“Wealth-based penal disenfranchisement”

This is the title of a study by UCLA law professor Beth Colgan, published in the Vanderbilt Law Review, in which she documents how every state that disenfranchises people based upon criminal conviction also conditions restoration of the vote for at least some people upon their ability to pay.  In some states this is because the law requires people to pay fines, fees, restitution and other court costs before they can vote.  Even in the states that restore the vote immediately upon release from prison, “wealth-based penal disenfranchisement” may occur through policies applied by parole and probation authorities. Colgan proposes…

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CCRC to hold roundtable on criminal records at U. Michigan Law School

We are pleased to announce that we are convening a roundtable meeting in August 2019, hosted by the University of Michigan Law School, to develop a model law on access to and use of criminal records, specifically in cases that do not result in a conviction. In March, we began a major study of the public availability and use of these non-conviction records – including arrests that are never charged, charges that are dismissed, deferred and diversionary dispositions, and acquittals.   Law enforcement agencies and courts frequently make these records available to the public allowing widespread dissemination on the internet, both…

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Survey of law enforcement access to sealed non-conviction records

As part of our non-conviction records project, we have researched what state laws provide on law enforcement agency access to and use of sealed or expunged non-conviction records for routine law enforcement purposes.  This issue is particularly salient in light of an ongoing lawsuit against the New York Police Department in which a New York state court found that the NYPD’s routine use and disclosure of sealed arrest information—without securing a court order—violates New York’s sealing statute. Looking across the country, we found an almost even split on this issue: exactly half the states either do not allow law enforcement…

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“Invisible Stripes: The Problem of Youth Criminal Records”

This is the title of a paper by Professor Judith McMullen of Marquette University Law School.  Professor McMullen points out that “the efforts of today’s young people to ‘go straight’ are hampered by nearly unlimited online access to records of even the briefest of encounters with law enforcement, even if those encounters did not result in conviction.”  She argues that “we need to restrict access to and use of information about contacts that offenders under the age of 21 have had with the criminal justice system.” CCRC’s forthcoming study of how jurisdictions manage non-conviction records underscores the points made in this article….

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Administration withdraws proposal to require federal job-seekers to disclose diversions

The Washington Post reports that the White House has directed the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to drop its proposal to expand the types of criminal records that must be disclosed by applicants seeking federal jobs and contracting work.  OPM’s proposal, which we described in March, would have required applicants for federal jobs and contracting work to disclose participation in pretrial diversion programs in the last 7 years. In March, we launched our non-conviction records project, a major study of the public availability and use of non-conviction records – including arrests that are never charged, charges that are dismissed, deferred and diversionary dispositions,…

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