Permanent punishments imposed at the local level, as well as by more than 44,000 separate federal and state permanent punishments, prevent or limit the access of people with conviction or arrest records to employment, housing, education, public benefits, and much more. Without anti-discrimination protection for people with records, municipal, town, township, and county civil law sanctions, restrictions, and disqualifications impede our reintegration into the community,
fail to promote public safety, and curtail our civil rights.
The Protected Class Network is part of a civil rights campaign developed by formerly incarcerated Black women who know from our own experience how people like us are legally denied our basic civil rights because of our conviction or arrest history. It brings together and supports groups led by justice-impacted people that are organizing in their communities to designate those with conviction and arrest records as a protected class, joining race, sex, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and other legally protected categories. From the beginning, we viewed local legislation as the first step towards having similar legislation passed in other cities, at the state level, and ultimately by the federal government.
See: “Leveraging Local Legislation as a Springboard for Federal Wins”
"Formerly Incarcerated People Seek Discrimination Protection as “Protected Class”
The Protected Class Network builds on the 2022 passage of an ordinance that made justice-impacted people a protected class in Atlanta. The Prison Policy Initiative, the anti-mass incarceration movement’s foremost research and policy organization, included “barring discrimination against people based on conviction history” as a “winnable criminal justice reform” in 2023—and highlighted the Atlanta ordinance and Barred Business.
The Network Coordinator
The Protected Class Network:
Civil Rights For People With Arrest Or Conviction Records
We call the tens of thousands of major legal roadblocks we face because of our record “permanent punishments,” rather than the frequently used term “collateral damages.” Like the criminal legal system as a whole (from arrest to reentry), permanent punishments are part of a system that systematically punishes people who are disproportionately Black, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+ (especially trans), and/or experiencing poverty.
The punishment is not something incidental that “just happens” without officials being unaware of their consequences and their targets. When we were given our sentences or convinced to make a plea deal, no official was legally required to tell us that, while our sentence or probation might end, our punishment would last for many more years and often throughout our lives.