No longer a ‘collateral consequence’: Imprisonment and the reframing of citizenship

This article examines the impact of imprisonment on citizenship. It identifies how civil, political and social rights are circumscribed with a sentence of imprisonment, and scrutinizes to what extent citizenship is limited for prisoners. Drawing on recent developments in England and Wales, it contends that citizenship has been eroded, not as a ‘collateral consequence’ of imprisonment, but rather as a determined penal policy. The boundaries of punishment have become blurred, moving from criminal justice institutions, and extending towards what is termed civil and political penality. Finally, it argues that, because citizenship in prison is inevitably framed around the differences between freedom and captivity, prisoners respond to the constraints of imprisonment through alternative ways of expressing their citizenship.

Public opinion and the politics of collateral consequence policies

We analyze data from a national sample of the U.S. population to assess public support for policies that deny former offenders’ access to job training programs, food stamps, and public housing. We find that Americans generally oppose benefit restrictions, though support for these policies is higher among Republicans and people with higher levels of racial resentment. We also find that a legislator’s criminal justice reform positions generally do not significantly affect voters’ evaluation of him or her, and even voters with more punitive attitudes toward collateral consequence policies support legislators who advance particular kinds of reform proposals. These findings provide little evidence that any group of Americans would be mobilized to vote against a legislator who works to reform collateral consequence policies. We discuss the implications of these findings for American and comparative studies of the politics of punishment.

The Impact of Parental Criminal Justice Involvement on Children of Color

Over the past five decades, arrest, incarceration, and correctional supervisory rates have risen dramatically. One collateral consequence of the upward trend concerns the millions of children who are deeply impacted by the effects of parental criminal justice involvement and the associated risks, yet remain relatively hidden from society and underserved by support systems. Of great concern is the extent to which children of color, who are significantly overrepresented, experience increased vulnerability to adversity and poor outcomes. The need and opportunity exist to examine contributors to racial disproportionality and disparity among this population and to identify policies and practices that counteract contributing factors. This chapter discusses the scope of the problem, the impact that parental criminal justice involvement and the associated risks have on youth, and policies and practices that contribute to overrepresentation of children of color. Policy and practice recommendations that advocate for culturally informed responses and child-centered approaches are provided.

State variation in the drug felony lifetime ban on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: Why the modified ban matters

The drug felony lifetime ban on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) affects thousands of individuals with felony drug convictions in the United States. Federal law allows states to choose to opt out or modify the full ban. Prior research has treated the ban as a binary outcome, characterizing anything but a full ban as a sign of state reform of this harsh collateral consequence. We argue that modified versions of the ban, which simultaneously allow greater access to public aid while also monitoring and sanctioning recipient behavior, have been overlooked but pose important theoretical and empirical challenges to this narrative. To address this gap, we analyze state discretion in the implementation of the drug felony lifetime ban on TANF receipt between 1997 and 2010 utilizing a multilevel multinomial modeling strategy. Results reveal that distinct patterns of state-level factors are associated with each form of the ban, highlighting the need to treat modified bans as unique policy choices in their own right. Our study informs the understanding of state implementation of collateral consequences that straddle both the penal and welfare systems in the United States.

Recent Cases of Regressive and Racially Disparate Taxation in the United States

This chapter assesses whether there is a national trend in the United States toward disproportionate imposition of regressive taxes on low-income communities of color, reflective of a deliberate effort to shift the tax burden from the wealthy and white to the poor and black. This phenomenon is not new. There is a history of communities that are facing financial exigencies correcting their budget deficits by levying formal and informal taxes on black people. The collateral consequence of formal and informal taxes levied disproportionately on black people includes more potentially violent confrontations with police and responses like the Black Lives Matter Movement. The chapter then considers whether well-intentioned white folks have lent their support to racist taxation, perhaps unwittingly, because the stated purposes of increased taxes satisfy their social desires while it squares with their financial interests to ignore the disparate racial ramifications.

Stick Together and Come Back Home

This book focuses on the spillover of carceral identity into poor communities of color as a collateral consequence of mass incarceration. Analyzing fifteen months of ethnographic research in two juvenile justice institutions and interviews with seventy paroled adults, probation youth, and institutional staff, I argue that punitive facilities institutionalize and enforce a “carceral social order”—a system of social organization in which authorities divide people by race, home communities, and peer networks into gang-associated groups. This social order is rooted in the prison, where racial sorting shapes day-to-day life and relationships for the incarcerated and where prisoners use the resulting collective identities to navigate the segregated institution. But this social order also seeps back into the neighborhoods that are disproportionately impacted by mass incarceration. Local youth learn about it through the experiences of imprisoned loved ones, but they also encounter it themselves as it is reproduced locally in juvenile justice facilities that adopt the prison’s sorting practices. This book focuses on understanding how the institutions of the justice system shape the identities that we commonly recognize as criminal, as well as on mapping how this influence extends from the prison to the neighborhood. Through this analysis, we can see how local communities are impacted by the socializing power of the prison system, how this influence exposes residents to ongoing criminal labeling and violence, and how the fallout of this spillover is experienced across generations.

Collateral sensitivity to β-lactam drugs in drug-resistant tuberculosis is driven by the transcriptional wiring of BlaI operon genes

Background:The evolution and spread of antimicrobial resistance is a major global public health threat. In some cases the evolution of resistance to one antimicrobial seemingly results in enhanced sensitivity to another (known as ‘collateral sensitivity’). This largely underexplored phenomenon represents a fascinating evolutionary paradigm that opens new therapeutic possibilities for patients infected with pathogens unresponsive to classical treatments. Intrinsic resistance to β-lactams in Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb, the causative agent of tuberculosis) has traditionally curtailed the use of these low-cost and easy-to-administer drugs for tuberculosis treatment. Recently, β-lactam sensitivity has been reported in strains resistant to classical tuberculosis drug therapy, leading to a resurgence of interest in using β-lactams in the clinic. Unfortunately though, there remains a limited understanding of the mechanisms driving β-lactam sensitivity.Methods:We used a novel combination of systems biology and computational approaches to characterize the molecular underpinnings of β-lactam sensitivity in Mtb. We performed differential gene expression and coexpression analyses of genes previously associated with β-lactam sensitivity and genes associated with resistance to classical tuberculosis drugs. Protein-protein interaction and gene regulatory network analyses were used to validate regulatory interactions between these genes, and random walks through the networks identified key mediators of these interactions. Further validation was obtained using functional in silico knockout of gene pairs.Results:Our results reveal up regulation of the key regulatory inhibitor of β-lactamase production, blal, following treatment with classical drugs. Co-expression and network analyses showed direct co-regulation between genes associated with β-lactam sensitivity and those associated with resistance to classical tuberculosis treatment. blal and its downstream genes (sigC and atpH) were found to be key mediators of these interactions.Conclusions:Our results support the hypothesis that Mtb β-lactam sensitivity is a collateral consequence of the evolution of resistance to classical tuberculosis drugs, mediated through changes to transcriptional regulation. These findings support continued exploration of β-lactams for the treatment of tuberculosis, particularly for patients infected with strains resistant to classical therapies that are otherwise difficult to treat. Importantly, this work also highlights the potential of systems-level and network biology approaches to improve our understanding of collateral drug sensitivity.