The current landscape of collateral consequences of conviction, and the coming debate

Currently in Mississippi, felony convictions are like diamonds: they're forever.  There are a few rare exceptions, outlined generally in Section 99-19-71, that allow for expunction (often called "expungement") of records of felony convictions.  Currently, felonies which may be expunged include convictions for bad checks, possession of a controlled substance, false pretenses, larceny, malicious mischief, and shoplifting.  Of course, as always, there are many intricacies to the law, so you'd need to seek the advice of an experience criminal practitioner in order to make sure a particular conviction is eligible for expunction.

What that means is that all other nonviolent felony crimes carry enormous consequences, which will never go away.  First, you can no longer legally carry a firearm.  If a convicted felon is found guilty of carrying a firearm, the maximum sentence is 10 years.  Think about that for a second.  I'm sure we all know good people who made bad mistakes when they were in their late teens and early twenties.  Those folks can't go hunting without risking a decade in the penitentiary.  To say nothing of their inability to vote and their difficulty finding a job.

These "collateral consequences" of a felony conviction make sense in certain instances.  For example, we probably are justified as a society having a rule that people convicted of armed robbery don't get to carry handguns.  That makes sense.  But over the last few decades of being "tough on crime", we've created a situation in which we are making it more and more difficult for first time, nonviolent offenders to recover from the error in judgment that led to their conviction.

That's where the National Inventory of the Collateral Consequences of Conviction comes in.  Launched yesterday by the American Bar Association, it promises to be an invaluable tool for defendants, prosecutors, judges, and criminal defense attorneys.  I predict it will also have a collateral consequence of its own, however.  I'd bet that as the Mississippi information is added to the site, our politicians are going to be armed with the information to have a serious debate about how we treat citizens convicted of nonviolent crimes.  And I think that will be a good thing.

Read the companion post at Cottonmouth.