Kathleen Harris

The Perpetual Punitive Machine Backfires

Our nation has a penchant for creating unnecessary complexity and obstacles for its people in areas such as the tax, health insurance and student debt miasmas. The prison industry adds to this with what it euphemistically calls “collateral consequences.” In simple language, this means a series of state-based statutory punishments – rooted in the medieval English practice of “civil death” – that greet ex-felons who have served their time and paid their debt to society.