The National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice and the ABA Criminal Justice Section present a new addition to the criminal law related resources – the National Inventory of the Collateral Consequences of Conviction (NICCC).
This fully searchable national inventory makes each jurisdiction’s collateral consequences accessible to the public. The inventory maps the triggers of collateral consequences across the federal and all state jurisdictions, as well as District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands. Users may search the database by keyword and results can be sorted by category (i.e. employment, judicial rights, education, housing, motor vehicle licensing, etc.), type (i.e. mandatory, discretionary, etc.), offenses (i.e. any, any felony, any misdemeanor, sex offense, crime of moral turpitude, etc.), jurisdiction, or duration (i.e. any, permanent, specific, conditional, etc.).
The results are displayed in a table listing the citation and title of the collateral consequence, the triggering offense category, consequence type, and duration category. Result list can be exported into an excel spreadsheet and individual result pages can be printed.
The website offers very thorough user guide explaining what collateral consequences are, addressing questions about the inventory database, search capabilities, and the results. The site also offers a thorough list of bibliographies (resources) divided into three major categories:
- Inventories and Studies of Collateral Consequences
- Standards, Policies, and Model Legislation
- Reports and Law Review Articles
The website makes it clear that it is intended for educational and informational purposes only, and that no part of this websites constitutes legal advice. Further,
The website [makes] it possible for criminal and civil lawyers to determine which collateral consequences are triggered by particular categories of offenses, for affected individuals to understand the limits on their rights and opportunities, and for lawmakers and policy advocates to understand the full measure of a jurisdiction’s sanctions and disqualifications. It also [is] possible through the website to perform inter-jurisdictional comparisons and national analyses.
This is an excellent addition to the criminal law related tools available online; making it much easier for anyone to look up what collateral consequence a particular conviction triggers, what is the duration of such consequence and whether such consequence is mandatory.