Research Note: "Privacy Loss as a Collateral Consequence"

Abstract

The digital age has raised important new questions about privacy rights, particularly in the collection and dissemination of personally identifiable data. In a justice context, these privacy questions are compounded by the stigmatizing nature of criminal records. While discrimination based on a criminal conviction has been long documented in social science research, and privacy conversations have been invoked in criminal record policy, less direct attention has been paid to the psychological and social privacy harms of internet-based criminal record disclosure, especially for non-conviction, sealed, and expunged records. This note situates digital and reputational harms amidst broader collateral consequences of criminal records by discussing the complexity of competing privacy norms and law and the racialized dynamics of digital records and surveillance. By focusing on reputation and privacy, this note suggests that public policy better incorporate protections for the accused against digital punishment.