National News
Charges dismissed? It’s still on your permanent record
December 17, 2015 posted by Steve Brownstein
She was driving 20 miles over the speed limit, and she didn't stop when she saw the flashing blue lights.
"I panicked," she said. "I knew I couldn't afford a ticket so I tried to get away."
She didn't. She was arrested on suspicion of reckless endangerment and resisting arrest and taken to jail.
This was her first offense, so she was allowed to enter a conditional guilty plea for reckless driving. If she completed a six-month diversion and paid $350 in fines and court fees, the charge would be dismissed.
She did and it was, but her punishment wasn't over. She still had a criminal record.
If you don't know someone with a criminal record, you're a hermit reading this in a cave deep in the Ozarks.
More than a quarter of all adults in American have a rap sheet. The ratio is even higher locally.
Since I first started working for this newspaper in 1980, the Shelby County Sheriff's Office has issued more than 475,000 Criminal History Records and Identification numbers.
That's one R&I number for every two current county residents.
Too bad for them, right? Too bad for all of us.
Here in the age of mass incarceration and the massive Internet, when 9 of 10 employers and 4 of 5 landlords make background checks, criminal records can last forever.
Criminal records follow people around long after they've done their time, paid their fines, or completed their probations.
Even a minor criminal arrest can turn into a life sentence, keeping you from getting a job, renting an apartment, getting a license or a loan, building credit, even volunteering at a child's school.
Regardless of whether you get locked up, one strike and you're locked out.
The woman who pleaded guilty to reckless driving was getting locked out of the job market.
Even though the official charge against her was dismissed, she still had a criminal record, which included the original arrest charges.
"No one would hire me with that on my record," she said. "I had a baby to feed. I had to go on public assistance, even though I didn't want to."
There are more than 45,000 legal and regulatory sanctions and restrictions that keep people with criminal records from fully re-entering society.
"Many consist of nothing more than a direction to conduct a criminal background check, and an unspoken warning that it is safest to reject anyone with a record," according to a 2014 report by the American Bar Association.
"When convicted persons are limited in their ability to support themselves and to participate in the political process, this has both economic and public safety implications."
In other words, we all pay the price — in higher crime and poverty rates as well as higher costs for addressing more crime and poverty.
About 600,000 people get out of prison each year. Those who can find a job earn 40 percent less than their peers; the other 60 percent face long-term unemployment.
Several months ago, the woman with the reckless driving charges applied for a full-time job making $15 an hour. She got the job, but it was contingent on a background check.
Tennessee law allows criminal records to be expunged for certain felonies and misdemeanors. It's a complicated legal process, and it includes a $450 court filing fee — one of the highest expungement fees in the nation.
She qualified for expungement, but she didn't she have the money to hire an attorney or pay the fee. Her sentence was continued.
Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. Just City, a local nonprofit dedicated to criminal justice reform, provided the woman with an attorney and paid her fee.
I'm not using her name because her criminal record was expunged. A few days later, she cleared the background check and got the job.
"I thought I would never have a clean record," the woman wrote in a thank-you card she sent a few weeks ago to Just City's staff. "I once again feel like a productive member of society."
Since 2013, Just City's Clean Slate Fund has helped 33 other people get their Tennessee criminal records expunged. The organization is lobbying to get the legislature to reduce or eliminate the $450 fee.
Meanwhile, Just City and other organizations, including LifeLine to Success, a local re-entry program for ex-offenders, are lobbying for a federal law to allow for expungements.
"We all make mistakes and, while some may be more grave than others, there is no reason our society should diminish the quality of a whole life because of one mistake," said Rev. DeAndre Brown, LifeLine's founder.
"There must be a time when a debt can be paid in full."
