Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog

I learned something deep today: have you ever heard of “Collateral Consequences” in regard to the justice system? We all think we know how it affects people, but we mostly only know just the surface. “Collateral consequences are legal and regulatory sanctions and restrictions that limit or prohibit people with criminal records from accessing employment, occupational licensing, housing, voting, education, and other opportunities. Collateral consequences most frequently affect people who have been convicted of a crime, though in some states an arrest alone—even an arrest that doesn't result in a conviction—may trigger a collateral consequence”. “Some collateral consequences serve a legitimate public safety or regulatory function, such as keeping firearms out of the hands of people convicted of domestic violence offenses, prohibiting people convicted of abuse from working with children or the elderly, or barring people convicted of fraud from positions of public trust. Ot...

Whatever political party you belong to, whichever label you put on yourself, all sensible people know that our criminal justice system is far from perfect. We have left the “correctional and rehabilitation” parts out and focused on the “punishment” thereby creating issues that should not exist. The system changes with the political winds (should not happen), and industries whose CEOs names we do not know, are making huge profits from it. Inflated phone calls for prisoners, expensive commissaries, prison labor, the bail bond system, debtors prison (still exists just not called that), fining communities into poverty for minor offenses, etc. Private prisons can only make a profit if there are prisoners, and we have seen judges go to jail recently for jailing kids and adults for a healthy kick-back. We have police officers, through no fault of their own, that are inadequately trained to handle a lot of situations and there is no training in sight. We have communities tha...