Objectives

I examine housing instability among individuals with a felony conviction but no incarceration history relative to formerly incarcerated individuals as a means of separating the effect of felon status from that of incarceration per se—a distinction often neglected in prior research. I consider mechanisms and whether this relationship varies based on gender, race/ethnicity, time since conviction, and type of offense.

Methods

I use National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 data and restricted comparison group, individual fixed effects, and sibling fixed effects models to examine residential mobility and temporary housing residence during early adulthood.

Results

I find robust evidence that never-incarcerated individuals with felony convictions experience elevated risk of housing instability and residential mobility, even after adjusting for important mediators like financial resources and relationships. The evidence that incarceration has an additional, independent effect on housing instability is weaker, however, suggesting that the association between incarceration and housing instability found in prior studies may largely be driven by conviction status.

Conclusions

These findings reveal that conviction, independent of incarceration, introduces instability into the lives of the 12 million Americans who have been convicted of a felony but never imprisoned. Thus, research that attempts to identify an incarceration effect by comparing outcomes to convicted individuals who receive non-custodial sentences may obscure the important independent effect of conviction. Moreover, these findings highlight that the socioeconomic effects of criminal justice contact are broader than incarceration-focused research suggests. Consequently, reform efforts promoting the use of community corrections over incarceration may do less to reduce the harm of criminal justice contact than expected.

中文翻译：

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重罪定罪和监禁后的住房不稳定：摆脱被标记为被监禁的困境

目标

我研究了有重罪定罪但没有监禁历史的个人相对于以前被监禁的个人的住房不稳定情况，作为将重罪犯身份的影响与监禁本身的影响分开的一种手段——这一区别在以前的研究中经常被忽视。我考虑机制以及这种关系是否因性别、种族/民族、定罪后的时间和犯罪类型而变化。

方法

我使用 1997 年全国青年纵向调查数据和限制性比较组、个人固定效应和兄弟姐妹固定效应模型来研究成年早期的居住流动性和临时住房居住。

结果

我发现强有力的证据表明，即使在调整了财务资源和关系等重要调解因素之后，从未被监禁过的重罪犯也会面临住房不稳定和居住流动性较高的风险。然而，表明监禁对住房不稳定具有额外的独立影响的证据较弱，这表明先前研究中发现的监禁与住房不稳定之间的关联可能很大程度上是由定罪状况驱动的。

结论

这些发现表明，与监禁无关的定罪给 1200 万被判重罪但从未入狱的美国人的生活带来了不稳定。因此，试图通过将结果与接受非监禁刑罚的被定罪个人进行比较来确定监禁效应的研究可能会掩盖定罪的重要独立效应。此外，这些发现强调，刑事司法接触的社会经济影响比以监禁为重点的研究表明的更广泛。因此，促进使用社区矫正而非监禁的改革努力对于减少刑事司法接触的危害的作用可能不如预期。