Collateral Consequences of Sex Offender Registration and Notification Policies in Philadelphia: A Qualitative Examination of Implications for Substance Use, Mental Health, and Continued Criminal Legal Involvement

Background and Purpose: Sex offender registration and notification (SORN) laws do not have documented impacts on public safety, but have significantly destabilizing material and psychosocial collateral consequences for people required to register (PRR). These include: barriers to employment and education; restrictions from housing; ineligibility from community resources; stigma; exclusion; and isolation. No research has directly examined relationships between SORN policies and substance-use-related harms, but there are strong theoretical and clinical practice-based reasons to hypothesize that SORN policies a) increase substance-use-related risks and limit access to substance use treatment resources b) have consequences and implications for future criminal legal system involvement unrelated to sexual offending. As part of a dissertation exploring relationships between the material and psychosocial collateral consequences of SORN policies and substance use and treatment access for PRR, this presentation uses qualitative semi-structured interviews with PRR and with criminal legal, substance use, and forensic stakeholders to investigate how multilevel SORN consequences structure a substance use and criminal legal risk environment for PRR.

Methods: 25 semi-structured stakeholder interviews with Philadelphia based attorneys; substance use and social service providers; specialized probation officers; and local policy and programming officials. 50 semi-structured interviews with community-based PRR recruited from Philadelphia based program and treatment sites. Interviews explore experiences navigating SORN restrictions, SORN related barriers to material and psychosocial resources, resulting consequences for PRR substance use and mental health, and implications for continued criminal legal entanglement.

Results: SORN laws pose severe material and emotional hardship for PRR, restrict access to resources, and strongly impact PRR mental health and wellbeing. PRR identified mental health consequences of registration and notification such as anxiety, depression, shame, loneliness, despair, hopelessness, and suicidality, and described several linkages between these experiences and substance use behavior. Stakeholders, meanwhile, explained how SORN polices formally restrict PRR clients from accessing material resources, including needed mental health and substance use treatment and programming resources. Both stakeholders and providers raised important questions related to the fairness, equity, and effectiveness of SORN polices, and described ways in which SORN policies impacted risks of PRR incarceration, and increased the length of time spent incarcerated, in halfway houses, or on parole.

Conclusions and implications: This presentation provides evidence of a social and legal determinant of substance use, mental health, and continued criminal legal system involvement. Findings suggest the importance of future study and policy reexamination, and demonstrate a crucial need for social work practitioners and programs expand treatment and programming eligibility criteria to better support PRR.