In the criminal justice community, collateral consequences is a term we often hear in relation to the other effects a criminal conviction can have on a person’s life, but what is frequently overlooked is the fact that a criminal conviction is all too often a collateral consequence of the circumstances of a person’s life.
Commonly, alcohol or drug addiction, or socioeconomics are the reasons that people commit criminal acts and sometimes the roots are even deeper than that. For example, trafficked young women are usually given drugs by their traffickers to foster their compliance. Even if and when these victims are removed from their traffickers, addiction has already occurred. Once addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, these young woman may commit crimes to either feed their addiction or because of their addiction.
