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Life Sentences and Minor Offenses: Benchmarking, Recalibration, and the Culture of Collateral Consequence Reform

David McElhattan

Law and Policy2025https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.70000article
ABDC A
Weight
0.37

Abstract

The collateral consequences of justice involvement have become the subject of much reform activity in recent years. Drawing from a sample of 284 news articles, the present study uses content analysis methods to identify and examine the dominant frames that characterize collateral consequences in public discourse as a problematic feature of criminal justice policy and practice. The analysis finds that reform discourse draws primarily on a formal penal benchmark of gross disproportionality, which highlights the extreme disconnect between minor direct punishments for low‐level offenses and the long‐term collateral barriers that a person faces because of their criminal record. Gross disproportionality corresponds to a vision of reform that seeks to recalibrate collateral consequences according to the structure of direct punishment, an approach that may render collateral consequences more formally penal as a result of the reform process itself.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.70000

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@article{david2025,
  title        = {{Life Sentences and Minor Offenses: Benchmarking, Recalibration, and the Culture of Collateral Consequence Reform}},
  author       = {David McElhattan},
  journal      = {Law and Policy},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.70000},
}

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Life Sentences and Minor Offenses: Benchmarking, Recalibration, and the Culture of Collateral Consequence Reform

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Evidence weight

0.37

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.16 × 0.4 = 0.06
M · momentum0.53 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.