Under 42 U.S.C. § 13661(c), a public housing authority may deny admission or assistance to an applicant who, during a “reasonable time” before the admission decision, engaged in drug related criminal activity, violent criminal activity, or other criminal activity that would adversely affect the health, safety, or right to peaceful enjoyment of the premises by other residents, the owner, or public housing agency employees.” The statute does not define a “reasonable time.” According to HUD guidance, public housing authorities may want to define the term in a different way for different categories of criminal activity. HUD suggests that “five years may be a reasonable period for serious offenses.” Screening and Eviction for Drug Abuse and Other Criminal Activity; Final Rule, 66 Fed. Reg. 28,776, 28,779 (May 24, 2001). Nevertheless, many public housing authorities deny admission or assistance on the basis of criminal activity that occurred 10 years or more before the admission decision.
Public housing authorities that adopt such restrictive admission policies assume that a criminal record is a good predictor of future criminal behavior. Recent research shows, however, that individuals with an old criminal record do not exhibit a higher risk of committing a crime in the future than individuals without a criminal record. Megan C. Kurlycheck, Robert Brame, and Shawn D. Bushway, Enduring Risk? Old Criminal Records and Short-Term Predictions of Criminal Involvement, 53(1) Crime & Delinquency 64 (2007). The study used police contact data from a cohort of 670 men born in Racine, Wisconsin in 1942 and followed through age 32. The results reveal that if a person with a criminal record is incident free for a period of about 7 years, his risk of future criminal activity is similar to that of a person without a criminal record.
It is important to note that the value of the study is limited for several reasons. First, advocates may not want to suggest that public housing authorities define a “reasonable time” as 7 years. A period of 3 years or less is ideal. Second, the study used police contact as a proxy for criminal activity, when in fact, many arrests are erroneous. Finally, the study does not provide offense specific information. It is possible that the risk of future criminal behavior decreases at a more rapid rate for certain types of criminal activity. Nevertheless, advocates may want to draw on the results of the study to incrementally improve the admission policies of public housing authorities that reject individuals on the basis of criminal activity that occurred 7 years or more before the admission decision.
This page was supported in part by a grant from the Soros Justice Fellowships Program of the Open Society Institute.
