Collateral Consequences Resource Center

Michigan takes baby steps on criminal justice reform

January 9, 2015 Heather Garretson

Michigan spends one in five tax dollars on corrections so the state continues to explore strategies to safely reduce these costs. In its most recent session, the legislature fish considered bold criminal justice reforms, but strenuous last minute objections from the Attorney General succeeded in halting much of the reform agenda. In the end, only a few reforms were implemented and most of them were passed in watered-down form.

The new laws include (1) the establishment of a Criminal Justice Policy Commission; (2) narrow expansion of set-aside eligibility to victims of human trafficking; and (3) authorization for Certificates of Employability for prisoners who complete certain in-prison training programs. A more ambitious (though still narrow) expansion of the set-aside law is currently on the Governor’s desk for signature. These “baby steps” leave lots of room for improvement, but constitute a blueprint for future reform efforts.

States “rethinking” collateral consequences? Vera Institute jumps the gun

January 7, 2015 Margaret Love

The Vera Institute has published a new report that claims states are “rethinking” collateral consequences through enactment of laws intended to mitigate their impact. The report (Relief in Sight? States Rethink the Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction, 2009-2014) includes an excellent introduction to the issues, helpfully categorizes different types of relief measures, and makes a number of useful recommendations for future reform.

However, the report seems unduly sanguine in suggesting that wholesale dismantling of the regime of collateral penalties is just around the corner, or that reforms of the past five years augur a sea change in public attitudes. Of greater practical concern, the report has methodological shortcomings that limit its usefulness as a research and advocacy tool.

The need to eliminate barriers to diversifying police departments

January 6, 2015 Michael Pinard

The shootings and beatings of unarmed black men, boys, women and girls by police officers are sickeningly repetitive. Also repetitive are the calls in response to diversify police departments by hiring officers who better reflect the communities and neighborhoods they would patrol. These issues have surfaced starkly in Ferguson, Missouri, where three out of 53 officers are black. There, efforts to diversify the police department have been non-existent. Similarly in Cleveland, where twelve-year old Tamir Rice was killed by an officer while playing in a park, black residents make up 53 percent of the population but black officers comprise only 27 percent of the police force.

In Baltimore, the racial composition of the police force more closely approximates the city’s population. Nevertheless, the city has paid $5.7 million since 2011 in court judgments and settlements of police brutality claims. In 2013, 70 percent of Baltimore’s police officers lived outside the city. Thus, racial diversity alone is not a solution.

Appeals court finds federal firearms law constitutionally flawed

January 4, 2015 CCRC Staff

In a major victory for Second Amendment advocates, the Sixth Circuit court of appeals has sustained an as-applied constitutional challenge to the federal firearms dispossession law, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). While the particular provision of that law at issue in Tyler v. Hillsdale County Sheriffs Department is § 922(g)(4), the subsection prohibiting firearms possession by anyone “who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution,” the court’s broad holding and analytical approach will be of considerable interest to those watching developments under the felon-in-possession subsection of the law, § 922(g)(1).

State courts question mandatory lifetime sex offender registration

January 4, 2015 CCRC Staff

Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s decisions in Connecticut Department of Public Safety v. Doe, 538 U.S. 1 (2003) and Smith v. Doe, 538 U.S. 84 (2003), state courts are coming to different conclusions under their own constitutions about whether sex offender registration and notification laws constitute punishment for purposes of due process and ex post facto analysis. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is the most recent to invalidate mandatory registration requirements imposed on juveniles, but several state supreme courts have limited the retroactive application of registration requirements to adults under an ex post facto analysis.

International travel restrictions based on criminal record

January 2, 2015 CCRC Staff

Below is another excerpt from the second edition of Love, Roberts & Klingele, Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction: Law, Policy & Practice (West/NACDL, 2d ed. 2015)(forthcoming), this one about restrictions on international travel based on criminal record. The first section discusses the subject in general terms, while the second section describes restrictions on travel to Canada for individuals with a foreign conviction, and the methods of overcoming these restrictions. (An earlier post described methods of neutralizing Canadian convictions for purposes of travel to the U.S.)

Minnesota’s sweeping new expungement law takes effect

January 1, 2015 Emily Baxter

Beginning January 1^st, 2015, many Minnesotans will have a meaningful shot at a second chance through criminal records expungement. For decades, many individuals have relied upon (and often languished under) a court’s inherent authority to expunge (or seal) criminal records, but recent Minnesota Supreme Court decisions effectively eviscerated that remedy. Without a legislative act expressly granting judicial authority to seal records held within executive branch agencies, the majority of petitioners were granted orders sealing only court records—leaving numerous publicly accessible criminal records untouched.

The new law, passed with bipartisan support and building upon momentum gained with last year’s Ban the Box for private employers, changes that. It provides new authority for expunging (sealing) both criminal and juvenile records held by executive branch agencies; requires data mining companies to observe expungements, protects employers and landlords hiring and renting to individuals with expunged records, addresses victimization and housing evictions, and clarifies a number of procedural issues. The standard for granting expungement remains that under current law, requiring the court to balance private and public interests.

While by no means a silver bullet, this new legislation will help a significant number of Minnesotans currently locked out of employment, housing, licensure, education, and countless other of life opportunities, by providing a true opportunity for a second chance.

Here is an explanation of the new law’s specific provisions.

Jerry Brown takes back a pardon . . . really?

December 31, 2014 Margaret Love

Jerry Brown reportedly regretted one of his 105 Christmas Eve pardons, after learning from an LA Times article that the recipient had recently been disciplined by federal financial regulators. He therefore announced that he was rescinding his grant, claiming that the pardon was not yet final because the Secretary of State had not signed the document evidencing it.

This is not the first time that a governor or president has had second thoughts about a pardon, but it is unusual for a chief executive to attempt to undo one that has been made public. Governor Brown’s attempt to retract the pardon may or may not be effective, but it certainly reflects unfortunate disarray in the administration of the pardon power in California for which other deserving pardon candidates may end up paying.

American criminal record exceptionalism (I): A Spanish comparison

December 30, 2014 James B. Jacobs

A comparative perspective is extremely useful for appreciating the status of individual criminal record information in the U.S. In this and future blog posts, we would like to share information about criminal record law and policy in continental Europe and the U.K., including some important decisions of the European Court of Human Rights.

We begin with Spain, the continental European country we know best. On the basis of past and on-going research, we believe that Spain’s law and policy on criminal records is representative of continental Europe. This is not surprising because, to some extent, all E.U. member states share a legal tradition and are subject to E.U. laws and ECHR’s judgments. However, to be sure, there are some national differences among E.U. member states.

Criminal records and the Obama immigration initiative

December 30, 2014 CCRC Staff

The National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center have published a practice advisory for criminal defense lawyers representing non-citizens seeking relief under the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program announced by President Obama on November 20, 2014. DHS simultaneously announced new priorities for enforcement that will bar eligibility for the new program, many of which are based on criminal conduct or convictions. The nine-page practice advisory provides technical assistance to criminal defense practitioners seeking to navigate the eligibility shoals of the new program for clients facing criminal charges.

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