Often called ‘clean slate’ projects, we’re working on seeing how expungement projects in different states can support each other and collaborate. To add to discussions here, everyone’s welcome to join our channel in the CfA Slack workspace - #clean-slate.
Onward
If you’re willing, do fill in the blanks.
TOC
What is expungement?
Definitions
Expunging: If you have a criminal record, expunging it theoretically shreds that specific record in the state where you expunge it. This is only available in some states and each state has its own rules about what can be expunged and how.
Sealing: Many more states have the option to seal a record, which means it’s only visible to some people. The rules surrounding this are also different in every state. Sealing is an important part of the whole picture for people dealing with their criminal records.
Petition: An application to expunge or seal your records.
Caveats
- It’s sometimes better to not expunge (add more details here).
- Many systems aren’t put together well and sometimes the expungement doesn’t get communicated to every department.
- The federal government may have a partial record of your crime, even if it was a state crime.
- There are companies that collect and store their own data of criminal records from courts and then publish them online. They charge a fee to remove the record.
Thoughts for New Efforts
Please add ones you think of-
Approach: Are you automating the government’s process? Are you making a tool for lay people? Are you making a tool for legal professionals?
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Who are your stakeholders (provide link to identifying stakeholders)?
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How will you get people from these communities to the table? Where will you find them? What can you offer them?
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Where can you find your statutes (laws)?
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Sometimes it’s a bad idea to expunge (e.g. immigrants, depending on the State’s definition of expungement).
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Setting aside regulations, what do you think are proper privacy and security measures? How will you set up informed consent with the people you hope to serve?
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How will you get information about someone’s criminal record? Does your State already have a way to get that data digitally?
Who is Working on Expungement?
The CfA Slack workspace channel is called #clean-slate.
(add your own project)
Goals and Description: …
Phase: …
Link: …
Open Questions
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Approach
Description: …
Reasons: …
Pennsylvania ¶
Goals and Description: Code for Philly in initial conversations with PLSE.
Phase: PLSE is already active in expungement, needs brigade help to work around new hurdles imposed by recently-passed “Clean slate” law
Link: Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity - Criminal Record Expungement & Pardons — Projects — Code for Philly
Open Questions
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Approach
Description: …
Reasons: …
Maryland (MD)
Goals and Description: Not a brigade?
Phase: Use (updates?)
Link: …
Open Questions
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Approach
Description: Tool for legal professionals.
Reasons: Form for lay folks wasn’t getting any traction. Others?
Massachusetts (MA)
Goals and Description: Code for Boston is working with Citizens for Juvenile Justice on a project called ‘Clean Slate’.
- Advocate for changes to the laws (currently working on efforts using data analysis).
- A form to help lay people petition to expunge (and maybe seal). Because of trouble getting access to the community, the target audience may change to professionals.
- Help digitally organize around the advocacy work.
Phase: Discovery and feasibility
Link: None yet
Open Questions
- Form: Is it too risky to have a lay person fill out their own form? Does a form need to be made for professionals instead?
- Form: The law is so restrictive that most people can’t get their record expunged. How do we deal with that?
- Form: Many users can’t access printers. How do we help them?
- Advocacy: Can we do this through data? We have FBI arrest records for MA - are those sufficient for estimates of number of expungeable records?
Approach
Description: 1. A tool for lay people (possibly pivoting to professionals). 2. Data analysis to reveal the numbers affected by limitations in the law.
Reasons: 1. Tool - we’d like it to be available to those who can’t, for whatever reason, get to legal representation. 2. Advocacy - we’re trying to show the need for changes in the very restrictive law.
Missouri (MO)
Goals and Description: …
Phase: …
Link: …
Open Questions
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Approach
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Ohio
Code for Dayton started working with a community partner’s law clinic >2yrs ago to “redeploy” CMR v.1 We discovered that the data required to determine eligibility from all of the >100 jurisdictions in the state resides in a central repository at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. They are public records, but access is metered. Making use of that repository is not so much a technical challenge as a political one. We’re working with community partner, state Reps et al to craft a bill that would remedy the access issue.
Code for America
Goals and Description: Working with some states’ governments to automate their expungement systems through their ‘Clear My Record’ project.
Phase: Implementation and use
Link: …
Open Questions
- Is it opt-in?
- If not, how do they deal with situations where it wouldn’t be a good idea to expunge?
Approach
Description: …
Reasons: …
ExpungeVT (Vermont / Code for BTV)
Goals and Description: Streamline VT Legal Aid efforts during expungement clinics
Phase: beta - has been tested / used at one clinic so far.
Open Questions
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Approach
Description: VT Legal Aid noted that they have to do a lot of data combing and collection from a variety of different pages inside the online case file system for Vermont in order to prepare an expungement request. Code for BTV worked with VT Legal Aid to build a Chrome plugin that automates as much of the page scraping as possible and dumps the needed data into a single location for the VT Legal Aid lawyer to then prepare the expungement request from. Code for BTV obtained special access to the case file system for the testing and building of the tool, and had to design it specifically so that no data from the case file system was ever downloaded or transferred out of the browser session. The project started in September 2018 and was tested at its first clinic at the end of June 2019.
Reasons: …
Access2Justice Record Expungement (Code for PDX)
Goals and Description: …
Phase: …
Open Questions
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Approach
Description: …
Reasons: …
Heart (Hack for LA)
Goals and Description: …
Phase: …
Open Questions
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Approach
Description: …
Reasons: …
Clear My Record (Code for Dayton)
Goals and Description: …
Phase: …
Open Questions
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Approach
Description: …
Reasons: …
DEAR (Bloomberg i-Team/Code for Durham)
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Open Questions
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Approach
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Resources
- Great doc/research on expungement forms for the public: https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/codeforamerica-cms1/documents/Closing-the-Delivery-Gap.pdf
- Discourse list of Safety and Justice projects
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Past Events
From Ben Trevino (2019):
Slack channel: #ndoch-day-of-hacking