I’ve written a few times about the difficulties people with criminal records have in the labor market. A recent study from Rice University shows that they also face difficulties accessing stable housing. What’s more, it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference if people were incarcerated or not.

The researchers highlight that around half of convicted felons never actually serve time, but the felony status alone is often enough to cause significant housing instability, such as a reliance on temporary housing or frequently moving abode. The scale of this is significant, with the researchers believing it can affect up to 12 million Americans.

“Unfortunately, the stigma of a felony conviction doesn’t appear to die off with time,” they explain. “When someone is incarcerated, they have to deal with being removed from their neighborhood, their social network and the labor market. But eventually individuals can recover from the disruption of incarceration and begin to rebuild their lives. However, this doesn’t seem to be the case with felony convictions—my work shows that they follow these individuals and seriously disrupt their housing trajectories.”

Secure housing

The authors highlight that there have been efforts at bipartisan criminal justice reform, these have largely focused on things like shorter sentences and greater use of community-based corrections in a bid to reduce the size of the prison population.

While these efforts are noble, they don’t really do much to help reduce the stigma people with a criminal record face upon their release.

“More investment in reentry programs, as President Biden and others have pushed for, is a great way to help ease the transition from prison back to society, but they don’t help the 12 million Americans with felony convictions who’ve never served time,” the authors conclude. “If we’re serious about giving people second chances we need to do things like remove barriers to getting occupational licenses, enact more automatic record sealing laws like Colorado and Pennsylvania have, and work to limit the use of unregulated and often inaccurate online criminal background check services. Until we take these sorts of steps to lessen the stigma around prior felony conviction, these individuals will face great hurdles as they try to rebuild their lives.”