When you plead guilty to a criminal charge, you are waiving several of your rights, namely, the right to not incriminate yourself, the right to a jury trial and the right to confront and cross-examine your accusers. While you may be offered a tempting plea agreement it is important to understand how pleading guilty to a felony will affect your life.

 Pleading guilty to a felony results in a felony conviction. When you are convicted of a felony based on your own testimony, you do not have a trial. Rather you have a sentencing. At your sentencing, you will learn of the punishment for the crime you admitted to and shortly after, start serving your jail time or whatever punishment has been assigned to you.

 While pleading guilty to a felony may speed up the legal process, it will affect the remainder of your life. A felony conviction will affect every aspect of your life, from your ability to vote and hold public office to your ability to pursue the career of your choice. Not only can a felony conviction affect your professional aspirations, but it can also affect your personal aspirations as you may be treated differently by friends and family, it may be hard to build trust in new relationships and you may not be able to volunteer for certain organizations that you would like to support.

 A felony conviction from a guilty plea will affect your life in the same way that being found guilty by a jury will. No matter how you are convicted, the only thing that will appear on your record is that you were convicted. And that conviction may disrupt your life in several ways.

 As a convicted felon, you may not be eligible for federal assistance. This may include your ability to receive food stamps and pursue higher education, as convicted felons are not eligible to receive grants, loans, or work study. Not having access to federal aid and federal assistance programs may make it very difficult to live and obtain many of the goals you may have in life.

 Another way that pleading guilty to a felony can affect your life is that you may have to forfeit any professional licenses that you may have held prior to your conviction. For example, your license to teach or practice medicine may be revoked upon a felony conviction.

 Pleading guilty to a felony may also make it very difficult to find a job, as many employers are hesitant to hire convicted felons (see How a Felony may affect Employment).

 In addition to these effects, your ability to travel to foreign countries or become a naturalized citizen of the U.S. may be impacted. For example, countries like Canada do not allow people who have been involved in criminal activity to enter their country. Criminal convictions that affect admissibility into Canada include both minor and serious offenses, including such things as convictions for: theft, drunk driving, assault, murder and manslaughter.

 If you are ever brought to court to testify as a witness or for any other reason, your standing as a convicted felon may discredit your testimony.

 As a convicted felon, you will also not be able to own or possess firearms, vote, or receive security clearance for government jobs.

 Pleading guilty to a felony or being found guilty of a felony by a jury will seriously impact your life for years to come. While it is not impossible to restore community standing and be successful after a felony conviction, it may be difficult.[with misspellings]

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A higher education student is not eligible for federal assistance if he is convicted under federal or state law of a crime involving possession or sale of a controlled substance. Other felonies do not automatically make you ineligible.

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Just from a search of the web we can find things like this:

 Confused: :confused: Hello all I have been reading allot of posts on here and know where you coming from. However I didn't go to prison, probally should have and served less time and still be in the same situation. I went to Jail for 6 months but still have a criminal back ground even after completeing everything and getting them reduced and dismissd. It will still linger over my head for the rest of my life. On top of that Im a tax paying citizen . Why shouldnt we be able to vote and do as a normal citizen. I could see if your a repeadid felon and you just dont want to change or give a dam . But its so hard for people these days. My attorney said I can be a doctor if I want to , dont let the past wreck my future. But in this corrupt day in age, its who you know is where ya gonna go. So whos to say if I take the exam I wont pass. YEAH right. in order to be a doc. you have to give percreptions . Being that it was a Health (marijuana) case still you cant do anything. Mabe a Chiropractor?????:confused: . Whos to say. Im willing to pay for school thats not a problem how ever long it will take but then whos to say the laws wont change when Im done with school. Then it would have been a waist of time.. Ya know . Things change so often its redicilous. Then there to complain why people arent voteing. Well hell if you tell America if youve commited a felon you cant vote then theres your answer. A good population of America has a feloney . Things just need to change for us and for the better. Any ideas of feedback greatly appreciated. Good luck all. Sorry for the spelling Its like 1am and Im so tired.. GN off to bed.[with misspellings]

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WE CAL HELP!

Gregory V Smith

Criminal Defense Attorney 

and Trial Lawyer

Martinsburg, Charles Town

and Berkeley Springs,

West Virginia

304-279-6447

The United States leads the world in the number of people in prison

an estimated 2.29 million people, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies. For every 100,000 people in the United States, there are some 756 people in prison, which is also the highest rate in the world. China, our closest competitor, has an estimated 1.57 million sentenced prisoners (though they have another 850,000 people in "administrative detention"), with a comparatively paltry 119 prisoners for every 100,000 people.

Over the past 4 decades, there has been “tectonic shift” in U.S. incarceration rates, according to Steven Raphael, co-editor of the book Do Prisons Make Us Safer?, “like nothing that has ever happened before in this country or any other.” Starting in the 1970s, the government began using prisons more frequently and putting people there for longer.

The driving force behind this prison population boom isn't actually the criminals, it's the policies that put them behind bars. According to Raphael’s research, some 85 percent of the shift can be attributed to policy changes. In particular, the United States has been increasing its use of prisons to punish drug offenders and parole violators. Raphael’s data suggest that the United States is locking up more people who are less of a danger to society, which decreases the marginal effect of the incarceration. In other words, more people, many of them who wouldn’t likely commit more crimes, are being locked up for longer. That makes the average effectiveness of the incarcerations lower.

“It's a matter of sentencing policy,” Sharp said. “A lion's share of the people we have in prison don't belong there.

“We're not putting people in prison for being a danger to society. We're putting them in prison for offending our morals.”