{"id":658,"date":"2012-01-13T18:26:11","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T23:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/?p=658"},"modified":"2012-01-14T11:12:32","modified_gmt":"2012-01-14T16:12:32","slug":"stale-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/2012\/01\/13\/stale-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Stale Records"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/2012\/01\/13\/stale-records\/ethel\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-659\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-659\" title=\"ethel\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/files\/2012\/01\/ethel-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/files\/2012\/01\/ethel-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/files\/2012\/01\/ethel-330x327.jpg 330w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/files\/2012\/01\/ethel.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>Criminologists <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heinz.cmu.edu\/faculty-and-research\/faculty-profiles\/faculty-details\/index.aspx?faculty_id=9\">Al Blumstein<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ccjs.umd.edu\/faculty\/faculty.asp?p=210\">Kiminori Nakamura<\/a>\u00a0offer a powerful\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/01\/10\/opinion\/paying-a-price-long-after-the-crime.html\">op-ed<\/a>\u00a0this week, arguing\u00a0that &#8220;stale criminal records&#8221; should expire when they can no longer distinguish criminals from non-criminals.<\/p>\n<p>But this isn&#8217;t just a couple of bleeding heart academics advocating on behalf of\u00a0a stigmatized group&#8212;there&#8217;s a solid research foundation supporting the argument.\u00a0Several smart and creative\u00a0studies have now followed people arrested or convicted of crimes to\u00a0watch how long it takes before\u00a0a criminal&#8217;s risk of a new offense drops to the point that it is indistinguishable from those with no record of past crimes.<\/p>\n<p>Several teams of social scientists have\u00a0designed really elegant studies to answer this important\u00a0question. Most use some variant of\u00a0event history or survival\u00a0analysis&#8212;a semi-fancy but straightforward set of statistical tools. Based on their own\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/j.1745-9125.2009.00155.x\/abstract\">research<\/a>,\u00a0Blumstein and Nakamura\u00a0now conservatively estimate the \u201credemption time\u201d\u00a0at 10 to 13 years. <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/j.1745-9133.2006.00397.x\/abstract\">Megan Kurlychek, Bobby Brame, and Shawn Bushway<\/a> came up with about a 6-year window using somewhat different data and methodology in <a href=\"http:\/\/chrisuggen.blogspot.com\/2006\/05\/when-do-i-stop-being-felon_04.html\">2006<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>While the specific &#8220;time-to-no-crime&#8221; varies across studies, the best evidence is now calling into question standard &#8220;lifetime&#8221; bans on employment, voting,\u00a0and other rights and privileges. This doesn&#8217;t mean that the laws will be changed or even that they should be changed. But it does show how good social science can challenge old assumptions and inject much-needed evidence into public debates. And, for\u00a0those\u00a0of us who\u00a0like to\u00a0put\u00a0our semi-fancy statistics to good purpose, the op-ed and the research beneath it\u00a0offer a fine example of public scholarship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Criminologists Al Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura\u00a0offer a powerful\u00a0New York Times op-ed\u00a0this week, arguing\u00a0that &#8220;stale criminal records&#8221; should expire when they can no longer distinguish criminals from non-criminals. But this isn&#8217;t just a couple of bleeding heart academics advocating on behalf of\u00a0a stigmatized group&#8212;there&#8217;s a solid research foundation supporting the argument.\u00a0Several smart and creative\u00a0studies have now [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10983,10985,1063,10984],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-blumstein","tag-criminal-records","tag-criminology","tag-nakamura"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/files\/2012\/01\/ethel.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":672,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions\/672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}