A new bill will be introduced in the D.C. Council next week that will give some people with minor convictions a chance to clear their records after they have paid their debt to society.
The bill would also allow people who were arrested for, but never convicted, of minor crimes to expunge their criminal records. “It is very difficult for people to obtain employment and in some cases obtain housing with criminal records. This is a very big problem in the District,” said June Kress, of the Council for Court Excellence, which convened a group that drafted the bill.
Council Member Phil Mendelson, D-at large, said he would introduce a measure next week.
Mendelson said he wants to be very careful about how the legislation is worded because some crimes should follow their perpetrators around and because law enforcement has a compelling interest in knowing people’s arrest records.
“There’s a critical public interest in knowing this information most of the time,” Mendelson said. “But there may be individual circumstances where it’s warranted to seal the information or to go further and expunge it.”
Though the language of the bill is still being worked out, it has already earned enthusiastic cheers from defense lawyers.
“We hear from hundreds of people every year who find out that a five-, 10-, 15-year-old arrest which was dismissed the day after the arrest is preventing them from getting gainful employment,” said Julia Leighton, general counsel to the D.C. Public Defender Service.
She said that people with records can’t even get jobs as janitors if their company has a government contract.
Defense lawyer Stephen B. Mercer says it’s not just janitors who have an interest in clearing their records. He has several professional clients who have been arrested for minor crimes — driving an unregistered vehicle, for instance — and are worried the record will hurt their careers.
Clearing records
» Thirty-six states allow people who have been arrested but not convicted to have their records expunged.
» Twenty-four states allow some people to expunge their convictions for minor crimes.
» Most felonies won’t be sealed or expunged.
