“ESCAPE” FROM PUNISHMENT: Exploring the Sealing of a Criminal Record and Potential Disparities in Its Application

The criminal justice literature has a long tradition of studying sentencing as the final form of punishment meted out by the criminal justice system including both empirical studies of large administrative data. This chapter reviews the ways in which race has been found to influence other key decision-making points in the criminal justice system. It explores these state and federal sealing policies and discusses how prosecutorial and judicial decision-making in charging and plea bargaining/conviction could greatly impact the demographics of those individuals eligible to have their record sealed. The chapter examines the possibility of such racial and gender bias using data from one state, New York, on a cohort of young offenders who have perhaps the most to lose from the lifelong sentence of a criminal record. It utilizes these examples to suggest pathways for future research to further explore the intricate ways in which prosecutorial and judicial discretion may impact the “punishment” of having a permanent criminal record.