A conviction for a crime can have several consequences including imprisonment, fines, and the loss of civil and political rights. Restrictions imposed on an offender may include the loss of the right to take part in elections, disqualification from jury service, the loss of professional license, and other measures depending on the country of citizenship. The loss of civil and political rights is characterized by the loss of rights the aim of which is to protect a citizen from discrimination and abuse and guarantee participation in civil and political life.
There are multiple debates on the issue, aiming to find out if the diminishment of civil and political rights proves its worth. According to Chin (2012), “for many people convicted of crimes, the most severe and long-lasting effect of conviction is … being subjected to collateral consequences involving the actual or potential loss of civil rights, parental rights, public benefits, and employment opportunities” (par.3). Not surprisingly, most people convicted of a crime are not in prison now as there are such measures as probation. Furthermore, some of these people are already free in a general sense, though they could face massive limitations. Some call such disenfranchisement civil death. For instance, Chin (2012) writes that “even as civil death as an institution bearing that name withered, it was replaced with a new version—a pervasive system of collateral consequences applicable to people convicted of crimes” (par. 19). It is important to consider the category of crime because multiple limitations contribute to the civil death of an individual as a whole, underlying the fact that those who once broke the law can abuse it in any sphere of their lives.
Any conviction must be considered along with the rehabilitation practices to treat the convicted as individuals with the ability to react and change. One of such practices is Evidence-based practice. As Alarid (2015) states, “evidence-based practices have caused a dramatic shift in the way that offenders are supervised in the community and prepares for release from prison” (p. XV). Criminals continue to pay taxes, debts and provide child support – they take part in public and economic life after conviction so it may be logical to make their collaboration with the family and working environment more painless for both sides. Although some experts mention the high costs and unproductivity of evidence-based rehabilitation, better social inclusion, rising education standards, and falling unemployment decreased crime rates by several percent (Alarid, 2015, p. 4). Adequate community supervision, helping offenders meet the community’s expectations and thorough examination of their needs are much more productive than incarceration.
One more important thing to consider is the public attitude to community correction. The emotional reaction of the people driven by the mass media accentuating anger and hate while dealing with crime is a major factor (Alarid, 2015, p. 10). On the other hand, the mass media tend to underestimate the fact that imprisonment and strict punishment affect the permitted political and economic participation of the convicted negatively. Thus, according to Gerber, Huber, Meredith, Biggers, and Henry (2016), “focusing on those who were registered before experiencing incarceration, we find released prisoners are much less likely to vote than the general population of registrants” (p.21). Public opinion influences the fates of the convicted significantly as fear often results in creating limitations for any threat.
To conclude, it will be sensible to point out that the convicted ones are individuals with certain public obligations and economic potential and it may be unthoughtful and ineffective to treat a person as a sum of law violations. Social inclusion and Evidence-based practice are those measures that can result in the fall of crime rates. In addition to this, adequate informing of the public by the mass media is needed to make society more flexible in their opinions towards innovative and more decent community-based corrections.
References
Alarid, L. F. (2015). Cengage advantage books: Community-based corrections. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Chin, G.J. (2012). The new civil death: rethinking punishment in the era of mass conviction. UC Davis Legal Studies Research Paper Series, 160, 1789-1833.
Gerber, A. S., Meredith M., Huber G. A., Biggers D. R. & Henry D.J. (2016). Does incarceration reduce voting? Evidence about the political consequences of spending time in prison from Pennsylvania and Connecticut. Web.