Publication Date

10-20-2025

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Criminal Justice and Behavior

DOI

10.1177/00938548251379861

Abstract

Having a criminal record significantly alters a person’s life chances, decreasing their opportunities for employment, housing, student loans, voting, public benefits, and more. The collateral consequences of criminal convictions, or the civil restrictions that follow criminal convictions, are well documented. However, because individuals are connected to families and communities, it is impossible to isolate the effects of punishment to only the persons holding criminal records. Instead, the effects of criminal records might be best understood as a set of symbiotic harms, marked by relational and interdependent effects. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 59 expungement-eligible persons and 69 community representatives, this paper explores the symbiotic harms of lower-level criminal records and explores the potential for automated criminal record clearance to enhance the lived experiences of record holders and their networks.

Funding Sponsor

Santa Clara University

Keywords

automated criminal record clearance, expungement, families, symbiotic harms, volunteering with children

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Department

Justice Studies

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