Felony Convictions

January, 2006

Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Chair

Last fall I was resource person for five consensus meetings on drug policy. Most of participants had a good understanding of the issues. But, some conversations indicated deficiencies in our study. Most surprising was a lack of discussion about the consequences of felony convictions, whom they affect and whether they are helpful to society, especially for non-violent offenses such as selling drugs.

Felony convictions for drug offenses are imposed almost exclusively on people of color. According to the 2003 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 64% of drug sellers are Anglo. Only 8% of Texas inmates held for drug offenses are Anglo.

Retaining the Texas drug felony laws and applying them equally to the races would mean spending huge amounts of tax money to increase prison capacity, filling the new prisons with thousands of young, white, middle and upper class men and women and continuing to punish them as felons for the rest of their lives. Even if this were a good idea, it is politically impossible. Texas drug felony laws will be applied discriminatorily or not at all.

A felony drug conviction usually means that a young minority man or woman is taken away from his/her community to serve a long prison sentence at the age that he/she should be beginning a career. Lost economic productivity due to incarceration in the African-American community in Texas exceeds $1 billion dollars a year.

The felon’s children are frequently sent to foster care and are able to see their parent only for very short periods a few times a year. Texas prisoners owe $2.5 billion in child support. The most accurate predictor of who will one day spend time in prison is who had a parent who spent time in prison.

Even in cases where the felon is sentenced to probation instead of prison, there are serious consequences to a felony conviction. Employers almost always refuse to employ job applicants who have a felony record regardless of individual circumstance. Texas has over 100 state laws that forbid a felon working certain types of jobs. Many of these have no relationship to the offense.

Federal laws impose a temporary ban on student loans or grants and a lifetime ban on food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families for anyone convicted of even a single drug felony. Public housing agencies can deny housing to anyone with a criminal background. Private landlords can, and usually do, refuse to rent to felons. Even felons raising children are usually limited to the worst part of town because no other landlord will rent to them.

Texas LULAC has published an excellent study on these issues, “Pro-Family Criminal Justice Policies.” It is available on their website, http://www.txlulac.org/Downloads/