Critical requirement: You cannot publish research on criminal justice without explicitly documenting who could be harmed by your findings. This is not optional—it's an ethical prerequisite.
Stakeholders in carceral policy research
Click each stakeholder to see potential benefits, harms, and required mitigation strategies:
⚠️ Potential harms
- Further surveillance: data collection on already over-monitored population
- Stigma reinforcement: framing as "unbanked population" rather than "people excluded by policy"
- Commercial exploitation: findings used to justify predatory financial products
- No reciprocity: community provides data, receives no direct benefit
✅ Potential benefits
- Policy advocacy: evidence for sentencing reform and financial inclusion legislation
- Visibility: documenting systemic barriers others deny exist
- Legal challenges: data supporting lawsuits against discriminatory practices
Required mitigation strategies:
Partner with justice-impacted advocacy organizations before publication. Share findings with affected communities first. Commit portion of any commercial licensing fees to mutual aid funds. Frame findings in liberatory language that names policy as cause.
✅ Potential benefits
- Market intelligence: identify "underserved" populations in reform states
- Regulatory compliance: evidence for CRA obligations
- Product development: justify new offerings for formerly incarcerated customers
⚠️ Potential harms (to others)
- Predatory targeting: use findings to market high-fee products to vulnerable populations
- Redlining justification: avoid high-incarceration areas citing "risk"
- Data extraction: profit from research on marginalized communities without reciprocity
Required mitigation strategies:
Embargo commercial use of findings for 2 years. Require non-commercial license for publication. Advocate simultaneously for regulatory protections against discriminatory use of incarceration data.
✅ Potential benefits
- Evidence base: data supporting sentencing reform legislation
- Economic argument: quantified commercial cost of mass incarceration
- Intervention design: identify which policies most suppress financial access
⚠️ Potential misuse
- Austerity justification: "reform saves money" used to cut services, not expand justice
- Selective citation: use evidence for punitive policies if framed wrong
Required mitigation strategies:
Frame findings explicitly as justice issue, not fiscal issue. Partner with reform advocacy groups to control narrative. Provide policy briefs in liberatory framing only.
⚖️ Complex impact
- Double-edged: Documenting harm to these communities is necessary for justice, but data could be weaponized
- Risk: Findings reinforce racist stereotypes if framed as "communities' problems" rather than "policy's impacts"
- Opportunity: Evidence for reparative justice and targeted policy interventions
Required mitigation strategies:
Center structural racism explicitly in analysis. Never present disparities without naming their cause (policy choices, not community characteristics). Partner with racial justice organizations. Include community members in research design and interpretation.
✅ Potential benefits
- Governance metrics: state-level risk assessment tool
- Investment screening: identify states with justice reform momentum
- Portfolio diversification: quantified social risk factor
⚠️ Potential harms
- Divestment from reform: punish states attempting change due to "uncertainty"
- ESG-washing: use findings to claim social consciousness while maintaining extractive practices
- Capital flight: withdraw investment from high-incarceration states, harming residents further
Required mitigation strategies:
Clarify that reform creates opportunity, not risk. Advocate for investment IN reform states to support transition, not divestment. Reject "social impact" framing that extracts without transforming power.
⚠️ Potential harms (to others)
- Algorithmic enhancement: use data to build predictive risk scores that entrench discrimination
- Surveillance expansion: justify monitoring financial transactions of formerly incarcerated people
- Opposition to reform: weaponize findings to argue incarceration "doesn't matter" if framed neutrally
Required mitigation strategies:
Explicitly prohibit use in risk assessment algorithms. Do not share disaggregated data that could enable individual-level targeting. Frame all findings in context of policy reform, not individual prediction.
The power asymmetry
Notice the pattern: institutions (banks, investors, carceral actors) gain actionable intelligence, while formerly incarcerated people and communities of color face increased surveillance and exploitation risk. Your research design must actively counter this imbalance—reciprocity is not automatic.
✋ Before proceeding with your research:
Document mitigation strategies for EVERY stakeholder who could be harmed. If you cannot mitigate a harm, you must either redesign the study or acknowledge the harm explicitly in your ethics statement and justify why the knowledge is worth it.
Continue to Module 3: Data Provenance Check →