Tag: East Bay Community Law Center

David Schlussel joins CCRC as its first Fellow

I am delighted to announce that David Schlussel will join CCRC as its first Fellow at the end of this month.  Most recently, David served as a law clerk for the Honorable David O. Carter on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. While attending law school at Berkeley, David represented clients in juvenile delinquency, school discipline, and clean slate proceedings as a clinical student for the East Bay Community Law Center. He also interned at public defender offices, taught outreach courses in Juvenile Hall, and wrote a law review note on marijuana, race, and collateral consequences. David…

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Should a criminal record ruin a career?

The Atlantic has published an excellent article about the permanently disabling effects of a criminal record, by two attorneys at the East Bay Community Law Center (Oakland, CA), Sarah Crowley and Alex Bender (an Equal Justice Works AmeriCorps Fellow).  Haunted by the Past: A Criminal Record Shouldn’t Ruin a Career, March 25, 2015.  The authors argue, based on their experiences in their practice, that “too many applicants, particularly people of color, are being denied jobs based on background checks that are irrelevant or even inaccurate.”   They describe the sources of inaccuracy and other unreliability in criminal background checks, even ones based…

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Clean slate remedies help overcome collateral consequences

Eliza Hersh, director of the Clean Slate Clinic at the East Bay Community Law Center and one of CCRC’s contributing authors, has co-authored a most persuasive op ed in the LA Times, which we are pleased to reprint here in full.   Should a shoplifting conviction be an indelible scarlet letter? Not in California What exactly is the appropriate punishment for someone who commits a low-level, nonviolent crime? Should a conviction for minor drug possession, shoplifting or writing a bad check result in a lifetime of stigma and denied opportunities, or do people with criminal records deserve a second chance?

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