CRUEL AND INVISIBLE

A Guest Editorial From The San Francisco Chronicle:

The idea that one could be punished for life for stealing a couple of
library books may sound absurd, but it's a fact in Pennsylvania. There, a
sweeping law forever bans the thief from working in a nursing home or with
the elderly.

In New York, a criminal conviction could ban you for life from more than
100 different jobs, including plumbing and barbering, even if you were a
model prisoner and have long since served your time.

In an effort to get tougher on crime, Congress and state legislatures have
been tacking onto court sentences so-called "invisible punishments" as
deterrents since 1990.

But the laws have boomeranged, leading ex-felons to reoffend because - by
law - it's almost too tough to do anything else.

For example, drug felons can't get federal student loans, welfare, food
stamps, a job in education. They can't vote in some states or, among other
things, even visit public housing.

In Florida alone, more than 600,000 residents could not cast a ballot in
the 2000 presidential election because of their criminal records.

The idea of paying your debt to society and then moving on has been
displaced by lifetime penalties that are likely to achieve precisely what
is feared most: high crime and overcrowded prisons.

As of the end of 2002, a record 3.1 percent of U.S. adults were in prison,
federal data show. A University of Michigan study says nearly 7 percent of
Americans have served prison time at some point in their lives. That's
roughly 13 million people.

A 15-state study by the U.S. Department of Justice found that more than
two-thirds of released prisoners were rearrested within three years.

Erecting "invisible" barriers to a productive future apparently is not an
effective deterrent, but rather an invitation to a continued life of crime.