VOLUME 99 SYMPOSIUM
OFFENDERS IN THE COMMUNITY: RESHAPING SENTENCING & SUPERVISION
7:30-8:15
REGISTRATION AND COFFEE
8:15-8:20
WELCOME
CARLA J. VIRLEE
Symposium Articles Editor, Minnesota Law Review
8:20-8:30
WELCOME
DAVID WIPPMAN
Dean & William S. Pattee Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law
School
8:35-8:45
SETTING THE STAGE: THE CURRENT STATUS OF COMMUNITY
SUPERVISION IN AMERICA
MICHELLE PHELPS
Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota Department of Sociology
8:45-10:15
KEEP “HOPE” ALIVE?
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
MARK KLEIMAN
Professor of Public Policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
CEO, BOTEC Analysis Corporation
The Outpatient Prison Cell
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
CECELIA KLINGELE
Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School
External Co-Director of the University of Minnesota Robina Institute's
Sentencing Law & Policy Program
What are We Hoping For?: Defining Purpose in Deterrence-Based
Correctional Programs
MODERATED DISCUSSION
MARK KLEIMAN & CECLIA KLINGELE
MODERATED BY:
TBD
10:15-10:30
BREAK
1
“HOPE” IN PRACTICE
10:30-12:00
HONORABLE STEVEN S. ALM
Judge, O'ahu First Circuit of Hawaii
Founder, Hawaii's Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE)
Probation and Parole That Work: Reducing Crime, Helping Offenders, and
Saving Millions of Taxpayer Dollars
RONALD P. CORBETT
Project Director for the Robina Institute’s Community Sanctions and
Revocations Project
Former Acting Commissioner of the Massachusetts Probation Department
The Burden of Leniency: Probation in the “Tough On Crime” Era
.
HONORABLE DONOVAN W. FRANK
U.S. District Judge, District of Minnesota
MODERATED BY:
RICHARD S. FRASE
Benjamin N. Berger Professor in Criminal Law, University of Minnesota Law
School
Co-Director, Robina Institute of Criminal Law & Criminal Justice
12:00-1:00
LUNCH
1:00-2:20
THE FUTURE OF ECONOMIC SANCTIONS
BARRY RUBACK
Professor of Criminology and Sociology, Penn State University
The Benefits and Costs of Economic Sanctions: Considering the Victim, the
Offender, and Society
JESSICA EAGLIN
Counsel, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School
Addressing Criminal Justice Debt and Mass Incarceration: Improving
Economic Sanctions in State Justice Systems
KEVIN R. REITZ
James Annenberg La Vea Land Grant Chair in Criminal Procedure Law,
University of Minnesota Law School
MODERATRED BY:
JUSTICE DAVID R. STRAS
Minnesota Supreme Court
2
2:30-2:35
BREAK
2:35-3:55
COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES AFFECTING OFFENDERS ON
COMMUNITY SUPERVISION
CHRISTOPHER UGGEN
Distinguished McKnight Professor of Sociology and Law, University of
Minnesota
Collateral Consequences and Community Supervision
MARK HAASE
Co-Chair, Minnesota Second Chance Coalition
Former Chief lobbyist and Vice President, Council on Crime and Justice
Behind the Mask of Leniency: An Analysis of Felon Disenfranchisement in
Minnesota
MODERATED BY:
KEVIN LINDSEY
Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights
3:55-4:05
CHANGE FOR THE FUTURE: THE DIRECTION OF SUPERVISION
REFORM (tentative)
MICHELLE PHELPS
Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota Department of Sociology
4:05-5:30
RECEPTION IN AUERBACH COMMONS
3
SYMPOSIUM ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAPHIES
KEYNOTE PANEL: KEEP “HOPE” ALIVE?
Panelist: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
CEO, BOTEC Analysis Corporation
Biography
Mark Kleiman is Professor of Public Policy in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs,
where he teaches methods of policy analysis, crime control, and drug policy. He is the editor of the
Journal of Drug Policy Analysis, the organizer of the group blog called The Reality-Based
Community (samefacts.com) and a member of the Committee on Law and Justice of the National
Research Council.
His books include When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment
(named by The Economist as one of the “Books of the Year” for 2009), Against Excess: Drug
Policy for Results (winner of the Wildavsky Prize of the Policy Studies Organization for 19xx, and
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control. With Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken, he cowrote Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know, and (with those co-authors and Beau
Kilmer) Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know
He is also CEO of BOTEC Analysis Corporation, which advises governments, non-profits,
and corporations on drug policy and crime control. BOTEC was the lead contractor in implementing
a legal cannabis market in Washington State.
Mr. Kleiman grew up in Baltimore where he attended local public schools and graduated
from Haverford College (B.A. in political science, philosophy, and economics, magna cum laude),
before attending the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he
received his Master of Public Policy degree in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Public Policy in 1983. He has
served as Legislative Assistant to Congressman Les Aspin, special assistant to Polaroid CEO Edwin
Land, Deputy Director for Management and Director of Program Analysis for the Office of
Management and Budget of the City of Boston, and Associate Director, and then Director, of the
Office of Policy and Management Analysis in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of
Justice.
His academic work focuses on designing deterrent regimes that take advantage of positivefeedback effects and the substitution of swiftness and predictability for severity in the criminal
justice system, and on policies toward imperfectly rational personal behavior. He taught at Harvard
and the University of Rochester before coming to UCLA in 1995.
Mr. Kleiman is also an adjunct scholar at the Center for American Progress and a member of
the board of Drug Strategies. He has served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and as
the first Thomas C. Schelling Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy at the
University of Maryland.
4
The Outpatient Prison Cell
Compared to its total population, the Land of the Free now has five times as many people behind
bars as any other advanced democracy. The great crime decline of the past two decades has brought
us back to 1965 crime rates; returning to 1965 incarceration rates would mean holding 80% fewer
prisoners.
That would require learning how to punish offenders and control their behavior without physically
locking them up. Tight controls, close monitoring, and swift, certain, and fair sanctions for each
detected violation of the rules can help empty out the prisons while keeping crime rates moving
down.
Not all prisoners are alike. Some need to be in prison to protect everyone else from the crimes they
would otherwise commit. Some aren’t dangerous, have been punished enough, and ought to be set
free. But still others deserve to be punished and need to be controlled for public safety, but don’t
need to be in expensive prison cells. They can be managed outside prison walls.
Many state corrections agencies have wide discretion about where to house the people under their
jurisdiction. In those states, it would be legally possible. to designate a clean but Spartan efficiency
apartment in a city, equipped with video monitors, as a “correctional institution.” That would allow
some current inmates (starting with a few score to test the new system) to be physically – but not
legally – released from prison and placed in such housing.
In the community, these offenders would be subject to drug-and-alcohol testing and GPS
monitoring to enforce curfew rules. In addition, there would be a requirement to either find private
employment or perform full-time minimum-wage work on public needs. From that income,
“outpatient prisoners” would have to feed themselves and pay rent on their new “cells.” Even if all
of them required public employment, their wages would be much less than the cost of keeping them
imprisoned.
Minor violations, such as failure to observe a curfew, unexcused absence from work, or a positive
test for alcohol or other drugs, would draw immediate and certain, but short, jail stays. Absconding,
or a new offense, would mean an immediate return to prison.
To start with, "outpatient prisoners" would face extremely restrictive conditions, including early
curfews. But those restrictions would be progressively relaxed as a reward for compliance, and for
accomplishments such as finding real jobs. That would allow offenders to earn their way back to
freedom, culminating in an early termination of sentence.
Not everyone would succeed. But the evidence from swift-certain-fair probation and parole
supervision suggests that the great majority would do fine. It’s worth a try.
5
Panelist: Cecelia Klingele
Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School
External Co-Director of the University of Minnesota Robina Institute's Sentencing Law & Policy
Program
Biography
After receiving her J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 2005, Cecelia
Klingele served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Barbara B. Crabb of the United States District Court
for the Western District of Wisconsin, Judge Susan H. Black of the United States Court of Appeals
for the Eleventh Circuit, and Associate Justice John Paul Stevens of the United States Supreme
Court. Previously, she was a supervising attorney at the law school's Frank J. Remington Center,
and in spring 2014 she served as a visiting professor at Notre Dame Law School.
Professor Klingele's academic research focuses on criminal justice administration, with an
emphasis on community supervision of offenders on conditional release. She is Associate Reporter
for the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code: Sentencing revision, External Co-Director of
the University of Minnesota Robina Institute's Sentencing Law & Policy Program, and past co-chair
of the Academic Committee of the American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Section.
She teaches courses in criminal law, Constitutional criminal procedure, criminal justice
administration, and sentencing and corrections. In additional to her teaching and research, Professor
Klingele is a faculty associate of the Frank J. Remington Center and serves on the Executive
Committee of the UW-Madison Teaching Academy, an organization of faculty and instructional
staff dedicated to promoting effective teaching and learning on campus and nationally by
encouraging innovation, experimentation, and dialogue.
What are We Hoping For?: Defining Purpose in Deterrence-Based Correctional Programs
One of the most popular criminal justice innovations of the past two decades has been the
creation of community-based supervision programs that deliver quick and certain “micropunishments” to those who violate the terms of their release. Based on behavioral research that
suggests individuals comply with legal restrictions better when they believe those violations will be
noticed and sanctioned, programs based on this model claim high rates of legal compliance during
the term of supervision—a result that advocates assert will lead to long-term desistance from crime
for convicted individuals and a consequent reduction in prison populations. While those goals are
desirable, it is far from clear that programs purporting to utilize this model are in fact advancing
those goals. Even if program compliance rates are as high as supporters claim, serious questions
remain not only about the long-term outcomes they demonstrate, but in the soundness of their
design. Anecdotal evidence suggests that both the conditions and sanctions imposed on program
participants are often significantly more severe than the model itself requires, and are often at odds
with fostering behaviors known to foster desistance. This essay argues that program “success” must
be defined in terms more broad than mere compliance rates, and must account for the fairness of the
conditions imposed and the consequences meted out for failure to comply with those conditions.
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PANEL 1: “HOPE” IN PRACTICE
Panelist: Honorable Steven S. Alm
Judge, O'ahu First Circuit of Hawaii
Founder, Hawaii's Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE)
Biography
Judge Steven S. Alm has been a Circuit Court Judge in Honolulu, Hawai`i since 2001. He is
the principal HOPE Probation judge and, three years ago, became the First Circuit’s Adult Drug
Court judge as well. From 1994-2001, Judge Alm was the United States Attorney for the District
of Hawai`i. He is the past President of the Hawai`i State Trial Judges Association, served as Chair
of the 2005 Penal Code Review Committee (done every 10 years), and currently serves as co-chair
of the Interagency Council on Intermediate Sanctions. In 2007, HOPE Probation received the
American Judicature Society’s Special Merit Citation Award, and in January, 2009, Judge Alm
received the McGovern Award presented by the Institute for Behavior and Health for the most
promising drug policy idea of the year. In October, 2010, Judge Alm was named Hawaii Jurist of
the Year by Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald. In 2013, HOPE was named as one of the “Top 25
Innovations in Government” by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Probation and Parole That Work: Reducing Crime, Helping Offenders, and Saving Millions of
Taxpayer Dollars
Mass incarceration is an important American problem. So is the burgeoning community
supervision population. Nearly five million people in the United States are on probation or parole.
Many, at least a third, fail at probation on the front end or parole on the back end and end up in state
prison. This is a crisis for the county as it means more crimes committed, families torn apart, and
millions of tax payer dollars spent.
This paper discusses how a court system in Honolulu has re-worked its felony supervision
system. The two main components include the creation of Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with
Enforcement, or HOPE Probation, and redirecting the focus of their Drug Court Program.
Combined with regular probation, this has now created an effective continuum of supervision to
effectively manage offenders on probation in the community.
HOPE Probation employs swift, certain, consistent, and proportionate jail sanctions for
every probation violation. Top quality research is showing much better outcomes for HOPE than
for probation-as-usual; less drug use, fewer arrests for new crimes and fewer sentences to prison.
HOPE is procedural justice in action and when offenders believe they are treated fairly, they are
much more likely to buy into the system and be more successful in the community.
Drug Courts are typically small (75 clients) and nearly all have restrictive admissions
criteria. This results in many offenders being excluded who could otherwise benefit from the Drug
Courts’ wrap-around services. By shifting the Drug Courts’ focus from a lower-risk pretrial
population, to a higher-risk probation population, Drug Courts can play an important, cost-effective
7
role in helping offenders to avoid going to prison and become employed, drug-free, law-abiding
citizens.
Panelist: Ronald P. Corbett
Project Director for the Robina Institute, Community Sanctions and Revocations Project
Former Acting Commissioner, Massachusetts Probation Department
Biography
Ronald P. Corbett, Jr, Ed.D., former acting commissioner of the Massachusetts Probation
Department, is project director for the Robina Institute’s Community Sanctions and Revocations
Project, which will focus on nationwide practice in the area of parole and probation revocations.
This project will explore existing practice regarding revocations, its impact on incarceration
rates, and the potential for reform in several participant states. The Robina Institute will make the
project’s findings and recommendations available to all 50 states.
Corbett was acting commissioner of the Massachusetts Probation Department from 2011 to
2013. He was executive director of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 2000 to 2011.
Before this, he was second deputy commissioner of the Massachusetts Probation Service, having
previously worked as a probation officer, assistant chief probation officer, regional director and
director of training and development. He is past president of the National Association of Probation
Executives.
Corbett is a graduate of Harvard University (B.A.), Northeastern University (M.S.) and the
University of Massachusetts (Ed.D.). He has taught on a part-time basis since 1979 and currently
serves as adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, teaching in the graduate
program.
Corbett has published widely, including articles in Federal Probation, Corrections Today,
and Justice Quarterly. His publications include Transforming Probation Through Leadership: The
“Broken Windows” Model, published by the Manhattan Institute. He served as editor of
Perspectives, the journal of the American Probation and Parole Association, and co-editor of the
“Up to Speed” column in Federal Probation.
He is the recipient of the American Probation and Parole Association’s Sam Houston State
University Award, the William Haskell Memorial Distinguished Teaching Award, the New England
Council on Crime and Delinquency’s Manson-Robinson Award, and the Probation Executive of the
Year Award from the National Association of Probation Executives.
The Burden of Leniency: Probation in the “Tough On Crime” Era
The growing and focused attention given to the exponential growth in US prison
populations, along with the analysis of its negative consequences for a just society, have
overshadowed, if not obscured, a parallel and largely unexpected development in the parallel
8
universe of the sanction of choice in American criminal courts - probation. In the debate about the
future of sentencing in America, the sheer numbers of the probation population (a multiple of 3-4
times the number of those incarcerated), coupled with dramatic changes in probation practice that
have distorted its original intent almost beyond recognition, requires stepped-up attention and study
of a kind that would parallel the growing and impressive literature on mass incarceration.
Recent developments in probation have been confounding to those who associate the
practice more with its historical origins and original intent. Probation, as developed first in
Massachusetts in the mid-19th century, was a product of the humanitarian vision of a small Boston
businessman, John Augustus, an habitual court observer, who came to recognize that that something
other than punishment through incarceration would better serve the interests of the offender and the
community. Probation's first iteration as practiced by Augustus placed the focus on job training and
what we would now call personal mentoring, providing guidance toward a healthy, productive life.
Things have changed. Probation, as practiced for the past 20-30 years, has traces of
Augustus' vision but has developed in ways that trample on his original vision. He would hardly
recognize and surely regret what has become of his vision.
This paper will focus on teasing out the principal changes that have occurred in probation,
leading to a kind of “probation on steroids”. Where once the relationship between prison and
probation was seen as dichotomous, these two sentences are now more like kindred practices, with
shared assumptions leading to converging practices. Where once probation was clearly viewed as an
alternative to incarceration emphasizing rehabilitation through the provision of social services and
avuncular guidance from probation officers qua social workers, the evidence increasingly suggests
it is much more a staging area for tomorrow's inmates.
In the course of attempting to account for the “new probation”, this article will examine the
political pressures felt by all components of the criminal justice system as the “tough on crime”
juggernaut moved through the halls of state legislatures in the last quarter of the 20th century, down
to the criminal courts, leading to the felt necessity to stiffen sentencing practices. In order to join he
punishment parade, many probation officials felt obliged to develop a form of muscular probation
that would emphasize surveillance and enforcement – police work under the cloak of probation.
Feeding this race to punitiveness was what will be called a judicial “blind spot', an inability
to understand the lives of typical offenders, the pressures and challenges for those from poor
communities that would make compliance with probationary conditions “mission impossible”,
virtually guaranteeing failure and the likely prospect of revocation followed by a jail or prison term.
In blunt terms, too many judges and probation officers have no clue what's like to be broke and
scrambling to provide the bare necessities. Fortunately, recently published “street” ethnographies
provide a vivid education about life-on-the edge.
Finally, the paper will propose a set of inter-related reforms that will bring probation
forward into its past, restoring the rehabilitative ethic, breaking the probation-to-prison pipeline, and
replacing it with a neo-Augustan model suffused with hope, fair dealing, and the genuine prospect
of a better life.
9
Panelist: Judge Donovan W. Frank
United States District Judge, District of Minnesota
Biography
Coming soon
10
PANEL 2: THE FUTURE OF ECONOMIC SANCTIONS
Panelist: Barry Ruback
Professor of Criminology and Sociology, Penn State University
Biography
Barry Ruback is a professor of Criminology and Sociology at Penn State University. He
received a B.A. in history from Yale University, a J.D. from the University of Texas, and a Ph.D. in
social psychology from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a member of the State Bar Associations
of Texas and Georgia and has been a Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Justice and a
Judicial Fellow of the Supreme Court of the United States, assigned to the U.S. Sentencing
Commission. He is a consultant to the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing and conducts
research examining the predictors and effects of sentencing decisions, particularly economic
sanctions. His sentencing research has been funded by the National Institute of Justice, the National
Science Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.
The Benefits and Costs of Economic Sanctions: Considering the Victim, the Offender, and Society
A consideration of economic sanctions must distinguish between the types and purposes of
the different sanctions. Costs and fees refer to charges the offender must pay to reimburse the state
for the administrative costs of operating the criminal justice system, although there is some variance
in how the terms are used (e.g., specific vs. general charges, charges for past services vs. ongoing
and future services). Fines are monetary penalties imposed primarily as punishment for criminal
behavior. Restitution is court-ordered payment to the victim for financial losses suffered as a result
of the crime.
These different economic sanctions can be considered along dimensions of time (past
orientation vs. future orientation), target (offender vs. victim vs. society), and impact (relative costs
and benefits, in terms of stigma, degree of punishment, flexibility, and recidivism. vis-à-vis both
each other and incarceration).
This examination suggests that costs and fees are the least defensible type of economic
sanction because they impose real harms on offenders, have no benefits and possible costs for
victims, and, net of all costs, are of little or no benefit to society. Fines are potentially more
defensible than costs and fees, because they can be more directly tailored to the individual
offender’s behavior and circumstances. Moreover, fines have potential value as intermediate
sanctions in lieu of incarceration. Restitution to victims is the most defensible economic sanction
because it can provide the tangible and psychological equity that are preconditions for restorative
justice, which can be of benefit to victims, to offenders, and to society.
The paper then discusses practical problems of economic sanctions, especially when there
are multiple types of sanctions, multiple victims, and multiple crimes and when offenders have few
resources to make payments. The paper concludes with policy recommendations regarding
economic sanctions, including the elimination of costs and fees. Short of this dramatic change,
three more realistic changes regarding restitution are recommended: (1) restitution should be
11
mandatory in cases where there is a victim (i.e., criminal justice system expenses should not
masquerade as restitution; (2) restitution should be paid first, before other economic sanctions,
especially before costs and fees; and (3) although ability to pay should be a consideration for costs,
fees, and fines, ability to pay should not be a consideration for restitution.
Panelist: Jessica Eaglin
Counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School
Biography
Jessica M. Eaglin is Counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program where she focuses on
addressing the overreliance on incarceration in the United States. Ms. Eaglin brings expertise in the
areas of state and federal sentencing and correctional reform, civil rights strategy and litigation, and
evidence-based programming in the states. She currently researches the broader tolls of mass
incarceration, including economic impact, and burdensome fees and fines that prevent the formerly
incarcerated from reintegrating into society successfully. Ms. Eaglin additionally supervises the
Justice Program’s access to justice work.
Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Ms. Eaglin taught federal sentencing law and civil
rights law at California Western School of Law in San Diego, CA. She previously worked as a
litigation associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, LLP in New York. She also served as a law
clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In her spare time, Ms. Eaglin also teaches an undergraduate seminar on mass incarceration
at Yale College. She obtained her J.D. and M.A. in Literature from Duke University, and graduated
magna cum lade from Spelman College with a B.A. in English.
Addressing Criminal Justice Debt and Mass Incarceration: Improving Economic Sanctions in State
Justice Systems
Economic sanctions in the U.S. justice system acquired newfound attention from the public
and policymakers across the country in recent years. As states start to reconsider excessively severe
sentences for low level offenders captured in the system, there is a renewed interest in using
alternatives to incarceration – including economic sanctions – to further penal policy while avoiding
the high costs of incarceration. At the same time, states continue to search for ways to fund and
subsidize increasing criminal justice related costs – from indigent defense systems to court
operational expenses to jail systems – with disappearing financial support from legislatures feeling
the pressure to cut correctional costs. On the other hand, more than 80% of offenders incarcerated
in prison and jail today are poor. These recent developments create a tension at the site of economic
sanctions that policymakers are only just starting to engage with substantive solutions. Within this
context, the American Law Institute has revised their Model Penal Code on Sentencing to address
economic sanctions. This essay briefly provides an overview of the competing interests that
contribute to the difficulty in determining an appropriate economic sanctions policy perspective. It
then describes the Model Penal Code’s new approach to economic sanctions, highlighting the ways
that this policy reform finds a balance between the competing goals. The essay concludes by
12
situating the Model Penal Code’s solution to this problem within the framework of states’ current
practices.
Panelist: Kevin R. Reitz
James Annenberg La Vea Land Grant Chair in Criminal Procedure Law, University of Minnesota
Law School
Biography
Professor Kevin R. Reitz joined the University of Minnesota law faculty in 2005. He teaches
criminal law, criminal procedure, and professional responsibility. His scholarship is focused on
criminal justice policy, including law and criminology. His recent book with Henry Ruth, The
Challenge of Crime: Rethinking Our Response (Harvard University Press, 2003), considers issues
of crime and punishment in American history, drug control policy, policing, gun control, and
juvenile justice. Much of his writing has been in the field of sentencing law and policy, including
2005 articles in the Columbia and Stanford Law Reviews.
In addition to his research, Professor Reitz serves the criminal bar and the criminal justice
community. In 1993, he organized the pilot meeting of the National Association of Sentencing
Commissions, which has gone on to become a nationwide resource for states contemplating or
undertaking the process of sentencing reform. He continues to work with NASC and with individual
sentencing commissions nationwide. From 1989 to 1994, he served as Co-Reporter for the new
edition of the ABA's Criminal Justice Standards for Sentencing. In June 2001, he was appointed by
the American Law Institute to be Reporter for the first-ever revision of the Model Penal Code,
limited to the Code's provisions on sentencing and corrections. This ambitious project has drawn
wide attention from policy makers and scholars, including a full symposium issue of the Buffalo
Criminal Law Review in 2003.
Professor Reitz graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1982, where
he served as Comment Editor of the Law Review. Following graduation, he clerked for one year for
Justice Jay A. Rabinowitz of the Supreme Court of Alaska in Fairbanks. From 1983 to 1988 he was
an associate in the litigation department of Saul, Ewing, Remick, and Saul, in Philadelphia, where
he handled criminal and civil cases. From 1988 to 2005 he taught at the University of Colorado
School of Law in Boulder. In 2002 he was visiting fellow at the Institute of Criminology at the
University of Cambridge, where he taught a seminar in sentencing policy and research.
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PANEL 3: COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES AFFECTING OFFENDERS ON COMMUNITY
SUPERVISION
Panelist: Christopher Uggen
Distinguished McKnight Professor of Sociology and Law, University of Minnesota
Biography
Christopher Uggen is Distinguished McKnight Professor of Sociology and Law at the
University of Minnesota. He studies crime, law, and deviance, firm in the belief that good science
can light the way to a more just and peaceful world. He received his Ph.D. in 1995 from Wisconsin,
where he worked with Ross Matsueda. With Jeff Manza, he wrote Locked Out: Felon
Disenfranchisement and American Democracy, and his writing on felon voting, employment, and
discrimination is regularly cited in media such as the New York Times, The Economist, and NPR.
Current projects involve a comparative study of reentry from different types of institutions,
employment discrimination and criminal records, crime and justice in genocide, and the health
effects of incarceration. Outreach and engagement projects include editing Contexts Magazine and
TheSocietyPages.Org (with Doug Hartmann), a book series and multimedia social science hub that
draws over one million readers per month. His work has been supported by NSF, NIJ, NICHD,
NIMH, RWJF, JEHT, and OSI; awards include Young Scholar (ISC 1998; ASC 2000); Faculty
Mentor (1998, 2011); New York Times Magazine Ideas of the Year (2003); Outstanding Service
(ASA 2011; Department 2009; TRIO 2007), Equal Justice (CCJ 2011), and ASC Fellow (2013).
Collateral Consequences and Community Supervision
Christopher Uggen and Robert A. Stewart
As levels of criminal punishment have risen in the United States, more and more citizens are
affected by the collateral consequences of felony convictions. Such consequences are wide-ranging,
placing limits on education, employment, family rights, gun ownership, housing, immigration
status, political participation, public assistance, and travel, to name a few. This article examines
how these restrictions affect non-incarcerated felons—those living in their home communities while
completing a term of probation or parole. While there has been great recent interest in the collateral
effects of imprisonment, far less attention has been devoted to collateral consequences during and
after periods of community supervision. While many such restrictions are surely merited in
individual cases, they are typically applied globally to all convicted felons rather than being tailored
to particular offenses or individuals. And the evidence is mounting that at least some of these
collateral sanctions may be impeding successful completion of probation and parole – and perhaps
compromising rather than enhancing public safety. Articles in the national media, reports from the
American Bar Association and the Uniform Law Commission, federal legislation such as the
Second Chance Act of 2007, and public hearings across the 50 states are now squarely addressing
the challenge of community reintegration—and the barriers posed by the formal and informal
collateral consequences of felony conviction. With the rapid growth of community supervision over
the past four decades, such effects have taken on greater meaning for attorneys, researchers, policy
makers, and, most importantly, people convicted of criminal offenses. This article will thus survey
the landscape of “invisible punishment” and community supervision. The first section briefly
describes the legal consequences of involvement with the criminal-justice system and how they
14
affect probationers and parolees in the United States. The second section reviews what we know
about their impact on those being supervised—including prospects for education, employment, and
social integration. The third section zooms outward to consider broader effects on specific groups
and communities – and, perhaps, democracy itself. Finally, we conclude by sketching some reform
proposals to help policy makers distinguish necessary and useful collateral consequences from
restrictions that appear to do more harm than good.
Second Author Biography: Robert Stewart
Robert Stewart is a graduate student in sociology at the University of Minnesota and a
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. His research is focused in areas of law,
punishment, and crime. His dissertation project is a study of the use of criminal records in the
college admissions process in American higher education. His other current projects include an
investigation of pre-sentence investigation reports and an analysis of the decision of some
defendants to choose prison instead of probation. He frequently testifies at the State Capitol on
criminal justice issues and is a spokesperson for the Minnesota Second Chance Coalition, a
partnership of more than 50 organizations that advocates for fair and sensible laws, policies, and
practices to assist former offenders.
Panelist: Mark Haase
Co-Chair, Minnesota Second Chance Coalition
Former Chief lobbyist and Vice President, Council on Crime and Justice
Biography
Mr. Haase is a licensed Minnesota Attorney and Co-Chair of the Minnesota Second Chance
Coalition, a coalition of over 50 organizations that advocate for fair and responsible policies that
allow those who have committed crimes to contribute to their communities to their full potential.
From 2008-2014 Mr. Haase was the chief lobbyist and Vice President of the Council on Crime and
Justice where he supervised operations of the Council’s programs including 24 hour general crime
victim assistance, services to strengthen the family relationships of prisoners reentering the
community, criminal justice research and program evaluation, public education and outreach, and
policy advocacy. Mr. Haase has developed and provided numerous trainings and presentations on
safely increasing opportunities for people with criminal records to attorneys, policy-makers,
business leaders, and the general public. He has successfully lobbied for passage of several groundbreaking Minnesota laws that increase opportunities for adults and juveniles with criminal records,
including “ban the box” and records expungement legislation. Prior to joining the Council Mr.
Haase was a U.S. Coast Guard Officer, a college student leadership development director with the
YMCA, and sole proprietor of a law practice. He received his B.A. from the University of
Minnesota, and completed his J.D. (cum laude) and M.A. at the University of St. Thomas.
Behind the Mask of Leniency: An Analysis of Felon Disenfranchisement in Minnesota
Minnesota has one of the lowest rates of incarceration in America. However, it has some of
the highest rates of felon disenfranchisement, particularly for African Americans. This article will
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describe the policies that have led to this phenomenon including their history and make
comparisons to other states and international policies. It will explore the idea that Minnesota’s
relatively lenient incarceration policies have helped to mask and perpetuate a system that is
relatively punitive in actual effect. It will also describe and compare the impact these policies have
had on creating some of the other relatively harsh collateral effects of criminal records in
Minnesota.
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PRESENTERS & MODERATORS
Michelle Phelps
Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota Department of Sociology
Biography
Prof. Phelps’ research is in the sociology of punishment, focusing in particular on the
punitive turn in the U.S. Her current work focuses on the rise of probation supervision as a criminal
justice sanction and its relationship to mass incarceration. She has also examined a variety of
criminal justice topics, including: changes in rehabilitative programming in U.S. prisons since the
1970s, the recent decarceration trend and its implications for inequality, and inmates' wellbeing
across prison contexts. Together with Prof. Joshua Page and Philip Goodman, she is also working
on a book tentatively titled Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice.
Richard S. Frase
Benjamin N. Berger Professor in Criminal Law, University of Minnesota Law School
Co-Director, Robina Institute of Criminal Law & Criminal Justice
Biography
Professor Richard S. Frase is the Benjamin N. Berger Professor of Criminal Law. He
currently teaches criminal law, criminal procedure, and the federal defense clinic. He has also
taught the Misdemeanor Prosecution Clinic and a Federal Prosecution clinic. His seminars include
sentencing guidelines, sentencing policy, and comparative criminal procedure. His scholarship
examines Minnesota and other state sentencing guidelines, punishment and proportionality theories,
criminal procedure in the U.S. and abroad, and comparison of sentencing law and practice in U.S.
states and in other nations. He is the author or co-author of eight books and over seventy articles
and essays on these topics.
Professor Frase graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Haverford College. He received his J.D.
degree from the University of Chicago, where he was Comment Editor of the University of Chicago
Law Review. He clerked for the Honorable Luther M. Swygert, Chief Judge of the United States
Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and was an associate attorney for the law firm of Sidley &
Austin in Chicago from 1972 to 1974. Professor Frase then became a research associate and Arnold
Shure Fellow at the University of Chicago-Center for Studies in Criminal Justice.
n 1977 he joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School. He was the Julius
E. Davis Professor of Law for 1988-89 and became Berger Professor in 1991. He has been a
Visiting Professor at the Christian Albrechts Universität in Kiel, Germany, and at the Université
Jean Moulin in Lyon, France, and a Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and
International Criminal Law in Freiburg (Breisgau), Germany. Professor Frase is a member of the
American Law Institute, the American Society of Criminology, and the American, Minnesota, and
Hennepin County Bar Associations. He is a frequent contributor to radio, television, and newspaper
reports on criminal justice issues.
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Justice David R. Stras
Minnesota Supreme Court
Biography
David Stras became an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court on July 1, 2010.
His current term expires in Jan. 2019. Prior to his appointment, Justice Stras was a member of the
faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School from 2004 through 2010.
He taught and wrote in the areas of federal courts and jurisdiction, constitutional law,
criminal law, and law and politics. In addition, Stras was co-director of the Institute for Law and
Politics at the University of Minnesota. His law review articles have appeared in many academic
journals, including the Cornell Law Review, Texas Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal,
Northwestern Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, and the Minnesota Law Review. He has
also served as of counsel to the law firm of Faegre & Benson LLP in their appellate advocacy
group.
Justice Stras received his Bachelor of Arts degree, with highest distinction, in 1995 and his
Master of Business Administration in 1999 from the University of Kansas. He also received his law
degree from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1999, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of
the Criminal Procedure Edition of the Kansas Law Review. While in law school, Stras achieved a
number of academic honors, including election to the Order of the Coif.
Following law school, Stras clerked for The Honorable Melvin Brunetti of the United States
Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then for The Honorable J. Michael Luttig of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
From 2001 to 2002, he practiced white-collar criminal and appellate litigation with the
Washington, D.C., office of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood. Following his year in practice, he
clerked for The Honorable Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Kevin Lindsey
Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights
Biography
Mr. Kevin Lindsey is Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights. He
previously served as a civil litigation attorney in the Office of the Ramsey County Attorney, and has
20 years of experience in resolving complex legal and public policy questions. As Commissioner,
Lindsey is responsible for a department that investigates charges of discrimination, ensures that
businesses seeking state contracts are in compliance with equal opportunity requirements, and
strives to eliminate discrimination by educating Minnesotans about their rights and responsibilities
under the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
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