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The consequences of a person’s prior crimes remain after the debt to society is paid and the sentence is discharged. While the practice of using prior convictions to enhance the severity of sentence imposed is universal, prior record enhancements (PREs) play a particularly important role in US sentencing, and especially in guidelines jurisdictions. In grid-based guidelines, criminal history constitutes one of the two dimensions of the grid. The enhancements are hard to justify. Retributive theories generally reject the use of robust, cumulative record-based enhancements. Research into recidivism suggests that the preventive benefits of PREs have been overstated. The public support the consideration of prior convictions at sentencing, but there is convincing evidence that people are less punitive in their views than are many US guideline schemes. PREs exacerbate racial disparities in prison admissions and populations, result in significant additional prison costs, undermine offense-based proportionality, and disrupt prison resource prioritization.

Surveys conducted over the past twenty years in several English-speaking countries reveal that most members of the public subscribe to a number of misperceptions about juvenile crime and justice. Regardless of actual trends, significant majorities believe youth crime to be increasing, and most people have quite negative views of youth courts. The public display considerable ambivalence with respect to juvenile justice. While strong majorities favor punishing violent juveniles with the same severity as adults, there has always been considerable support for rehabilitation. There is a clear consensus among scholars that public concern about youth crime, particularly violent crime, has been a driving force behind reforms that facilitated the transfer of accused juveniles to adult criminal court and made penalties harsher for offenders sentenced in youth court.

The relationship between crime and race or ethnicity has important implications for Canada. The constitution affirms the country's multicultural heritage. As in other Western nations, certain minorities are overrepresented in the prison population. Aboriginal and black offenders account for a disproportionate number of admissions. There has not been much research on why such disproportions exist, except concerning Aboriginal Canadians. Canada is not immune to problems of discrimination. Compared with whites, black accuseds are significantly more likely to be denied pretrial release on bail and, for certain offenses, to be incarcerated.