Tag: Demleitner

How Europe manages access to criminal records – a model for U.S. reformers

We are pleased to republish a book review by CCRC Executive Director Margaret Love of a collection of essays about how European countries manage access to criminal records. The philosophy and values underpinning the EU approach revealed in these essays are so different from our own that their product will make record reformers in the U.S. green with envy.

For example, the review points out that one of the foundational premises of European systems of criminal records is that giving the public broad access would be “contrary to ‘fundamental’ considerations of privacy and human dignity protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, which implicitly limit loss of liberty and public stigmatization through disclosure of a past crime.” Accordingly, employers and other non-law enforcement entities can have access to criminal records only if their subject explicitly authorizes it, and even then a request will be permitted only in specified circumstances where a criminal record is deemed relevant.

Individuals asked to produce their record may decide that the uncertainty of benefit is not worth the risk of exposure. In this fashion, individuals may take responsibility for achieving their own social redemption even if they lose an economic opportunity.

Only a “dystopian account” of the Australian system of accessing criminal records will seem familiar to U.S. practitioners.

Here is the review by CCRC’s Margaret Love, which originally appeared in Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books:

Read more

Federal judges challenge collateral consequences

Federal judges have begun speaking out about the burdens imposed by severe collateral consequences and the limited ability of courts to mitigate the resulting harm.  This is particularly true in the Eastern District of New York, where some judges have openly lamented the lack of statutory federal expungement authority and have used their opinions and orders to call upon the legislature to ensure that those with criminal records are given a fair shot at success.  Among the more vocal critics of collateral consequences is recently retired Judge John Gleeson, who last year took the extraordinary step of expunging one woman’s criminal record despite acknowledged uncertainty about his authority to do so.  In another case, Judge Gleeson crafted an alternative more transparent form of relief, a federal “certificate of rehabilitation.”  (You can find our extensive coverage of these cases here).

In a new article titled “Judicial Challenges to the Collateral Impact of Criminal Convictions: Is True Change in the Offing?,” Nora Demleitner takes a look at how the criticisms of members of the federal bench may shape the framework in which second chance laws and policies are considered, both at the legislative and judicial level, and how they may or may not affect the prospect of significant reform.

Read more