to compare justice-involved people with highly similar, non-justice-involved people. In early drafts of the report, NLSY Geocode data, which provides information on the location of NLSY participants, was also used under agreement with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to refine these estimates. Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the authors were unable to access the computer where Geocode data was stored (and, contractually, the only place where the authors were permitted to access it). Therefore, in the final draft, regional data was used as a substitute. The sources of data for each factor are explained in turn below. I. Estimates of Population Size Formerly Incarcerated Individuals To estimate the formerly incarcerated population, for each year studied, this report sums the total number of people released from prison, subtracts people who have likely recidivated, and then controls for mortality. The following data was used for each step of this analysis: Data on people leaving prison. Data on prison releases for the years 1960 through 2016 was obtained from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Yearly reports provide data as far back as 1978; for the remaining years, a BJS historical report stretches back to 1850.171 Prison release data was incorporated going back to 1965 only, because mortality figures suggest that the number of formerly imprisoned people still living but released before 1965 is negligible. Recidivism data. Rates tracking recidivism in threeand five-year increments are among those most commonly referred to by criminal justice researchers, making them an obvious choice when designing a study.172 But recidivism rates vary widely based on how long someone has been out of prison, rising quickly in the period immediately after release and ultimately reaching a plateau.173 That makes generally used recidivism rates, on their own, inadequate to estimate how many people have left prison but have since returned. Applying a five-year recidivism rate to a group of people released in 1980, for example, would not accurately estimate how many returned between 1980 and 2017. 28 Brennan Center for Justice Drawing from previous research, the authors calculated new recidivism rates that vary based on how long someone has been out of prison. This calculation was performed using the National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) dataset.174 While the NCRP does not include recidivism rates, it does have unique identifying variables (“Inmate_ID”) for each person entering or leaving prison, which allowed us to calculate recidivism rates based on when a person leaves prison and when he or she reenters it. For example, the results show that someone released in 2017 has a 3 percent chance of returning to prison during the study period. But someone released 20 years prior, in 1997, has a 65 percent chance of recidivating before 2017. Because of limitations on the data in the NCRP dataset, rates used in this report were constructed for roughly 25 years — specifically, for each cohort of releases from 1991 to 2016 — and then extrapolated backwards. These recidivism rates were then matched to each cohort of released prisoners; for example, someone released in 1991 was matched with a 25-year recidivism rate. Theoretically, this method should model the ebb and flow of prison populations. Numerous states inconsistently report prison information to the NCRP, which may confound any recidivism estimates. The authors followed the Neal and Rick (2014) recommendation and restricted the report’s recidivism analyses to 11 states that are identified as having consistent reports: California, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, South Dakota, Virginia, and Washington.175 Mortality data. Prisons are uniquely harmful to the physical and mental health of people incarcerated there.176 To calculate a realistic mortality estimate, the authors combined data from several sources, creating a new mortality estimate designed to model the unique health problems faced by previously incarcerated people. Starting with a 2007 study by physician Ingrid Binswanger, the authors conclude that people released from prison face mortality rates 3.5 times higher than the general public.177 Binswanger’s study focused only on Washington State, but lacking any satisfactory alternative, the authors felt more comfortable generalizing it to the rest of the population than working with mortality data that failed to take into account the effect of prison. With those results in hand, mortality figures were derived by starting with figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and mortality rates were multiplied by 3.5 to calculate new survival rates.178 Demographic data. Last, the authors turned again to the BJS and NCRP datasets for this report’s demographic estimate of the formerly imprisoned population. Drawing Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings from the NCRP, the authors used the 11 consistent state reports identified in Neal and Rick (2014) to construct a demographic breakdown of prison releases from 1991 to 2016, noting the proportions of each gender and race. White women, for example, represent 6 percent of the people released from state prison from 1991 to 2016. More than 700,000 individuals were released from prison in 2010, according to BJS data, and the authors assumed that approximately 26,600, or about 6 percent, were white women. The authors then applied race- and gender-specific mortality rates from the CDC and kept only non-recidivist released prisoners in the sample. Tables illustrating this process are available in supplemental data online. Felony Conviction The majority of people convicted of a felony offense will be sentenced to either a term of imprisonment or probation. Therefore, probation is used as a proxy for felony convictions not ending in imprisonment. This is an imprecise proxy for the reasons laid out in the report; specifically, some people convicted of felonies will serve a term of incarceration in jail or be ordered to pay a fine. As a result, the figure presented here may represent an underestimate. Like the preceding model, this estimate operates by starting with the average “flow” of people affected by the criminal justice system in a particular way, then discounting that population using recidivism and mortality estimates. The model proceeds with this data: Probation entries. Entry into probation is used as a proxy for conviction of a felony without imprisonment. Data on probation entries for the years 1980 through 2016 was obtained from BJS. The authors were not able to extend the Bureau’s estimate back through 1965 to match the previous model.179 Probation recidivism data. For recidivism rates within the first five years of probation, the authors used a BJS report that tracked individuals placed on federal probation in 2005 until 2010. Within five years, 43 percent of those placed on federal probation in 2005 were rearrested for a new offense.180 For recidivism after that point, drawing from the NCRP, the authors used the same recidivism rates constructed for estimating the formerly imprisoned population.181 The authors also subtracted people who entered probation from prison, relying on the National Prisoner Statistics Program, to ensure that people accounted for in the previous section would not be double counted. Specifically, the authors used the variables RLCOPROM and RLCOPROF, which track conditional releases to probation or shock probation.182 Mortality data. The authors assumed that the mortality rates of individuals who have been placed on probation are higher than the mortality rates of individuals with no 29 Brennan Center for Justice criminal record or justice involvement, but lower than the formerly imprisoned population. To estimate mortality, the authors drew from the CDC’s most recent National Vital Statistics Report.183 Black male mortality, being above average, is used as a proxy for mortality rates of people who have entered probation at some point in their lives. Nature of offense. Following this process so far would produce an estimate of the number of people who have served a term of probation without being incarcerated for the offense that led to their probation. To identify how many entered probation due to a felony conviction, rather than a misdemeanor, the authors relied on a series of BJS reports that include the ratio of felony to misdemeanor offenses for adults on probation in each year.184 As with the preceding model, tables illustrating this process are available in the supplemental data online. Misdemeanor Conviction Like the preceding models, this analysis estimates the number of people annually affected by the misdemeanor system and then controls for recidivism and mortality. Due to the nature of the misdemeanor system, this process required intermediate steps. Annual misdemeanor convictions. To estimate the number of misdemeanor convictions annually, the authors initially sought data on the number of misdemeanor cases filed annually. In reviewing existing literature, the authors found estimates concluding that more than 13 million misdemeanor cases were filed in both 2015 and 2016.185 But these two data points were insufficient to build a full estimate of the misdemeanor caseload. To fill in the gaps, the authors opted for a different approach: calculating the number of misdemeanor arrests and then estimating how often they convert to conviction. That process started by tallying arrests according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for offenses that are likely to be misdemeanors. The offenses counted as misdemeanors were as follows: “other assaults,” stolen property, vandalism, prostitution, gambling, driving under the influence (DUI), liquor law violations, drunkenness, disorderly conduct, vagrancy, and “all other offenses,” with each arrest representing one individual case. This closely parallels a process used by previous researchers.186 Arrest data was available through 1995. There are several reasons why this method might understate the number of misdemeanor convictions annually. For one, the UCR does not include arrests for non-DUI traffic offenses, some of which, depending on state law, may be misdemeanors. Further, some number of misdemeanor cases begin as felony arrests, and not all misdemeanor cases begin with an arrest. However, after extensive research, the authors concluded that this method was the best of imperfect alternatives.187 Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings To calculate how many of these arrests convert to convictions, the authors turned to the NLSY, a survey that followed a group of nationally representative young people starting in both 1979 (the NLSY79 cohort) and 1997 (the NLSY97 cohort). Critically, the NLSY97 provides data on whether, in a given year, respondents were arrested and offers a few broadly defined categories of criminal offenses. The NLSY97 recorded individual arrests and convictions for three offenses likely to correspond to misdemeanors or lower-level offenses: theft, major traffic offenses, and public order offenses. The authors assumed that the average conviction rate for these three offenses was likely to be statistically similar to the conviction rate for misdemeanor offenses in general. Therefore, finding the percentage of arrestees who were convicted of these three offenses would produce a fairly accurate estimate of the conviction rate for all misdemeanor offenses. The authors estimated misdemeanor conviction rates for the years 1995 through 2015 and calculated an average misdemeanor conviction rate of 72 percent — roughly in line with past literature on this subject.188 Multiplying each year’s conviction rate by the number of arrests identified in the previous step yielded a rough estimate of the number of misdemeanor convictions in a year. Recidivism data. Misdemeanors typically result in fines, alternatives to incarceration, or short sentences typically served in jails rather than prisons. Therefore, this report’s model had to control for something new: the possibility of multiple misdemeanor convictions within a single year. The authors found only one analysis discussing intra-year recidivism: a public health paper that studied jails in several large jurisdictions, concluding that each person admitted to a jail in these jurisdictions entered 1.4 times annually.189 Using multiple jail admissions as a rough proxy for multiple misdemeanor convictions, the authors controlled for recidivism by first dividing the conviction estimate in every year by 1.4. Recidivism data from an Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council report, which included nine-year reconviction rates for people released from probation for a misdemeanor offense, was then applied.190 Mortality data. The authors assumed that people convicted of only a misdemeanor have lower mortality rates than people who experience extended incarceration. With that in mind, Black male mortality rates were again used as an estimate for the mortality rates of Americans with misdemeanor convictions. Data Limitations Data on America’s sprawling criminal justice system is surprisingly sparse. Gaps must at times be filled by interpolation or approximations based on limited available research. As a result, the authors note that the estimates in this study are subject to the following limitations: 30 Brennan Center for Justice As noted above, this report’s estimate of the formerly imprisoned population is based on data spanning from 1965 through 2017. But the other two estimates provided in this report cover a more limited range of time: the estimate of the felony-convicted population relies on data that reaches back only as far as 1980, and data used to estimate the misdemeanor-convicted population is available only through 1995. Estimates of the formerly imprisoned population, and the population that has been convicted of a felony but not imprisoned, were designed to overlap as little as possible. But without better data, the authors cannot entirely rule out the possibility that some people were counted twice, once in each estimate. Additionally, this report’s estimate of those who have been convicted of felonies but not imprisoned is likely a lower bound, as it does not account for those who have been convicted of felonies and sentenced to some sanction other than probation or prison (e.g., jail or a fine). Relatedly, due to a lack of data, the misdemeanor-convicted population estimate almost certainly includes people who have been convicted of a more serious offense or even spent time in prison. As a result, this estimate should be understood to overlap with the other population estimates presented in this report. Data on the misdemeanor system is very sparse. The estimate of the misdemeanor-convicted population presented in this report was built using what is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the best available data on this group. However, this report’s estimate may ultimately prove high as this field of research grows and a better understanding of the model’s key elements — for example, intra-year misdemeanor recidivism — develops. Some of these limitations are discussed further in the main body of the report. II. Estimates of Earnings Effects This report’s primary goal was to evaluate the effect of criminal justice involvement on someone’s ability to earn a living wage. This report accomplishes that goal by using a statistical method to compare people who are highly similar to each other except in one way: criminal justice involvement (and degree of involvement). Note that while these methods study the effects of conviction and incarceration, they cannot exclude the possibility that earnings reductions were at least partially caused by other types of justice involvement incidental to those events — e.g., arrest and pretrial incarceration. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings Survey Data To accomplish this goal, the authors again started with the NLSY. As noted above, NLSY Geocode data was initially used, pursuant to an agreement with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but due to the intervening pandemic it could not be relied on to develop final estimates for this report. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 The NLSY79 is a nationally representative sample of 12,686 men and women, initially surveyed in 1979. At the time of the baseline survey, the sample respondents were 14 to 22 years old. Sample respondents were interviewed annually through 1994 and then biennially thereafter until 2014. Thus, the NLSY79 provides information on a large, nationally representative sample aged 14 to 57. NLSY79 data has an event history format. The start and end of important life events are recorded, especially labor market behavior, enabling users to ascertain the respondents’ annual earnings and education level in each survey year. At baseline, the NLSY79 provides demographic information on age, gender, and race or ethnicity. In follow-up survey interviews, the NLSY79 asked an extensive set of questions on criminal activity and criminal justice involvement. From this, the authors were able to acquire data on the following: Demographic characteristics. NLSY79 data enabled the authors to track the broad demographic status of sample participants, i.e., age, gender, racial-ethnic identity, and educational attainment. Earning potential. In the NLSY79, the authors focused on earnings data supplied in each interview year. Earnings were measured as total earnings over the prior 12 months. There were numerous outliers in the earnings data, so the authors removed the top 2 percent of earners from the sample. Criminal justice contact. The authors defined criminal justice contact in two distinct ways: (1) conviction without incarceration, and (2) incarceration. The NLSY79 provides data on both, but not for every survey year. The authors therefore focused on the 1980 survey year, in which respondents were asked whether they were convicted of a crime. But the NLSY79 did not ask respondents explicitly whether they were incarcerated. Instead, this information had to be gleaned from the type of residence the respondent reported. If the respondent stated that he or she was living in a jail or prison, the authors considered the respondent incarcerated for that survey year. The clear limitation of the NLSY79 data is that survey participants were likely to understate justice involvement in any given year. And, undoubtedly, some respon- 31 Brennan Center for Justice dents could become convicted or arrested for a crime after the 1980 surveys. Similarly, a respondent could have been incarcerated between survey years. Geography of residence. The NLSY79 data adds information on a survey respondent’s region of residence. Regional identifiers enabled the authors to incorporate key measures related to both earnings and justice involvement (unemployment and poverty rates). The original analyses used state of residence, based on NLSY Geocode data, as the geographical identifier for these measures. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Like the NLSY79, the NLSY97 followed a cohort of participants annually or biannually, from 1997 to 2015. There were approximately 9,000 participants born between 1980 and 1984, and at the initial interview in 1997, the participants’ ages ranged from 12 to 17. As with the NLSY79, the later survey again enabled the authors to track demographic status, earning potential, and geography of residence. The NLSY97 also added more comprehensive criminal justice variables. In contrast to the NLSY79, the NLSY97 provides data on arrest, conviction, and incarceration in every survey year. For each survey year, the NLSY97 asked respondents whether they had ever been arrested, convicted of a crime, or incarcerated. It also offers some granularity on the nature of the arrest and conviction. The NLSY97 data on criminal justice contact is thus richer than that provided by the NLSY79. The limitation of the NLSY97 data rests with the age of the sample population. Because respondents were teenagers at the time of the initial interview, this means that they were no older than 35 years at the time of the last survey, in 2015. Statistical Methods Using this survey data, the authors sought to compare people who become involved in the criminal justice system with each other and with other similarly situated people in the survey dataset. Propensity-Score Matching To do so, the authors used propensity-score matching (PSM). This approach compares those in contact with the criminal justice system with others who have no criminal justice contact, focusing on people who are “similar” in terms of demographic and regional characteristics. Propensity-score matching uses control variables to calculate the probability that someone who has had no criminal justice contact could have been justice involved. PSM calculates a “propensity score” based on how similar those in the comparison group look to those in the treatment group. The higher the propensity score, the Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings more similar the individuals in the comparison group look to those in the treatment group. The authors compared justice-involved and non-justice-involved groups based on their similarities in these traits: demographic characteristics (age, race-ethnicity, gender, and education), regional characteristics (poverty rates and unemployment rates), and interview-year fixed effects (i.e., indicators for each interview year). The authors used the PSM method to analyze earnings loss over time due to incarceration or conviction in early adulthood (i.e., early 20s on average). To do this, the authors evaluated earnings among similarly matched groups in the year the respondent was interviewed and up to 30 years thereafter. This enabled the authors to plot the trajectory of earnings for justice-involved and non-justice-involved individuals over a 30-year working period. This 30-year analysis begins in the individuals’ late 20s and therefore represents the prime working years of people in the analysis sample. For the sake of clarity, the authors split the 30-year period into 10-year blocks and defined years 1–9 as “early career,” years 10–19 as “mid career,” and years 20–30 as “late career.” The authors also conducted numerous sensitivity checks using additional control variables, including gaps in employment, engagement in criminal or delinquent activities, and other regional characteristics (such as crime, arrest, and incarceration rates). The results from these analyses were statistically similar to the ones presented in this report. However, the authors wanted to maintain the integrity of the PSM model by ensuring that the means and the variances of the PSM-balanced sample were close to 0 and 1, respectively. Our specification, albeit sparse in controls, characterized a fully balanced sample (in contrast to other specifications with numerous control variables). Heckman Correction Although the PSM method helps minimize bias from omitted variables, there is another problem that could bias incarceration and conviction estimates. PSM estimations can observe and account for earnings only of individuals who are employed. People who are not working may have a different earning potential, such that if the authors could observe their earnings outcomes they would likely be significantly lower than the earnings of people who are employed. This inability to observe the outcomes of people who are not working could bias the report’s estimates. 32 Brennan Center for Justice To remedy this sample selection problem, the authors used a Heckman two-step correction procedure.191 In the first step, the model uses an instrumental variable (i.e., region- and year-specific minimum wage rates) to predict which individuals are employed (versus not), thereby producing an inverse Mills ratio. The inverse Mills ratio measures what the authors cannot observe — the probability of being employed over the cumulative probability of employment. In the second step, the inverse Mills ratio is then included in the general earnings equation along with the incarceration and conviction indicators and individual- and region-level characteristics. The estimates on incarceration and conviction should now be purged of the bias from sample selection. The authors found that after accounting for bias from sample selection using the Heckman two-step procedure, the lifetime earnings losses from incarceration and conviction remained statistically significant and negative. These estimates are substantially larger than the PSM results for both incarceration and conviction, suggesting that the sample selection bias from zero-earners understated the general findings. Alternative Approaches Ideally, analyses of the economic impact of incarceration and conviction would also be performed using fixed effects (FE) estimation. This method would not only account for observed differences between justice-involved and non-justice-involved individuals, but also control for unobserved differences (such as productivity, values, and propensity to commit crimes) that bias the estimated effects of incarceration and conviction. However, longitudinal data is unavailable for the number of convictions in the NLSY79, preventing the authors from producing FE estimates on the impact of conviction (without incarceration) on earnings. While the NLSY79 does provide longitudinal data on incarceration, it notes that status only in the year that someone reported actual incarceration; comparing people within that single year would rely on an incarcerated sample of less than 1 percent of the overall sample population. This limits the report’s ability to present robust FE lifetime earnings trajectories as there are relatively few incarcerated respondents to compute “within-individual” differences over time.192 To address this limitation, the study relied on the PSM method to measure the effects of conviction and incarceration as well as establish lifetime earning trajectories for the justice-involved. PSM does not rely on within-individual differences and thus provides more efficient estimators of conviction and incarceration effects. The study also used two strategies to account for bias from omitted variables. The first strategy employed proxy variables for unobserved factors such as attitudes, work ethic, and cognitive ability. A simple strategy to mitigate omitted variable bias is to use the proxy variable – ordinary Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings least squares solution.193 This approach simply controls for observed variables that might be good substitutes for factors the authors cannot observe. Both the NLSY79 and NLSY97 datasets provide suitable proxy variables for key unobserved variables. In the NLSY79, the authors used as proxy variables indicators that explicitly measure the respondent’s attitude toward school and work, cognitive ability (Armed Forces Qualification Test), and locus of control (Rotter scale score).194 For the NLSY97, proxy variables the authors used for unobserved factors included the number of days absent from school, percentage of peers belonging to a gang, what the respondent thinks is the percent chance she or he would be arrested after stealing a car, and cognitive ability (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery). Accounting for these proxy variables in the lifetime earnings model generally lowered the estimated effects of incarceration and conviction. However, this approach did not erase the robust effects of incarceration and conviction on lifetime earnings, which remained both significant and substantive. Some critics argue that the proxy variable – ordinary least squares solution is inadequate because proxies may not fully capture the effects of unobserved variables. In light of this concern, the authors implemented another strategy that bound the estimated incarceration and conviction effects based on the proportionality of the selection on observables to the selection on unobservables.195 Simply put, the approach makes assumptions about the degree to which the selection on observables is proportional to the selection on unobservables, then shows how estimated effects change based on this proportionality. Oster (2019) formalizes this theory and provides an accompanying STATA command (psacalc) to execute the procedure.196 The findings show that selection on unobservables would have to be stronger than the selection on observables to completely explain away or erase the effects of incarceration and conviction on lifetime earnings. 33 Brennan Center for Justice Additionally, the authors performed analyses using the logged form of earnings. This conveniently produces estimates that can be interpreted as percentages (rather than dollar amounts). However, logging the earnings outcome also had the side effect of condensing the data, which inadvertently made the lifetime earnings effects appear flatter over time. Given this, the authors used annual earnings (adjusted for inflation) as the preferred outcome measure. Further, the authors also accounted for pre-incarceration/conviction earnings, and the results remained consistent. Data Limitations To summarize points made elsewhere, the wage loss estimates in this report are subject to the following limitations: The authors cannot exclude the possibility that experiences incidental to conviction and imprisonment — that is, arrest and pretrial imprisonment — contribute to the effects identified here. PSM cannot fully account for unobserved differences between treatment and control groups. As noted above, these concerns were addressed by employing additional methods to confirm the results. Further sensitivity checks were also performed. Because this report evaluates justice involvement in the 1980 survey year, it cannot account for the possibility that survey participants would become involved in the justice system again, at a later date. All justice involvement in the NLSY is self-reported. Therefore, there is a risk of measurement error, as people may misrepresent their criminal history. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings Endnotes 1 Kriston McIntosh et al., “Examining the Black-White Wealth Gap,” Brookings Institution, February 27, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/ blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap. 2 Dionissi Aliprantis and Daniel Carroll, What Is Behind the Persistence of the Racial Wealth Gap?, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 2019, 1, https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publications/ economic-commentary/2019-economic-commentaries/ec-201903what-is-behind-the-persistence-of-the-racial-wealth-gap.aspx. See also William Darity Jr. et al., What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap, Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, April 2018, https://socialequity.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/ what-we-get-wrong.pdf. 3 Calvin Schermerhorn, “Why the Racial Wealth Gap Persists, More than 150 Years After Emancipation,” Washington Post, June 19, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/06/19/why-racialwealth-gap-persists-more-than-years-after-emancipation. 4 See Report of the Sentencing Project to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance Regarding Racial Disparities in the United States Criminal Justice System, The Sentencing Project, March 2018, https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/ un-report-on-racial-disparities. 5 New York Civil Liberties Union, “Stop-and-Frisk Data,” last accessed August 7, 2020, https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-Friskdata. A federal judge also concluded that the program operated with discriminatory intent. See Floyd v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 540, 661 (S.D.N.Y. 2013). of Justice Statistics, accessed August 20, 2019, https://www.bjs.gov/ index.cfm?ty=nps; and Margaret Werner Cahalan, Historical Corrections in the United States, 1850–1984, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1986, 182, https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ hcsus5084.pdf. 12 For a discussion of recidivism rates, see Mariel Alper et al., 2018 Update on Prisoner Recidivism: A 9-Year Follow-Up Period (2005– 2014), Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2018, 3, https://www.bjs.gov/ index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=17. 13 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “National Corrections Reporting Program, 1991–2016: Selected Variables,” 2018, https://www.icpsr. umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies/37021/summary; and Crystal S. Yang, “Local Labor Markets and Criminal Recidivism,” Journal of Public Economics 147 (2016): 16–29, http://scholar.harvard.edu/ files/cyang/files/labor_recidivism_dec2016.pdf. 14 See, e.g., Beth Schwartzapfel, “How Bad Is Prison Health Care? Depends on Who’s Watching,” Marshall Project, February 26, 2018, https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/02/25/how-bad-is-prison-health-care-depends-on-who-s-watching. 15 Ingrid A. Binswanger et al., “Release from Prison — A High Risk of Death for Former Inmates,” New England Journal of Medicine 356, no. 2 (2007), http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa064115; and Elizabeth Arias and Jiaquan Xu, “United States Life Tables, 2017,” National Vital Statistics System, 2019, tables 5–12, https://www.cdc. gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr66/nvsr66_03.pdf. 6 Timothy Williams, “Study Supports Suspicion that Police Are More Likely to Use Force on Blacks,” New York Times, July 7, 2016, https:// www.nytimes.com/2016/07/08/us/study-supports-suspicion-thatpolice-use-of-force-is-more-likely-for-blacks.html. 16 In 2017, the year studied in this report, Virginia’s population was 8.14 million. “Population Distribution by Race/Ethnicity,” Kaiser Family Foundation, accessed May 27, 2020, https://www.kff.org/other/ state-indicator/distribution-by-raceethnicity/?dataView=1¤tTimeframe=1&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D. 7 Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/ us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html. 17 The average prison stay is about three years. Danielle Kaeble, Time Served in State Prison, 2016, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2018, https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6446. 8 For example, the late Devah Pager, a renowned sociologist, noted that racial discrimination and justice involvement both caused Black job applicants to miss out on opportunities. “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” American Journal of Sociology 108 (2003): 937, 958. This study, and its relationship to this report’s findings, will be discussed at greater length below. 18 See, e.g., Cherrie Bucknor and Alan Barber, The Price We Pay: Economic Costs of Barriers to Employment for Former Prisoners and People Convicted of Felonies, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2016, 1, 4–5, http://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/ employment-prisoners-felonies-2016-06.pdf?v=5; and John Schmitt and Kris Warner, Ex-offenders and the Labor Market, Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2010, 3, fig. 1, and 4, https://www.cepr. net/documents/publications/ex-offenders-2010-11.pdf. Roughly 60 percent of the American population is “working age.” “Quick Facts,” United States Census Bureau, accessed March 18, 2020, https://www. census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045218. 9 There is a risk that people with records in multiple states are counted twice in the FBI database, and records may not be promptly removed upon death, to say nothing of the confounding effects of sealing and expungement. That said, 70 million appears to be the consensus figure. See Matthew Friedman, “Just Facts: As Many Americans Have Criminal Records as College Diplomas,” Brennan Center for Justice, November 17, 2015, https://www.brennancenter. org/blog/just-facts-many-americans-have-criminal-records-college-diplomas, citing Gary Fields and John R. Emshwiller, “As Arrest Records Rise, Americans Find Consequences Can Last a Lifetime,” Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2014, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ as-arrest-records-rise-americans-find-consequences-can-last-a-lifetime-1408415402. For a potential comparison point, see “NGI Monthly Fact Sheet,” Next Generation Identification, last modified November 2019, https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/ngi-monthly-fact-sheet/ view (noting more than 77.7 million “criminal fingerprint” database entries). 10 By some estimates, half of all Americans may have had a family member incarcerated. See Every Second: The Impact of the Incarceration Crisis on America’s Families, FWD.us, 2018, https://everysecond. fwd.us/downloads/EverySecond.fwd.us.pdf. 11 “Corrections Statistical Analysis Tool (CSAT) – Prisoners,” Bureau 34 Brennan Center for Justice 19 Sarah K. S. Shannon et al., “The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People with Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010,” Demography 54, no. 5 (2017): 1804–5 and table 1. 20 This report assumes a mortality rate among the formerly imprisoned population 3.5 times higher than that of the general population. Previous researchers have assumed mortality rates roughly 1.5 times higher than that of the general population. Shannon et al., “The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution,” 1802. For more on this matter, see appendix B. 21 James Cullen, “Despite Progress, Prison Racial Disparities Persist,” Brennan Center for Justice, August 19, 2016, https://www. brennancenter.org/blog/despite-progress-prison-racial-disparities-persist. 22 E. Ann Carson, Prisoners in 2018, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2020, 6, table 3, https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6846. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings 23 Roughly 1.5 million people were in a state or federal prison in 2017. Jennifer Bronson and E. Ann Carson, Prisoners in 2017, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2019, 1, https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6546. Factoring in the 7.7 million formerly imprisoned people identified in this report leads to the conclusion that roughly 9.2 million Americans had been imprisoned or were incarcerated in 2017. 24 Sean Rosenmerkel, Matthew Durose, and Donald Farole Jr., Felony Sentences in State Courts, 2006 – Statistical Tables, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2009, 4, table 1.2, https://bjs.gov/content/pub/ pdf/fssc06st.pdf. 25 Rosenmerkel, Durose, and Farole, Felony Sentences in State Courts, 4, table 1.2. 26 Joshua A. Markman et al., Recidivism of Offenders Placed on Federal Community Supervision in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2014, table 4, https://www.bjs.gov/ content/pub/pdf/ropfcs05p0510.pdf. 27 Lauren E. Glaze and Thomas P. Bonczar, Probation and Parole in the United States, 2005, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006, table 3, https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ppus05.pdf. 28 Further, in 2001 BJS changed the way it reports the racial composition of the probation population. Compare Lauren E. Glaze, Probation and Parole in the United States, 2001, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002, 4, table 4, https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1111, with Bureau of Justice Statistics, Probation and Parole in the United States, 2000, 2001, 6, table 5, https://www.bjs.gov/index. cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1230. 29 According to BJS, roughly 28 percent of people convicted of a felony were sentenced to incarceration in a jail. Rosenmerkel, Durose, and Farole, Felony Sentences in State Courts, 4, table 1.2. However, this data is from 2006. The portion of people sentenced to jail may have changed in the intervening decade as prisons became less crowded, making them more attractive options to sentencing judges seeking to impose a term of incarceration. 30 More than 90 percent of cases are resolved by plea bargain, for example. Emily Yoffe, “Innocence Is Irrelevant,” Atlantic, September 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/ innocence-is-irrelevant/534171. 31 Megan T. Stevenson and Sandra G. Mayson, “The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice,” Boston University Law Review 98 (2018): 735–36, http://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2018/06/STEVENSON-MAYSON.pdf. As law professor Alexandra Natapoff puts it, “The slipshod quality of petty offense processing is a dominant systemic norm that competes vigorously with and sometimes overwhelms foundational values of due process and adversarial adjudication.” Alexandra Natapoff, “Misdemeanors,” South California Law Review 85 (2012): 1315–16, https://southerncalifornialawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/85_1313.pdf. For a survey of New York City’s misdemeanor system, see Issa Kohler-Hausmann, “Managerial Justice and Mass Misdemeanors,” Stanford Law Review 66, no. 3 (2014): 629–39, http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/wp-content/ uploads/sites/3/2014/03/66_Stan_L_Rev_611_Kohler-Hausmann. pdf. 32 Stevenson and Mayson, “The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice,” 737; Alexandra Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime (New York: Basic Books, 2018), 258. 33 Stevenson and Mayson, “The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice,” 739–40. 34 The same is technically true of felony convictions not entailing imprisonment, but the official recidivism data used in the report’s model adequately captures that risk. 35 See Anne C. Spaulding et al., “HIV/AIDS Among Inmates of and Releasees from US Correctional Facilities, 2006: Declining Share of Epidemic but Persistent Public Health Opportunity,” PLOS ONE 4, no. 11 (2009): table 2, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0007558. 35 Brennan Center for Justice 36 Zhen Zeng, Jail Inmates in 2017, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2019, 2, table 1, https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6547. 37 See, e.g., “Hampden County Sherriff’s Department: Research,” accessed February 25, 2020, http://hcsdma.org/public-resources/ research. 38 Zeng, Jail Inmates in 2017, 8 table 8. One recent paper by the Prison Policy Initiative sought to bridge this gap using a medical dataset, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which tracks how many times someone has been “arrested and booked” in the year studied. The paper concluded that 4.9 million unique people are arrested and jailed annually. But as the authors concede, the dataset they used was not built with the justice system in mind. Alexi Jones and Wendy Sawyer, Arrest, Release, Repeat: How Police and Jails Are Misused to Respond to Social Problems, Prison Policy Initiative, 2019, “Read About the Data,” https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/ repeatarrests.html#methodology. 39 Zeng, Jail Inmates in 2017, 8; and New York City Department of Correction (hereinafter NYC DOC), “NYC Department of Correction at a Glance: Information for the 12 Months of FY 2019,” accessed May 28, 2020, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doc/downloads/press-release/ DOC_At_Glance_FY2019_072319.pdf. 40 See, e.g., Benjamin Weiser, “Kalief Browder’s Suicide Brought Changes to Rikers. Now It Has Led to a $3 Million Settlement,” New York Times, January 24, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/ nyregion/kalief-browder-settlement-lawsuit.html. 41 Will Dobbie, Jacob Goldin, and Crystal S. Yang, “The Effects of Pretrial Detention on Conviction, Future Crimes, and Employment: Evidence from Randomly Assigned Judges,” American Economic Review 108, no. 2 (2018): 201–40l, https://www.aeaweb.org/ articles?id=10.1257/aer.20161503; and Nick Pinto, “The Bail Trap,” New York Times Magazine, August 13, 2015, http://www.nytimes. com/2015/08/16/magazine/the-bail-trap.html?_r=1. 42 NYC DOC, “NYC Department of Correction at a Glance”; and NYC Open Data, “Inmate Admissions,” updated February 1, 2020, https:// data.cityofnewyork.us/Public-Safety/Inmate-Admissions/ 6teu-xtgp. 43 Zhen Zeng, Jail Inmates in 2018, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2020, 2, table 1, https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ji18.pdf. 44 Adjuwa Thomas, legal assistant, Legal Division, NYC DOC, email message to author, June 14, 2019. 45 Thomas Ahearn, “NAPBS Survey Reveals 95 Percent of Employers Conducting Employment Background Screening in 2018,” ESR News blog, July 2, 2018, https://www.esrcheck.com/wordpress/2018/07/02/napbs-survey-reveals-95-percent-employers-conducting-employment-background-screening-2018. 46 Devah Pager, Bruce Western, and Naomi Sugie, “Sequencing Disadvantage: Barriers to Employment Facing Young Black and White Men with Criminal Records,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 623, no. 1 (2009): 195–213, http:// scholar.harvard.edu/files/pager/files/annals_sequencingdisadvantage.pdf. 47 Society for Human Resource Management, Workers with Criminal Records, last updated May 17, 2018, https://www.shrm.org/ hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/pages/ second-chances.aspx. 48 Lucius Couloute and Daniel Kopf, Out of Prison & Out of Work: Unemployment Among Formerly Incarcerated People, Prison Policy Initiative, 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/outofwork. html. 49 Naomi F. Sugie, “Finding Work: A Smartphone Study of Job Searching, Social Contacts, and Wellbeing After Prison” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2014), https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/ grants/248487.pdf. 50 Michelle Natividad Rodriguez and Beth Avery, Unlicensed & Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings Untapped: Removing Barriers to State Occupational Licenses for People with Records, National Employment Law Project, 2016, https:// www.nelp.org/publication/unlicensed-untapped-removing-barriers-state-occupational-licenses. 51 Ruth Sangree, “Prison Inmates Fighting California’s Wildfires Can’t Do It Once They’re Released,” Brennan Center for Justice, August 17, 2018, https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/prison-inmates-fighting-californias-wildfires-cant-do-it-once-theyre-released. 52 Steven Raphael, “The Impact of Incarceration on the Employment Outcomes of Former Inmates: Policy Options for Fostering Self-Sufficiency and an Assessment of the Cost-Effectiveness of Current Corrections Policy,” Goldman School of Public Policy (working paper, Institute for Research on Poverty, Working Conference on Pathways to Self Sufficiency: Getting Ahead in an Era Beyond Welfare Reform, Madison, WI, September 6–7, 2007), 11, http://citeseerx.ist. psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.484.1144&rep=rep1&type=pdf. See also Christopher J. Lyons and Becky Pettit, “Compounded Disadvantage: Race, Incarceration, and Wage Growth” (National Poverty Center Working Paper Series #08-16, October 2008), https://static.prisonpolicy.org/scans/working_paper08-16. pdf; and Daniel Shoag and Stan Veuger, “The Economics of Prisoner Reentry,” in Education for Liberation: The Politics of Promise and Reform Inside and Beyond America’s Prisons, eds. Gerard Robinson and Elizabeth English Smith (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 35–36. incarceration, such as the incapacitating or deterrent effects of incarceration. While the effect at America’s current level of incarceration is arguably marginal, incarceration could lower crime by incapacitating individuals who engage in crime or deterring individuals from crime. Next, those “benefits” would be set against the “costs” of mass incarceration — such as the impact of imprisonment on children and families, and the economic costs detailed in this report. For discussions of the incapacitative and deterrent effects of imprisonment, see Daniel Kessler and Steven D. Levitt, “Using Sentence Enhancements to Distinguish Between Deterrence and Incapacitation,” Journal of Law and Economics 42, no. S1 (1999): 343–64; Francesco Drago, Roberto Galbiati, and Pietro Vertova, “The Deterrent Effects of Prison: Evidence from a Natural Experiment,” Journal of Political Economy 117, no. 2 (2009): 257–80; and Emily G. Owens, “More Time, Less Crime? Estimating the Incapacitative Effect of Sentence Enhancements,” Journal of Law and Economics 52, no. 3 (2009): 551–79. For an argument that such effects are marginal given the high current rates of incarceration, see Oliver Roeder, LaurenBrooke Eisen, and Julia Bowling, What Caused the Crime Decline?, Brennan Center for Justice, 2015, 7, 21–27, https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/what-caused-crime-decline. 54 See Dobbie, Goldin, and Yang, “The Effects of Pretrial Detention,” 203–4. 60 The authors also sought to use geocode data, obtained under agreement with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to account for state rather than regional criminal justice variables. Initial analyses using geocode data yielded promising results, indicating that imprisonment, felony conviction, and misdemeanor conviction were all associated with earnings loss. Due to its sensitive nature, though, geocode data could be analyzed only on-site at the Brennan Center for Justice, which became an impossibility as work on this report was being finalized during the Covid-19 pandemic in April and May 2020. As a result, the authors were unfortunately not able to incorporate geocode data into the final models. 55 Indeed, “higher levels of incarceration are associated with higher levels of both morbidity (percentage reporting fair or poor health) and mortality.” Robert R. Weidner and Jennifer Schultz, “Examining the Relationship Between U.S. Incarceration Rates and Population Health at the County Level,” SSM – Population Health 9 (2019), https://www. sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352827319300874; and Michael Massoglia and Brianna Remster, “Linkages Between Incarceration and Health,” Public Health Reports 134, no. 1 (2019): 8S–14S, https:// journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/0033354919826563. 61 Adam Looney and Nicholas Turner, Work and Opportunity Before and After Incarceration, Brookings Institution, 2018, 8, https://www. brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/es_20180314_looneyincarceration_final.pdf; Bernadette Rabuy and Daniel Kopf, Prisons of Poverty: Uncovering the Pre-Incarceration Incomes of the Imprisoned, Prison Policy Initiative, 2015, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/ reports/income.html (analyzing Bureau of Justice Statistics, Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities, 2004, https://www.icpsr. umich.edu/icpsrweb/NACJD/studies/4572). 56 Andrew P. Wilper, “The Health and Health Care of U.S. Prisoners: Results of a Nationwide Survey,” American Journal of Public Health 99, no. 4 (2009): 669; and David Cloud, On Life Support: Public Health in the Age of Mass Incarceration, Vera Institute of Justice, 2014, 4, https://www.vera.org/publications/on-life-support. 62 Center for Poverty Research, “What Are the Annual Earnings for a Full-Time Minimum Wage Worker?,” University of California, Davis, last updated January 12, 2018, https://poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/ what-are-annual-earnings-full-time-minimum-wage-worker. 53 Michael Mueller-Smith, “The Criminal and Labor Impacts of Incarceration” (working paper, University of Michigan, August 2015), 3, https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mgms/wp-content/uploads/ sites/283/2015/09/incar.pdf. 57 Larisa Antonisse and Rachel Garfield, “The Relationship Between Work and Health: Findings from a Literature Review,” Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, 2018, 2, https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issuebrief/the-relationship-between-work-and-health-findings-from-a-literature-review. Specific policy interventions focused on rehabilitation could blunt these effects. See Bruce Western, “The Rehabilitation Paradox,” New Yorker, May 6, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/ news/news-desk/the-rehabilitation-paradox. 58 Summarizing the psychological effects of prison, one scholar notes that prisons foster isolation, distrust, and diminished self-worth and may create a post-traumatic stress reaction. Craig Haney, “The Psychological Impact of Incarceration: Implications for Post-Prison Adjustment” (working paper, National Policy Conference, From Prison to Home: The Effect of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, and Communities, Washington, DC, January 30–31, 2002), https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/psychological-impact-incarceration-implications-post-prison-adjustment. 59 This report is not a cost-benefit analysis. However, its findings can be used by future researchers to conduct a truly comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of criminal justice policy, comparing the current state of mass incarceration to a specific, future reform proposal. Such an analysis would start by identifying some “benefits” of mass 36 Brennan Center for Justice 63 It is important to acknowledge that this approach may introduce some measurement error. While felony is a term of art in the legal world, it is possible that neither surveyors nor participants understood the term with that same degree of precision. As a result, participants may have under- or overreported felony involvement. While it is difficult to determine the effect of this survey measurement error, underreporting of felony records may be more likely. See Bruce Western et al., “Study Retention as Bias Reduction in a Hard-to-Reach Population,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 20 (2016): 5477–85, https://www.pnas.org/content/113/20/5477. 64 Dobbie, Goldin, and Yang, “The Effects of Pretrial Detention,” 203–4. 65 Christopher Uggen et al., “The Edge of Stigma: An Experimental Audit of the Effects of Low-Level Criminal Records on Employment,” Criminology 52, no. 4 (2014): 632–33, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ doi/10.1111/1745-9125.12051. 66 See Kohler-Hausmann, “Managerial Justice,” 643–49, 668–70. For the policy ramifications of this “marking” process, see Kohler-Hausmann, “Managerial Justice,” 690–92. For further development of this theory and a description of how the misdemeanor system disrupts lives, see Issa Kohler-Hausmann, Misdemeanorland (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings 67 N.Y. Veh. & Traf. Law §§ 1192(2) & 1193(1)(b)(i) (prescribing misdemeanor penalties for driving with a blood alcohol concentration greater than 0.08); and N.Y. Penal Law § 120.00 (defining simple assault as a misdemeanor). 68 Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity, City of New York, “NYC Opportunity 2018 Poverty Report,” 2018, 3, https://www1.nyc.gov/ assets/opportunity/pdf/NYCPov-Brochure-2018-Digital.pdf. See also Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity, City of New York, New York City Government Poverty Measure 2017: An Annual Report, 2019, 3, https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/opportunity/pdf/19_poverty_ measure_report.pdf and https://www1.nyc.gov/site/opportunity/ poverty-in-nyc/poverty-measure.page. 69 Eric M. Johnson, “More than 500,000 People Homeless in the United States: Report,” Reuters, November 19, 2015, https://www. reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness/500000-people-homeless-in-the-us. 70 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “NASA FY 2021 Budget Request,” 2020, https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/ atoms/files/fy2021_agency_fact_sheet.pdf; and National Aeronautics and Space Administration, “NASA Administrator Statement on Moon to Mars Initiative, FY 2021 Budget,” news release no. 20-015, February 10, 2020, https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-administrator-statement-on-moon-to-mars-initiative-fy-2021-budget. 71 “Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS): FY 2021 Budget Request at a Glance,” U.S. Department of Justice, 2020, https://www. justice.gov/doj/page/file/1246796/download. 72 See Bruce Western and Becky Pettit, “Incarceration and Racial Inequality in Men’s Employment,” ILR Review 54 (2000): 11–13. 73 Jeff Guo, “America Has Locked Up So Many Black People It Has Warped Our Sense of Reality,” Washington Post, February 26, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/america-has-locked-up-so-manyblack-people. 74 Wendy Sawyer, “How Much Do Incarcerated People Earn in Each State?,” Prison Policy Initiative, April 10, 2017, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages. 75 See Lauren-Brooke Eisen, “Paying for Your Time: How Charging Inmates Fees Behind Bars May Violate the Excessive Fines Clause,” Loyola Journal of Public Interest Law 15 (2014): 321–28; and Sawyer, “How Much Do Incarcerated People Earn in Each State?” Such deductions are permitted even in better-paying federal programs. See Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program Guideline, 64 Fed. Reg. 17000, 17011 (April 7, 1999). 76 See, e.g., Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 73–78. 77 For a recent discussion of this problem, see James M. Byrne, The Effectiveness of Prison Programming: A Review of the Research Literature Examining the Impact of Federal, State, and Local Inmate Programming on Post-Release Recidivism, First Step Act Independent Review Committee, 2019, 15, https://firststepact-irc.org/wp-content/ uploads/2019/12/IRC-Effectiveness-of-Prison-Programming.pdf. 78 There are two additional data limitations worth mentioning. First, there is no guarantee that an early-adulthood experience of incarceration or conviction is the only justice involvement an individual might experience before the prime working years. In this sense, the results presented in this report should be interpreted as the effects of early-adult conviction or incarceration on lifetime earnings trajectories, not conditional on future recidivism. Second, because this analysis studies the effect of a self-reported conviction, it carries a risk of measurement error. Some survey respondents may have understood the term conviction differently, for example, and either under- or overreported their experience with the criminal justice system. 79 See James Jacobs, The Eternal Criminal Record (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 1–8 (“A criminal record is for life; there is no statute of limitations.”). 37 Brennan Center for Justice 80 Economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues identify five factors associated with lower intergenerational mobility — “segregation, income inequality, school quality, social capital, and family structure.” See Raj Chetty et al., “Where Is the Land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129, no. 4 (2014): 1557, 1603–20. Chetty has shown that childhood interventions can have a powerful impact on adult earning potential — suggesting, conversely, that socioeconomic disadvantage can perpetuate itself. See Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment,” American Economic Review 106, no. 4 (2016): 899–900. 81 Lam Thuy Vo, “Income for Young, Middle-Aged and Elderly Americans, in Two Graphs,” NPR, October 23 2012, https://www.npr. org/sections/money/2012/10/11/162744378/average-income-ofyoung-middle-aged-and-elderly-americans-in-two-graphs. 82 Looney and Turner, Work and Opportunity, 1 (finding that 45 percent of formerly incarcerated individuals report zero earnings for the full first calendar year after their release). 83 Bruce Western, Jeffrey R. Kling, and David F. Weiman, “The Labor Market Consequences of Incarceration,” Crime & Delinquency 47 (2001): 412–13, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00111287 01047003007. 84 John Nally et al., “The Marginally Employed Offender: A Unique Phenomenon Among Released Offenders,” Journal of Correctional Education 64 (2013): 50–54, https://www.jstor.org/stable/ pdf/26507530.pdf?seq=1. 85 Todd Gabe, Jaison R. Abel, and Richard Florida, Can Low-Wage Workers Find Better Jobs?, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2018, 3, 18, https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/ staff_reports/sr846.pdf (finding that only 5.2 percent of people in low-wage jobs move up the job ladder). 86 Center for Poverty Research, “What Is ‘Deep Poverty’?,” University of California, Davis, last updated January, 16, 2018, https:// poverty.ucdavis.edu/faq/what-deep-poverty. 87 Based on the 2017 poverty threshold for a family of two with zero minor children ($16,414). U.S. Census Bureau, “Poverty Thresholds,” last accessed July 29, 2020, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/ time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-thresholds. html. 88 Based on the 2017 poverty threshold for a one-person household ($12,752). U.S. Census Bureau, “Poverty Thresholds.” 89 Aliprantis and Carroll, What Is Behind the Persistence of the Racial Wealth Gap?. See also Darity et al., What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap. 90 Serena Lei, “Nine Charts About Wealth Inequality in America,” Urban Institute, 2017, http://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts (click “Show Median” under the chart “Average Family Wealth by Race/Ethnicity, 1963–2016”). 91 Lei, “Nine Charts,” 5. 92 Khaing Zaw et al., “Race, Wealth and Incarceration: Results from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth,” Race and Social Problems 8 (2016): 111–12, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/wealthraceincarcerationrates.pdf. 93 Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” 937, 958. 94 A large-scale reclassification effort in California — Proposition 47 — had no effect on violent crime rates, and it reduced recidivism rates; however, it may have had a weak effect on the larceny rate, which increased slightly. Mia Bird et al., The Impact of Proposition 47 on Crime and Recidivism, Public Policy Institute of California, 2018, 3, https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/r_0618mbr.pdf. For a discussion of broader reclassification efforts, see Brian Elderbroom and Julia Durnan, Reclassified: State Drug Law Reforms to Reduce Felony Convictions and Increase Second Chances, Urban Institute, Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings 2018, https://www.urban.org/research/publication/reclassified. 95 Many states have begun to decriminalize marijuana, for example. NORML, “Decriminalization,” accessed February 24, 2020, https:// norml.org/aboutmarijuana/item/states-that-have-decriminalized. 96 Sixty-five percent of agencies that responded to a survey noted that the jail or correctional facility that processes arrestees had already restricted the types of arrestees it would receive because of Covid-19. Cynthia Lum, Carl Maupin, and Megan Stoltz, “The Impact of COVID-19 on Law Enforcement Agencies (Wave 1),” International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy, 2020, 1, https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/ IACP-GMU%20Survey.pdf. For an example, see Fort Worth’s experience, described in Nichole Manna, “Fort Worth Police Will Give Citations for Low-Level Crimes Amid Coronavirus Outbreak,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, March 18, 2020, https://www.star-telegram. com/news/coronavirus/article241254951.html. 97 For examples and a discussion of decriminalization, see Alexandra Natapoff, “Misdemeanor Decriminalization,” Vanderbilt Law Review 68, no. 4 (2015): 1067–77. 98 For examples, see Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime & Incarceration, Ensuring Justice and Public Safety: Federal Criminal Justice Priorities for 2020 and Beyond, 2020, 8–10, http://lawenforcementleaders.org/ensuring-justice-public-safety-federal-criminal-justice-priorities-for-2020-and-beyond. 99 See Advocates, Advocates Jail Diversion Program: A Step-byStep Toolkit, 8–10, https://mn.gov/dhs/assets/czech-advocates-jds-manual-12_tcm1053-256994.pdf. 100 For one example, see Center for Court Innovation, “Project Reset,” 2019, https://www.courtinnovation.org/sites/default/files/ media/document/2019/PR_FactSheet_07232019.pdf; and Center for Court Innovation, “Project Reset,” accessed February 24, 2020, https://www.courtinnovation.org/programs/project-reset/ more-info. 101 Kohler-Hausmann, “Managerial Justice,” 649, 668–70. 102 Lauren-Brooke Eisen et al., How Many Americans Are Unnecessarily Incarcerated?, Brennan Center for Justice, 2016, 23, https:// www.brennancenter.org/publication/how-many-americans-are-unnecessarily-incarcerated. 103 Shaila Dewan and Andrew W. Lehren, “After a Crime, the Price of a Second Chance,” New York Times, December 12, 2016, https://www. nytimes.com/2016/12/12/us/crime-criminal-justice-reform-diversion.html. 104 Brad Hershbein, David Boddy, and Melissa S. Kearney, “Nearly 30 Percent of Workers in the U.S. Need a License to Perform Their Job: It Is Time to Examine Occupational Licensing Practices,” The Brookings Institution, January 27, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/ blog/occupational-licensing-practices; and Morris M. Kleiner, Reforming Occupational Licensing Policies, The Hamilton Project, 2015, 6, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/THP_ KleinerDiscPaper_final.pdf. 105 Rodriguez and Avery, Unlicensed & Untapped, 1. 106 Rodriguez and Avery, Unlicensed & Untapped, 10–14. 107 Jonathan Haggerty, How Occupational Licensing Laws Harm Public Safety and the Formerly Incarcerated, R Street Institute, 2018, https://www.rstreet.org/2018/05/31/how-occupational-licensing-laws-harm-public-safety-and-the-formerly-incarcerated. 108 Rodriguez and Avery, Unlicensed & Untapped, 2. 109 National Employment Law Project, “Fact Sheet: ‘Ban the Box’ Is a Fair Chance for Workers with Records,” August 2017, https://www. nelp.org/wp-content/uploads/Ban-the-Box-Fair-Chance-Fact-Sheet. pdf. 110 Beth Avery, Ban the Box, National Employment Law Project, 2019, 106, https://www.nelp.org/publication/ban-the-box-fairchance-hiring-state-and-local-guide; C. J. Ciaramella, “Trump Will Sign Federal ‘Ban the Box’ Bill into Law as Part of Massive Spending 38 Brennan Center for Justice Bill,” Reason, December 20, 2019, https://reason.com/2019/12/20/ trump-will-sign-federal-ban-the-box-bill-into-law-as-part-of-massive-spending-bill; and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020, Pub. L. No. 116-92, § 1121-24, 133 Stat. 1605-15 (2020), https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/1790. 111 Some studies find that ban-the-box rules may have unintended negative consequences for younger Black job seekers, such as an apparent increase in racial discrimination in hiring. But research by other experts — including one of the authors of this report, Terry-Ann Craigie — casts doubt on those conclusions. See Terry-Ann Craigie, “Ban the Box, Convictions, and Public Employment,” Economic Inquiry 58 (2020): 442–43, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ ecin.12837; and Phil Hernandez, “Ban-the-Box ‘Statistical Discrimination’ Studies Draw the Wrong Conclusions,” National Employment Law Project, August 29, 2017, https://www.nelp.org/blog/ ban-the-box-statistical-discrimination-studies-draw-the-wrong-conclusions. Indeed, there are several other possible explanations for the apparent decrease in the hiring of younger Black men. They include an increase in the hiring of older Black men, who are more likely to have criminal records, and the focus on private sector ban-the-box policies, which at the time of these studies were in the early stages of implementation. See Terry-Ann Craigie et al., letter to Hon. Elijah E. Cummings and Hon. Jim Jordan, March 25, 2019, Brennan Center for Justice, https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/letter-supportfair-chance-act; and Daniel Shoag and Stan Veuger, “ ‘Ban the Box’ Measures Help High-Crime Neighborhoods” (American Enterprise Institute Economics Working Paper #2016-08, 2020), https://www. aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Veuger-Shoag-Ban-the-boxWP-updated.pdf. (As of this report’s release date, Shoag and Veuger’s paper was slated for publication in the Journal of Law and Economics.) Further, Craigie’s findings show that ban-the-box policies significantly increase employment for justice-involved people in the public sector. Craigie, “Ban the Box, Convictions, and Public Employment,” 442–43. 112 These policies already risk colliding with U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance, which warns that overly broad rules targeting justice-involved people create a disparate racial impact and may violate Title VII accordingly. See EEOC, “Enforcement Guidance on Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act,” No. 915.002, April 25, 2012, https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/ arrest_conviction.cfm. Retaining state law that conflicts with EEOC guidance arguably puts employers in an untenable situation in which they must decide whether to comply with state law and risk an EEOC lawsuit, or comply with EEOC rules and ignore state law. See Timothy M. Cary, “A Checkered Past: When Title VII Collides with State Statutes Mandating Criminal Background Checks,” ABA Journal of Labor & Employment Law 28 (2013): 499, 499–500, 517–21 (describing the conflict and seeking to resolve it) and 509–12 (identifying 14 states where this conflict was present at the time of writing). 113 See N.Y. Correction Law § 752 (prohibiting the denial of employment or licensure based solely on a criminal conviction); see also Pickering v. Uptown Comm’s & Elec., 42 Misc.3d 1205(A), 2013 WL 6798521 (Sup. Ct., Queens County Dec. 23, 2013) (summarizing the state of the law before denying a motion to dismiss claim arguing that employer terminated employee based on criminal conviction without weighing statutory factors). 114 See, e.g., Levine v N.Y.C. Taxi & Limousine Comm’n, 136 A.D.3d 1037, 1039 (2d Dep’t 2016) (concluding that the defendant Commission reasonably denied a license to operate a for-hire vehicle to a person previously convicted of crimes involving fraud, where the offense was “recent and serious, and bore a direct relationship to how he dealt with persons who hired him for services,” and reversing a grant of administrative relief accordingly). 115 See Lynn M. Clark, “Landlord Attitudes Toward Renting to Released Offenders,” Federal Probation 71, no. 1 (2007), https://www. uscourts.gov/federal-probation-journal/2007/06/landlord-attitudes-toward-renting-released-offenders; and Lucius Couloute, Nowhere to Go: Homelessness Among Formerly Incarcerated People, Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/ reports/housing.html. 116 Seattle Office for Civil Rights, “Fair Chance Housing,” accessed February 25, 2020, https://www.seattle.gov/civilrights/civil-rights/ fair-housing/fair-chance-housing. 117 John Bae et al., Coming Home: An Evaluation of the New York City Housing Authority’s Family Reentry Pilot Program, Vera Institute of Justice, 2016, 7–8, https://www.vera.org/publications/ coming-home-nycha-family-reentry-pilot-program-evaluation. For more information on this subject, see National Law Housing Project, An Affordable Home on Reentry: Federally Assisted Housing and Previously Incarcerated Individuals, 2018, https://www.nhlp.org/ wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Rentry-Manual-2018-FINALne.pdf. 118 Sarah Gonzalez, “New York Eases Rules for Formerly Incarcerated to Visit Public Housing,” WNYC News, April 21, 2017, https://www. wnyc.org/story/new-york-city-felonies-visit-family-public-housing. For a formal study of the pilot program and results, see Bae et al., Coming Home, 13, 21. The program continues to operate successfully. Yolanda Johnson-Peterkin, social worker at New York City Housing Authority, voicemail message to author, December 3, 2019. 119 Katy Reckdahl, “Housing Authority Eliminates Ban of Ex-offenders,” Shelterforce, July 6, 2016, https://shelterforce.org/2016/07/06/ housing-authority-eliminates-ban-of-ex-offenders; and Housing Authority of New Orleans, “Adding Family Members with Criminal Backgrounds,” July 2019, http://www.hano.org/attachments/ CBCFlyer2019.pdf. 120 Cloud, On Life Support, 5–10. 121 Antonisse and Garfield, The Relationship Between Work and Health, 2. 122 The Massachusetts Department of Corrections partners with MassHealth to provide health insurance to people being released from prison. “Reentry Planning,” Mass.gov, last accessed February 25, 2020, https://www.mass.gov/service-details/reentry-planning. 123 Martha R. Plotkin and Alex Blandford, Critical Connections: Getting People Leaving Prison and Jail the Mental Health Care and Substance Abuse Treatment They Need, Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2017, 75, https://files.csgjusticecenter.org/critical-connections/Critical-Connections-Full-Report.pdf. 7 C.F.R. § 272.3(c). New York City’s pre-enrollment program operates under one such waiver. See Elizabeth Wolkomir, “How SNAP Can Better Serve the Formerly Incarcerated,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 16, 2018, 6–8, https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/ files/atoms/files/3-6-18fa.pdf. 130 The estimates of the formerly imprisoned population studied here most closely also include estimates of the population that has received a felony conviction. These papers are cited and discussed together in the following section. For details, see notes 133–135 and accompanying text. 131 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Data Collection: National Survey of Prosecutors (NSP),” last accessed January 22, 2020, https://www.bjs. gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=265. See also Steven W. Perry and Duren Banks, “Prosecutors in State Courts, 2007 — Statistical Tables,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, table 4, https://www.bjs.gov/ content/pub/pdf/psc07st.pdf. 132 Perry and Banks, “Prosecutors in State Courts,” 2. 133 Schmitt and Warner, Ex-offenders and the Labor Market, 3–4. 134 Bucknor and Barber, The Price We Pay, 5. 135 Shannon et al., “The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution,” 1804–5 and table 1; and Sarah Shannon et al., “Growth in the U.S. Ex-felon and Ex-prisoner Population, 1948 to 2010” (conference paper, 2011), http://paa2011.princeton.edu/papers/111687. 136 Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime, 13. 137 Stevenson and Mayson, “The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice,” 738–39. 138 In a 2009 publication, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers first estimated that there were 10.5 million misdemeanor cases filed per year. That study calculated a median misdemeanor filing rate based on data from a mere 12 states. The researchers then applied the same rate to the remaining 38 states to estimate the number of cases filed nationally. Robert C. Boruchowitz, Malia N. Brink, and Maureen Dimino, Minor Crimes, Massive Waste: The Terrible Toll of America’s Broken Misdemeanor Courts, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, 2009, 11, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/uploads/9b7f8e10-a118-4c23-8e12-1abcc46404ae/misdemeanor_20090401.pdf. 124 For example, one study indicated that access to government benefits materially reduced the poverty rate in New York City. See Sophie Collyer et al., The State of Poverty and Disadvantage in New York City, Robin Hood, 2020, 15, fig. 2, https://robinhood.org/ uploads/2020/02/PT_2019_ANNUAL_2.21.pdf. 139 Stevenson and Mayson, “The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice,” 741–44. 125 Crystal S. Yang, “Does Public Assistance Reduce Recidivism?,” American Economic Review 107 (2017): 554, http://www.law.harvard. edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Yang_920.pdf. 141 126 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 § 115, codified at 21 U.S.C. § 862a(a), (b). 127 States may opt out in whole or in part. 21 U.S.C. § 862a(d)(1)(A). 128 For information on state opt-outs, see Chesterfield Polkey, “Most States Have Ended SNAP Ban for Convicted Drug Felons,” National Conference of State Legislatures, July 30, 2019, https://www. ncsl.org/blog/2019/07/30/most-states-have-ended-snap-ban-forconvicted-drug-felons.aspx; Marc Mauer, A Lifetime of Punishment: The Impact of the Felony Drug Ban on Welfare Benefits, The Sentencing Project, 2015, 2, https://sentencingproject.org/wp-content/ uploads/2015/12/A-Lifetime-of-Punishment.pdf; and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, SNAP State Options Report, 2018, 21, https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/ snap/14-State-Options.pdf. 129 Federal SNAP rules specifically exclude people who are in the care of public institutions and receive a significant portion of their meals from those facilities. 7 C.F.R. § 273.1(b)(7)(vi). But many eligibility rules are regulatory rather than statutory, and a separate federal regulation allows states to seek waivers that relax these rules. 39 Brennan Center for Justice 140 Stevenson and Mayson, “The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice,” 744–45. Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime, 258. 142 Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States 2016, 2017, table 18, https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/ crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-18; and Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States 2015, 2016, table 29, https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/ crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/table-29. 143 Carol J. DeFrances and Greg W. Steadman, Prosecutors in State Courts, 1996, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998, 5, table 5, https:// www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/psc96.pdf; and Carol J. DeFrances, Prosecutors in State Courts, 2001, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002, 6, table 7, https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/psc01.pdf. 144 Nancy J. King and Michael Heise, “Misdemeanor Appeals,” Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper Series, paper no. 19-14 (2019): appendix B, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3478284. 145 David A. Anderson, “The Aggregate Burden of Crime,” Journal of Law and Economics 42, no. 2 (1999): 611–42. 146 Jens Ludwig, “The Costs of Crime,” testimony to U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, DC, September 19, 2006, https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ludwig_testimony_09_19_06.pdf. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings 147 Michael McLaughlin et al., The Economic Burden of Incarceration in the U.S., Washington University in St. Louis, Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice, 2016, 7, https://joinnia.com/ wp-content/uploads/2017/02/The-Economic-Burden-of-Incarceration-in-the-US-2016.pdf. https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/rsfjss/5/1/198.full.pdf. See also Jeffrey Grogger, “The Effect of Arrests on the Employment and Earnings of Young Men,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, no. 1 (1995): 51–71, https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/110/1/51/1894002. 148 Kathryn E. McCollister et al., “The Cost of Crime to Society: New Crime-Specific Estimates for Policy and Program Evaluation,” Drug and Alcohol Dependence 108 (2010): table 3, https://www.ncbi.nlm. nih.gov/pmc/articles/costofcrime. 170 A draft of the paper was not available for review at the time of publication. For a discussion of Mueller-Smith’s work, see Jennifer Doleac, interview with Michael Mueller-Smith, Probable Causation, podcast audio, August 6, 2019, https://www.probablecausation.com/ podcasts/episode-9-michael-mueller-smith. 149 Pager, “The Mark of a Criminal Record,” 937, 959. 150 Pager, Western, and Sugie, “Sequencing Disadvantage,” 195–213. 151 Sugie, “Finding Work,” iii, 6, 148. 152 John M. Nally et al., “Post-release Recidivism and Employment Among Different Types of Released Offenders,” International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences 9 (2014): 16, 18, http://sascv.org/ijcjs/pdfs/ nallyetalijcjs2014vol9issue1.pdf; and John M. Nally, Susan R. Lockwood, and Taiping Ho, “Employment of Ex-offenders During the Recession,” Journal of Correctional Education 62, no. 2 (2011): 117–131. 153 Western et al., “The Labor Market Consequences of Incarceration,” 410–27. 154 Bruce Western, “The Impact of Incarceration on Wage Mobility and Inequality,” American Sociological Review 67 (2002): 541, https:// scholar.harvard.edu/files/brucewestern/files/western_asr.pdf. 155 Mueller-Smith, “The Criminal and Labor Impacts of Incarceration,” 3. 156 Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett, “How Unregulated Is the U.S. Labor Market? The Penal System as a Labor Market Institution,” American Journal of Sociology 104 (1999): 1030–60. 157 Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006). 158 Amanda Geller, Irwin Garfinkel, and Bruce Western, The Effects of Incarceration on Employment and Wages, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, January 2006, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/ a748/257cf094a1868ba70514c09098462f2c5dde.pdf. 159 Steven Raphael, “Early Incarceration Spells and the Transition to Adulthood,” in The Price of Independence: The Economics of Early Adulthood, eds. Cecilia Elena Rouse and Sheldon Danziger (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2008), 278–305, https://gspp.berkeley. edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/P47.pdf. 160 Bruce Western and Becky Pettit, Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility, The Pew Charitable Trusts, 2010, https://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_ assets/2010/collateralcosts1pdf.pdf. 161 Richard B. Freeman, Crime and the Employment of Disadvantaged Youth, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1991, 11, http:// core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6586657.pdf. 162 Schmitt and Warner, Ex-offenders and the Labor Market, 14. 163 Cherrie Bucknor and Alan Barber, The Price We Pay, 13. 164 Uggen et al., “The Edge of Stigma,” 627–54. 165 Uggen et al., “The Edge of Stigma,” 627–54. 166 Daniel Nagin and Joel Waldfogel, The Effect of Conviction on Income Through the Life Cycle, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1993, https://www.nber.org/papers/w4551.pdf. 167 171 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Data Collection: National Prisoner Statistics (NPS) Program,” accessed January 22, 2020, https://www. bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=269; and Margaret Werner Cahalan, Correctional Populations in the United States, 1850–1984, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1986, 182, https://www.bjs.gov/content/ pub/pdf/hcsus5084.pdf. 172 Joshua A. Markman et al., Recidivism of Offenders Placed on Federal Community Supervision in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2014, https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ pdf/ropfcs05p0510.pdf. 173 Markman et al., Recidivism of Offenders, fig. 1. 174 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “National Corrections Reporting Program, 1991–2016.” 175 Derek Neal and Armin Rick, “The Prison Boom and Sentencing Policy,” Journal of Legal Studies 45 (2016): 41. 176 Michael Massoglia et al., “The Relationship Between Incarceration and Premature Adult Mortality: Gender Specific Evidence,” Social Science Research 46 (2014): 142–54, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pmc/articles/PMC6123019/. 177 Binswanger, “Release from Prison,” 157–65. 178 Elizabeth Arias and Jiaquan Xu, United States Life Tables, 2017, National Center for Health Statistics, 2019, tables 5–11, https://www. cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_07-508.pdf. 179 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Publications & Products: Probation and Parole Populations,” accessed August 26, 2019, https:// www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=42. 180 Markman et al., Recidivism of Offenders, table 4. 181 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Data Collection: National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP),” accessed August 26, 2019, https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=268. 182 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “National Corrections Reporting Program, 1991–2016.” 183 Arias and Xu, United States Life Tables, 2017, table 8. 184 Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Publications & Products: Probation and Parole Populations”; and Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Publications & Products: Correctional Populations in the United States,” accessed August 26, 2019, https://www.bjs.gov/index. cfm?ty=pbse&sid=5. 185 Stevenson and Mayson, “The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice,” 737; and Natapoff, Punishment Without Crime, 258. 186 Stevenson and Mayson, “The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice,” 736–37. 187 Stevenson and Mayson, “The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice,” 742–44. Christopher Uggen et al., “The Edge of Stigma,” 627–54. 188 King and Heise, “Misdemeanor Appeals,” appendix B. 168 Amanda Sheely, “Criminal Justice Involvement and Employment Outcomes Among Women,” Crime and Delinquency 66, no. 6–7 (2020), https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ abs/10.1177/0011128719860833. 189 Spaulding et al., “HIV/AIDS Among Inmates,” 3. 169 Robert Apel and Kathleen Powell, “Level of Criminal Justice Contact and Early Adult Wage Inequality,” RSF: Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 5, no. 1 (2019): 198–222, 40 Brennan Center for Justice 190 Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council, The High Cost of Recidivism, 2018, 4, table A, https://tinyurl.com/qp82ost (archive of deleted page). See also Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council, Misdemeanor Sentencing: Trends and Analysis, 2018, 18–19, https:// spac.icjia-api.cloud/uploads/SPAC_Misdemeanor_ Report_2018_101818-20191127T15335263.pdf. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings 191 James J. Heckman, “Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error,” Econometrica 47 (1979): 153–61. 194 These proxy variables were all retrieved from the 1979 or 1980 survey year. 192 More explicitly, the report’s initial analysis using FE estimation showed that incarceration significantly lowered annual earnings by approximately $10,000 (p <0.05). Evaluating FE estimates over the lifetime trajectory produced negative estimates that get smaller over time, potentially signaling that the sample of respondents incarcerated at the time of the interview was too small to produce efficient lifetime earnings trajectories. 195 Joseph G. Altonji, Todd E. Elder, and Christopher R. Taber, “Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools,” Journal of Political Economy 113, no. 1 (2005): 151–84, https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/ abs/10.1086/426036?mobileUi=0&journalCode=jpe. 193 Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010). 41 Brennan Center for Justice 196 Emily Oster, “Unobservable Selection and Coefficient Stability: Theory and Evidence,” Journal of Business & Economic Statistics 37, no. 2 (2019): 187–204, https://amstat.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1 080/07350015.2016.1227711. Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings ABOUT THE AUTHORS Terry-Ann Craigie is the economics fellow in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, where she works to document the economic and social costs of mass incarceration. Craigie is also an associate professor of economics at Connecticut College, where her research examines the collateral consequences of mass incarceration and the impact of ban-the-box policies on the employment of those with criminal records. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, she was a visiting fellow at the Urban Institute and a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. She was selected as a Self-Sufficiency Research Clearinghouse Emerging Scholar in 2013. Craigie has published in journals such as Eastern Economic Journal, Future of Children, Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, Oxford Development Studies, and Review of Black Political Economy. She has presented her research at numerous conferences and seminars, most notably at the White House. She holds a BA magna cum laude in economics from Stockton University and an MA and a PhD in economics from Michigan State University. Ames Grawert is senior counsel and John L. Neu Justice Counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. He leads the program’s quantitative research team, focusing on trends in crime and policing and the collateral costs of mass incarceration. Additionally, he advocates for criminal justice reform policies at the federal level. Previously, Grawert served as an assistant district attorney in the Appeals Bureau of the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office, where he reviewed and litigated claims of actual innocence in addition to his appellate work. Before entering public service, he was an associate at Mayer Brown LLP, where he represented criminal defendants pro bono in post-conviction litigation. Cameron Kimble is a senior research and program associate in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program. As a member of the program’s law and economics research team, he supports the organization’s work to end mass incarceration and researches the relationship between mass incarceration, wages, and economic inequality. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, he worked as a quantitative analyst at Progressive Insurance, where he was tasked with evaluating and forecasting auto insurance industry and consumer trends. Kimble holds a BA in economics from Miami University. 42 Brennan Center for Justice Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings AC K N OW L E D G M E N TS The Brennan Center acknowledges Arnold Ventures’ founders Laura and John Arnold, Jason Flom, and The Margaret and Daniel Loeb Foundation for their generous support of our work. This publication was made possible in part through the support of Robin Hood, for which we are grateful. This is an independent Brennan Center publication; the opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of our supporters. The authors thank Steven Durlauf, Stan Veuger, and Bruce Western for reviewing a draft of this report and for their thoughtful feedback on its findings and methodology. The authors also thank Alexandra Natapoff for offering her thoughts on the report’s misdemeanor findings, and James Austin and John Pfaff for their time discussing the report’s population models. This research was conducted with restricted access to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the BLS. The authors thank Lauren-Brooke Eisen for her insightful comments on and careful revisions to the report; Michael Waldman and John Kowal for their support of this research; James Cullen for his extensive work on a previous draft of this report, which continues to underly several of the report’s conclusions; and Inimai Chettiar for her conception and early editing of this project. They also thank Peter Miller for his input on the report’s quantitative analysis; Adureh Onyekwere for her careful attention to detail in fact-checking the report; Ruth Sangree for her contributions to the policy recommendations section; and (in alphabetical order) Jessica Christy, Aliana Knoepfler, Safeena Mecklai, Lauren Seabrooks, Stacey Strand, Vienna Thompkins, and Julia Udell for their research and drafting support. The authors are grateful to Matthew Friedman, Oliver Roeder, Maria Barrera, and Anamika Das for their work on previous drafts of this report. Last, the authors are also grateful to Lisa Benenson, Jeanine Chirlin, Yuliya Bas, Matt Harwood, Zachary Laub, Jeanne Park, Alexandra Ringe, Derek Rosenfeld, and Alden Wallace for their thoughtful review of the report, communications assistance, and work ensuring the report’s successful launch. 43 Brennan Center for Justice Conviction, Imprisonment, and Lost Earnings BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law 120 Broadway // 17th Floor // New York, NY 10271 www.brennancenter.org