Why Start a Protected Class Campaign (Dr

People with conviction or arrest records have our lives and progress severely constrained by permanent punishments that are imposed locally by “the country’s estimated 3,000 county governments and nearly 36,000 municipal, town, and township governments,” as well as by more than 44,000 separate federal and state permanent punishments.
"Formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of over 27% — higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period.”

” Formerly incarcerated Black women in particular experience severe levels of unemployment, whereas white men experience the lowest.”

“Black People with No Criminal Record Earn Less Annually than Socioeconomically Similar White People with a Record.”
“Compared to the general public, people who’ve been formerly incarcerated are almost 10 times as likely to be homeless.”

“Formerly incarcerated Black men have much higher rates of unsheltered homelessness than white or Hispanic men.”

“Formerly incarcerated Black and/or Hispanic women experience unsheltered homelessness at significantly higher rates than white women.
". . . 25% of formerly incarcerated people still don’t have high school credentials, and low-skill jobs have largely disappeared.”

“While those in the general public have a 1 in 3 chance of attaining a college degree, a formerly incarcerated person’s chances are less than 1 in 20.”
20% of formerly incarcerated people report suffering from food insecurity — double that of the general population — with even higher rates among formerly incarcerated women and Black individuals.

“Denying SNAP and TANF to formerly incarcerated people has a devastating effect on them and their families. By one recent estimate, upwards of 36.5 million children have at least one parent with a criminal record.”
About 4.6 million people with felony convictions are disenfranchised, including one in 19 African Americans of voting age.

More than half of the states require us, as a prerequisite for voting, to pay our Legal Financial Obligations (LFOs)—fines, fees, and restitution ordered at sentencing or a condition of probation—a modern poll tax.
"Formerly incarcerated people are unemployed at a rate of over 27% — higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period.”

” Formerly incarcerated Black women in particular experience severe levels of unemployment, whereas white men experience the lowest.”

“Black People with No Criminal Record Earn Less Annually than Socioeconomically Similar White People with a Record.”
So-called felony exclusion laws (applicable in some states and federal courts to people with misdemeanor convictions, “bar more than twenty million people from jury service, reduce jury diversity by disproportionately excluding Black and Latinx people, and actually cause juries to deliberate less effectively.”

“Nationwide, approximately one-third of Black men have a felony conviction; thus, in most places, many Black jurors (and many Black male jurors in particular) are barred by exclusion statutes long before any prosecutor can strike them in the courtroom.”
“More than 200,000 people are on sex-offender registries based on offenses they committed when they were children”—some when they were as young as eight years old—and, in some states they are “labeled for life” and can never get off the list

Because of bias, “LGBTQ people are overrepresented in sex offender registries, which create barriers to attaining housing and employment.”
”At least 17 states automatically ban people with some criminal convictions from changing their name, whether permanently or temporarily,” a prohibition that especially impacts those of us who are trans or gender nonconforming.

Why Start A Protected Class Campaign

For citations and more information and research findings about the permanent punishments we face as people with arrest and conviction records, see The Protected Class Network Toolkit, which you can find here [ADD LINK].