New federal screening requirements for child care workers

Child care workers in every state are subject to rigorous criminal background checks that may result in mandatory bars to employment. Until now, each state has been generally free to define its own standards regarding screening for criminal history. That is about to change.

By September of next year, states receiving funds under the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 (which appropriates over $ 2.5 billion each year to fund state child care and child welfare programs) must adopt minimum federally-defined screening standards for child care workers or risk loss of funding. The revised statutory standards subject current and prospective child care workers to a multi-level criminal background check and disqualify from employment anyone convicted of crimes against children, specified violent crimes, and drug crimes within the past 5 years.  States may opt to waive the disqualification for drug crimes on a case-by-case basis, but they are also free to adopt conviction-based disqualifications that are more restrictive than the law requires.

If the new CCDBG standards were not bad enough, the Department of Health and Human Services has issued proposed rules that would make them worse.  On Monday, the CCRC joined a coalition of organizations led by the National Employment Law Project in calling on HHS to rethink proposed rules that would implement the new screening requirements. A formal comment filed by the coalition details the ways in which the proposed rules fail to adequately address the disparate impact that the requirements could have on women, African Americans, and Latinos, and takes issue with requirements in the rules that are more exclusionary than the Act requires. Read more

New York Bar adopts reentry recommendations

In 2012 newly elected President of the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA), Seymour James, Jr., drew upon his 38 years of experience at the Legal Aid Society of New York City to establish a Special Committee on Reentry and appointed committee members who would spend the next three years researching and studying issues relating to reentry and reintegration.

The goal of this Special Committee was to develop a report and recommendations including a consideration of collateral consequences that can have an impact on reentry regarding education, housing employment, medical health, mental health and juveniles. The report identifies some of the best practices to ensure productive lives and minimize recidivism of formerly incarcerated adults and detained juveniles, and of adults and juveniles who can avoid convictions and delinquency findings through innovative diversion programs.

On January 29, 2016 the NYSBA House of Delegates adopted the report and recommendations of the Special Committee.

Read more

Mexico vacations out for sex offenders?

It appears that Mexico has inaugurated a policy of refusing entry to anyone registered in the United States as a sex offender.  While no formal policy has been announced, the body of anecdotal evidence supporting the existence of an informal policy is growing.  In numerous internet postings, vacationers report being turned back at the border or forced to take the next plane home, leaving their families behind.  There is no indication that people with other convictions are being similarly excluded.  The Mexican government’s new policy has been made technologically feasible by new federal data-sharing policies, including the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender website maintained by the Justice Department’s SMART Office. Members of the public may now do a free national search of all state sex offender registries, as well as all registries maintained in Indian country.  We will continue to monitor this situation, and watch for reports about exclusionary policies from other countries.

50-state guide to expungement and sealing laws

The 50-state chart of judicial relief mechanisms from the NACDL Restoration of Rights Resource, which is also posted on this site, is a comprehensive survey of all authorities for judicial relief in the states and federal system. We wanted to bring it to our readers’ attention in light of the new federal interest in helping individuals with a criminal record overcome barriers to employment and licensing through clearing their records.

The National Clean Slate Clearinghouse, recently announced as part of President Obama’s reentry initiative, will “provide technical assistance to local legal aid programs, public defender offices, and reentry service providers to build capacity for legal services needed to help with record-cleaning, expungement, and related civil legal services.” This joint project of the Labor and Justice Departments will doubtless make it a first priority to survey the laws providing judicial and other relief in different states, to determine what sort of assistance lawyers will need to neutralize the adverse employment consequences of conviction, though the courts or otherwise.  We hope these resources will prove useful in that effort.

Read more

How a parent’s criminal record limits children

reportcover“The barriers associated with having a criminal record do not just result in lifelong punishment for the parent with the record; they also can significantly limit a child’s life chances.” This is according to a new report by the Center for American Progress that examines the multi-generational effects of collateral consequences and the cycle of poverty and lost opportunity that those consequences perpetuate.

A parent’s criminal record can affect everything from a child’s emotional and physical well-being to future economic and educational outcomes.  This is true even if the record was for a minor conviction that did not result in incarceration or, in some cases, an arrest that did not result in conviction at all.

Read more

Medicare Employment Exclusions and Criminal Records: Good and Bad News

Yvelisse Pelotte, a staff attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, has drafted a survey and analysis of the barriers to employment in Medicare-funded programs and facilities for people with a criminal record, which is posted below.  While some of these exclusions are short-term and others can be waived by the Secretary of HHS, the statute gives HHS a great deal of latitude in extending exclusions for a lengthy period of time.

The applicable federal statute also contains a very broad definition of disqualifying conviction, specifically extending to expunged convictions and guilty pleas not resulting in conviction.  This means that federal law effectively puts off limits a very large segment of health care jobs, at least temporarily, for people with criminal records the state no longer regards as serious, if it ever did.

Read more

Employment bars in long-term health care facilities declared unconstitutional in Pennsylvania

A few days ago we received the following communique from Sharon Dietrich of Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, announcing a major litigation victory that will be welcome news across the country.  On December 30 a unanimous 7-judge appeals court struck down the provisions of the Pennsylvania Older Americans Protective Services Act barring employment of people with criminal records in long-term health care facilities such as nursing homes and home health care agencies.  The provisions declared unconstitutional on due process grounds law include lifetime employment bans for offenses as minor as misdemeanor theft, which Sharon notes “prevented many Pennsylvanians with criminal records from working in that entire burgeoning field.”  The decision in Peake v. Commonwealth is here, and NPR’s report on the decision is here.

Read more

Connecticut’s trail-blazing Gov. Dannel Malloy

The New York Times published a terrific editorial today describing in detail the extraordinary work being done by Governor Dannel Malloy and others in Connecticut to reform the system of criminal punishment, and to assist those with a criminal record get jobs and qualify for other benefits and opportunities.  Rather than try to summarize all of Connecticut’s trail-blazing accomplishments under Governor Malloy, we are reprinting the editorial in its entirely here.

Read more

Judge Gleeson stepping down from the bench

The New York Daily News reports that Federal District Judge John Gleeson is stepping down from the bench to practice law. Judge Gleeson may be best known to the public for his prosecution of mob boss John Gotti more than two decades ago, but while on the bench he has been a champion for sentencing reform, criticizing long mandatory sentences and coercive prosecutorial tactics.  More recently he has stepped into the debate over the punitive impact of collateral consequences, expunging the record of a woman he had sentenced 13 years before. The article notes that

Federal prosecutors are also fighting him tooth and nail on a decision to expunge the criminal record of a Brooklyn woman who convinced the judge that she was trying to turn her life around but could not find a good job because of a fraud conviction years ago.

The government has appealed Judge Gleeson’s expungement order, and CCRC recently filed an amicus brief in the Second Circuit in the case of U.S. v. Jane Doe.

Look for more in this space on Judge Gleeson’s resignation.

Criminal records and immigration in Europe and the U.S.

What are the emerging trends in Europe and the United States in considering a person’s past criminal record for purposes of travel, work and residency?  Professor James Jacobs of NYU Law School and three co-authors have just posted on SSRN a fascinating article titled Criminal Records and Immigration:  Comparing the United States and the European Union.   Research for the article, which will be published in the Fordham International Law Journal, shows that EU countries tend to focus primarily on public safety concerns in deciding the relevance of a criminal record for immigration purposes, including travel to and within the EU.  In contrast, the United States treats criminal record as “an indelible mark of bad character” that has become “the most important determinant of who is admitted to the country, who is removed, and who is offered the privileges of citizenship.”

While many U.S. practitioners and scholars are familiar with the ways a criminal record can affect a non-citizen’s right to enter and remain in this country, they will be interested to learn more about the complex and nuanced way that a criminal record can affect immigration to as well as travel and work within the European Union and its constituent countries. The authors ask the question whether increasing efficiency in access to criminal records in the EU will bring its laws and policies closer to those of the U.S.

Read more

1 … 39 40 41 42 43 … 58