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Fact Sheet
Poverty and Opportunity Profile: Eliminating Barriers to Reentry
The Sentencing Project partnered with Half in Ten and the Community Legal Services of Philadelphia (CLS) to produce a poverty and opportunity profile analyzing barriers for Americans with criminal records to accompany a new report by the Center for American Progress on eliminating barriers to economic success for people with criminal records.
Related to: Incarceration, Racial Justice, Collateral Consequences
Approximately 7 million individuals are under some form of correctional control in the United States, including 2.2 million incarcerated in federal or state prisons and local jails. Tens of millions have some type of criminal record, which can present obstacles to employment, housing, public assistance, education, and family reunification. Moreover, poverty and homelessness are increasingly criminalized. Failure to address these links as part of a larger anti-poverty agenda risks missing a major piece of the puzzle.
The Sentencing Project partnered with Half in Ten and the Community Legal Services of Philadelphia (CLS) to produce a poverty and opportunity profile analyzing barriers for Americans with criminal records to accompany a new report by the Center for American Progress, One Strike and You’re Out: How We Can Eliminate Barriers to Economic Security and Mobility for People with Criminal Records.