“It’s been clear for more than a decade that Ohioans have wanted to regulate cannabis for adults,” Fox, political director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told Bolts. “This should be a wake-up call.”

Issue 2 is set to go into effect Dec. 7, with the first round of new business licenses to be announced by September. But the law comes with a crucial asterisk: it changes state statute, not the state constitution, so its approval at the ballot is essentially tantamount to Ohio voters passing a new piece of legislation just like Ohio lawmakers do. This means that those lawmakers can change the law back without voter consent. There is no limit on the extent to which the GOP-controlled state legislature can amend the 41-page initiative voters just supported; they could even outright repeal it. 

Governor Mike DeWine and his fellow Republicans who run the legislature have stopped short of calling for total repeal, but even before Election Day, they had signaled their intent to make the law more restrictive if it passed. Now that it has, they’ve indicated they could make some changes as soon as in the next few weeks, ahead of the Dec. 7 effective date, while others may be a bit longer in the offing. 

Fox is incredulous that these lawmakers would cross the electorate by messing much with a law 57 percent of voters just approved. “It would be political malpractice,” Fox said. “That being said, they don’t always do right by their constituents.”

Ohioans need look no further than another ballot measure that just passed—Issue 1, enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution—to see that their legislature is comfortable upending voter will: House Republicans on Friday issued a news release claiming that Issue 1 doesn’t actually affect the state’s existing abortion ban, and they vowed to continue enforcing abortion criminalization, in defiance of election results. These lawmakers even said that they would “consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary” over the amendment—an extraordinary prospect. “No amendment can overturn the God-given rights with which we were born,” Republican state Representative Beth Lear said in that release.

These rapid threats come after Ohio Republicans earlier this year tried to torpedo the abortion measure by rushing a separate ballot measure to raise the threshold for passage of constitutional amendments from 50 to 60 percent. Ohioans rejected the measure in August, and Bolts reported at the time that these events were part of a long series of maneuvers by the Ohio GOP to undermine direct democracy. 

Cat Packer, director of drug markets and legal regulation at the Drug Policy Alliance, now worries that cannabis regulation ushered in by Issue 2 could similarly be distorted by politicians. “I think there’s going to be this real disconnect with particularly GOP legislators wanting to overturn the will of the voters and make this, potentially, something that actually does the opposite of what the voters intended in trying to address some of the harms of the drug war, and may be used as a vehicle to double down on some of those harms,” she told Bolts.

GOP leaders of both Ohio legislative chambers have already confirmed they’ll consider reversing aspects of Issue 2 that sought to unwind drug-war policies, which have produced vastly disproportionate enforcement of marijuana laws against Black people in the state. 

Issue 2 contains no provisions to automatically expunge the records of Ohioans who already have criminal convictions over marijuana. Other states have passed such a reform after legalization, but for now Ohio lawmakers seem more likely to loosen the measure’s other equity provisions than to strengthen them.

Senate President Matt Huffman has said that he takes issue with the amount of tax revenue that will be dedicated to promoting cannabis business opportunities for those most personally affected by prohibition. 

As it stands, Issue 2 calls for a 10 percent tax on marijuana sales, with a plurality of the proceeds going toward a program meant to provide financial assistance and license application support to prospective cannabis business owners who demonstrate “both social and economic disadvantage” resulting from the historically racist and classist enforcement of marijuana laws. That includes people and family members of people who “have been arrested for, convicted of, or adjudicated delinquent for a marijuana-related offense,” the law states.

Instead, some Republican leaders have signaled they want the tax money to serve very different purposes. Speaker Jason Stephens told local media that the legislature should allocate tax revenue from cannabis sales to fund jail construction and law enforcement training.

His remarks have alarmed people who worked to pass Issue 2 in Ohio, who say that a main reason they sought the initiative was to reduce incarceration and criminalization stemming from drug charges. FBI data show Ohio has arrested at least 5,700 people in each of the past three years for selling or possessing marijuana, and Black Ohioans have long been targeted at much higher rates than their white peers, despite comparable rates of marijuana usage.

Fox saw this up close when he was arrested multiple times in Ohio for possession of marijuana. These charges, he said, hampered his ability to take out student loans and to find housing and employment. But Fox, who is white, said he got off relatively easy: “I would go to court and have the exact same charge and criminal history, and the same exact judge, on the exact same day, and I saw people who didn’t look like me get much worse sentences.”

Packer of Drug Policy Alliance, who led Los Angeles’s cannabis regulation department from 2017 to 2022, also worries broadly about whether the aspects of Issue 2 that seek to promote social equity will be preserved. As both medical and recreational marijuana become legalized across the country—40 states allow at least medical use— it’s become commonplace for states to undertake restorative efforts like this one, but that wasn’t always true. 

“There has been a seismic shift,” Brian Vicente, an attorney and national leader in marijuana policy, told Bolts. Vicente, who is from Ohio, co-authored the measure that legalized recreational marijuana in Colorado in 2012, kick-starting a national movement. He also advised this year on Issue 2 in Ohio.

“Every law we see now has an attempt to address social equity issues and to try to remedy some of the harms of cannabis prohibition,” he added. “We didn’t see that for years and, in Colorado, it polled horribly and so we kept it out of the conversation in 2012. We cared deeply about the issue, but Colorado voters didn’t care.”

Because Colorado did not address social equity on the front end of its legal marijuana program, it has had to play catch-up for many years and remains behind the curve, current and prospective business owners of color in that state have said consistently. The same pattern has held elsewhere: in its short history, the legal marijuana industry in this country has shown in various states that it would marginalize Black people and other communities of color absent intentional intervention by regulators, even though those communities suffered the brunt of enforcement before legalization. 

Ohio has itself already learned that lesson: Black entrepreneurs have complained for years of being left out of the state’s medical marijuana industry. (Medical marijuana was legalized in Ohio in 2016.) 

Some states have sought not just to mend past harms through equitable business licensing, but also to allow people to wipe clean their criminal records for certain marijuana-related offenses. Ohio earlier this year passed broad legislation to streamline expungement for misdemeanor crimes, including simple marijuana possession, but neither this law nor Issue 2 creates a pathway for automatic record expungement. Automation eliminates the difficult and costly process of petitioning for expungement, and helps the legislation more widely impact the populations it’s intended to reach. Minnesota’s 2022 marijuana legalization law, for example, included an automatic expungement provision that impacted an estimated 50,000 people. 

Tom Haren, spokesman for the campaign to pass the measure, told Bolts his side was bound by rules limiting state ballot measures to single issues, which meant that Issue 2 could not force changes to the law regarding both regulation and record expungement. 

But while Issue 2 doesn’t mandate anything related to criminal records, the law does spend paragraphs detailing the profundity of the harm inflicted by criminalization.

“Individuals who have been arrested or incarcerated due to drug laws suffer long-lasting negative consequences, including impacts to employment, business ownership, housing, health, and long-term financial well-being,” the law states. “Family members, especially children, and communities of those who have been arrested or incarcerated due to drug laws, suffer from emotional, psychological, and financial harms as a result of such arrests or incarcerations.”

This, the law continues, argues for “remedying the harms resulting from the disproportionate enforcement of marijuana-related laws.”

Advocates hold out hope that some future legislation can address these harms, but for now their biggest concern is that lawmakers keep intact as much of Issue 2’s language as possible.

Packer said that when she reviewed those sections of Issue 2, plus those meant to promote equity in licensure, she feared that lawmakers would not let them stand if the ballot measure passed. Now that it has, and now that leading Republicans have signaled they’ll revise the law, she added, “I imagine those may be some of the first provisions that are on the chopping block.”

Because Ohio is 24th among U.S. states to legalize marijuana, Packer added, it cannot plead ignorance as to what will happen should lawmakers scrap equity-minded provisions of Issue 2. “Ohio should know better and it is in a position to do better,” she said.

The post After Ohioans Legalize Weed, GOP Leaders Already Want to Roll Back Key Reforms appeared first on Bolts.

Minnesota’s Democratic lawmakers, newly in control of the state legislature, plan to legalize the recreational use and sale of cannabis this year. And they insist that in doing so they must account for past harm—namely, harm done by wildly uneven enforcement practices that made their state one of the most dangerous places in the country to be a Black person in possession of marijuana. 

“For me, it’s a racial justice issue. I wouldn’t support this without it,” state Senator Clare Oumou Verbeten, a lead sponsor of the legalization effort and one of just three Black women ever elected to the Minnesota Senate, told Bolts. “There’s the argument that people are already using cannabis, so let’s not criminalize them for it. Well, yes, but the people who have to live in fear are Black people. They’re impacted the most. We’re trying to right these wrongs.”

A recent nationwide report by the ACLU found that Black Minnesotans were more than five times more likely than white Minnesotans to be arrested for marijuana possession between 2010 and 2018, one of the highest racial disparities across all states. That’s but one example of longstanding systemic inequality that has earned Minnesota the nickname “Mississippi of the North.”

“We’re constantly at the top of these lists in terms of quality of life, best places to live,” Oumou Verbeten said. “It’s not true for people who look like me.”

This is why she and many other backers of Minnesota’s legalization effort want the state’s program to be as dedicated to racial and class justice as any in the country. While early adopters like Colorado waited years after legalization to adopt policy confronting the damage done by the war on drugs, Minnesota lawmakers seek to do that work upfront. 

Their legalization bill, House File 100, proposes to help marginalized communities gain footholds in the regulated recreational cannabis industry by giving them preferential access to business licenses. These licenses would be awarded based on a points system weighted in favor of the poor and those who can demonstrate personal or familial harm from cannabis prohibition.

The bill would also automatically expunge records of low-level cannabis convictions, including for petty misdemeanor and misdemeanor charges over the sale or possession of up to 42.5 grams of marijuana. These convictions can acutely inhibit social mobility by blocking people from stable housing and employment, and can, in some cases, plunge people into a prolonged morass of criminalization and poverty. 

Jon Geffen, a law professor and attorney with The Legal Revolution, a Minnesota nonprofit law firm, explained that prior conviction records are currently public in Minnesota. As a result, “you can use that data for anything you want: hiring, renting—hell, even dating if you want it. Whether or not it was weed it comes up as ‘drugs,’ and people rarely hire people with drug convictions. People lose jobs and apartments. Families separate because of these things.”

For some advocates, though, these equity provisions may be too little, too late for those affected by the war on drugs.

Many political leaders now cast equity as core to their legalization efforts, rather than a footnote to be addressed years after state industries ramp up. In New York, people with past marijuana convictions are being given a first crack at business licenses. In Maryland, new Governor Wes Moore, sworn in this week, has insisted the state’s soon-to-launch legal cannabis industry must prize social justice and “economic parity.” Like the regulated cannabis industry itself, this concept of licensing equity is a rather new one; Oakland pioneered it in 2017.

But these equity projects have rarely gone smoothly, or delivered their stated impacts. Some Oakland licensees feel that the city’s program has done them more harm than good. Lawsuits challenging cannabis equity provisions in places like Detroit, Maine and Missouri have slowed or thwarted progress. 

Also, even the most equity-minded cannabis legalization policies do little to repair certain harms. Giving people from overpoliced communities special access to cannabis dispensary or cultivation licenses, for instance, won’t change the fact that those people are less likely to have business ownership experience, professional mentorship, and investor networks—intangible assets that help sustain an operation. 

Angela Dawson, a northern Minnesota hemp farmer and a champion for agricultural opportunities for Black people, said the expungement plan laid out in Minnesota’s pending bill would do very little for people like her younger brother, whose marijuana conviction two decades ago threw him for a prolonged tailspin.

“He lost time in school, never graduated. He met up with some pretty bad people while he was in jail. He didn’t have an opportunity to do anything else,” Dawson told Bolts. “He just got out of prison in November.”

Clearing marijuana charges like his will be relatively easy for the state, policy experts in Minnesota say. But that can’t undo twenty-plus years of compounding challenges and lost time that stemmed from his first drug charge. 

“It shouldn’t cost you your whole entire future,” she said.

Oumou Verbeten acknowledged that this bill alone won’t unwind these longstanding harms. She said she hopes to pair the cannabis legislation with complementary bills to seal eviction records and to ban public employers from asking job applicants about their criminal histories. She is also sponsoring legislation that would restore voting rights to Minnesotans on parole and probation—a population that skews disproportionately Black, Native American, and Latino.

These and other bills are viable in large part because Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party flipped the state Senate in November, claiming full control of the state government for the first time since 2014. 

The state House passed legislation in 2021 to legalize cannabis but the bill fizzled in the state Senate, which was then under control of Republicans. (One GOP leader at the time said there was “zero chance” his party would go along.)  Minnesota politicos believe it’s nearly assured to pass this time around, though its final form may be several months and about a dozen more committee hearings away.

But now that they have a trifecta, Democrats see marijuana legalization as a headlining bill in a legislative session that is also poised to see Minnesota lawmakers codify abortion rights, advance paid family and medical leave, and seek to expand voting access.

A recent poll, conducted by Mason-Dixon, shows a slim majority of overall Minnesotans—and a wide majority of non-white Minnesotans—back cannabis legalization. The country at large favors it, too, and strongly supports expungement of cannabis convictions.  

The specific design of the major equity portions of this year’s legalization bill in Minnesota are getting mixed reviews from criminal justice reform and racial justice advocates.

On expungements, “the framework of it is pretty darn good,” Geffen said. He noted that the bill would make expungements automatic and free, a measure that MinnPost estimates would affect some 50,000 people with criminal records.

The state already accepts petitions for expungement, in a process that is anything but user-friendly. He described it as a winding road with all sorts of obstacles over which even his law students regularly trip. Any mistake along the way can lead a court to toss a petition, with no way for the applicant to recoup the $305 the state requires for every charge one seeks to expunge.

“So the populations that don’t use it are poor populations. It’s a double whammy, where poor people are over-prosecuted, over-charged, and then they don’t get expunged, even when they’re eligible, because they don’t have the money to pay an attorney,” Geffen told Bolts.

Tom Gallagher, a Hennepin County (Minneapolis) criminal defense attorney and libertarian advocate for legalized cannabis, wishes the bill went further by categorically granting gun ownership rights back to people who lost those rights because of felony drug convictions. He doesn’t expect liberal lawmakers to restore gun rights through this bill, but he argues they should, in order to thwart the cycle of criminality that drug prohibition can catalyze. 

“Let’s say you’re 19 years old and you get convicted of possessing two ounces of marijuana. Now, 10 years later, you get caught with a gun in your house, but now you’re an ineligible person in possession of a firearm, and you’re looking at a minimum of 3 years in prison in Minnesota,” Gallagher told Bolts. “It’s purely the status of the person in possession of the gun that makes the crime.”

The bill’s second core equity provision—licensing equity—also faces questions as to its scope and implementation.

The state has had a regulated medical marijuana industry for seven years, and, at present, that entire sector is controlled by one of two corporations,.

The new legislation contains provisions meant to chart a more equitable path for the recreational cannabis industry by requiring that the state substantially favor cannabis business license applications from so-called “social equity” applicants—that is, residents for at least five years in areas “that experienced a disproportionately large amount of cannabis enforcement,” as determined by a state report not yet produced. People could also qualify for “social equity” status in business licensing if they live in areas with poverty rates of 20 percent or more, or where the median family income does not exceed 80 percent of the statewide mark.

Oumou Verbeten said the idea, transparently, is to give a boost to Black and Latino would-be businesspeople, but that it’d be thorny, and possibly illegal, to legislate in explicit favor of one or more racial groups over others.

“If you look at concentrated places of poverty and overlay that with racial demographics, then, yes, a lot of those areas are where we’re going to see communities of color,” Oumou Verbeten said. “We want to make sure people who’ve been harmed get the priority. And those are people of color, and Black Minnesotans especially.”

This goal is easier stated than accomplished, Black leaders in Colorado’s cannabis industry told Bolts. Boosting an application is much easier and cheaper, after all, than providing sustained training and financial support needed to get a cannabis business up and running. 

And that’s leaving aside headwinds that these businesses face in the market; existing federal prohibition cuts off cannabis operators from the tools other industries enjoy, like basic inclusion in banking systems, or loans and guidance from the Small Business Administration.

“In trying to bend ourselves into equity and things that make right, basically the entire industry is failing top to bottom,” Denver entrepreneur Wanda James told Bolts. For years she was the only Black cannabis business owner in Colorado, among hundreds of businesses; now, she says, she’s one of a few.

“The really sad thing is we are setting up Black and brown entrepreneurs for a massive failure. And at that point of massive failure, they don’t even have bankruptcy protection,” because cannabis remains illegal federally, James added.

She said Colorado and other states can do much better in providing support to licensees and those harmed in the war on drugs, but she said she’s skeptical policymakers can ever truly legislate out the impediments to equity that she and others trace to federal prohibition.

Jeff Brinkman, a Minnesota hemp entrepreneur, is also concerned that the state will not adopt enough legal protections on how licenses can be transferred from one business to another. “I just feel that as the bill is developed and revamped, if they aren’t keeping their eye in the loopholes and on how to build this industry for small business, that’s when we’ll get the takeover” by wealthy interests. 

When “social equity” licensees fail to launch, policymakers are given cover to say, “See, we tried and it failed,” Hashim Coates, executive director of Black Brown and Red Badged, an organization representing Black and Latino business owners in the cannabis industry, told Bolts.

“Just creating an opportunity without the intention of success is not creating an opportunity,” he added. 

The post With Marijuana Bill, Minnesota Democrats Seek to Repair Harms of War on Drugs appeared first on Bolts.

Felix would lie by omission on applications, declining to mention to employers she’d been previously convicted and jailed over a drug-related felony she says stemmed from a toxic romantic relationship. It was worth lying, she says now, because by the time her managers would find out, “at least I’d have had one paycheck.”

She worked hard to improve her station; as she struggled to find housing and income, she put herself through college, then law school. Two years ago, she ran for and won a seat in the Rhode Island House of Representatives, knocking off an incumbent who defended status-quo policing and sentencing laws, in a Democratic primary.

When the Rhode Island legislature convenes its next session on January 4, Felix will no longer be the only lawmaker in Providence who has experienced the criminal legal system from the inside. Cherie Cruz, who like Felix is from Pawtucket, and was also dogged for years by a conviction for a drug felony, won a House seat alongside Felix this fall. Prior to her election, Cruz co-founded the Formerly Incarcerated Union of Rhode Island to support people seeking to move beyond their criminal records.

Cruz and Felix, who have teamed up and supported each other’s campaigns, talked with Bolts in a joint interview shortly after their wins last month. They spoke about what drove them to seek public office, and why people who have navigated the criminal legal system should be seen and heard in policymaking spaces.

Both are bullish on providing more and better opportunities for people mired in the post-conviction slog. That fight is personal: Cruz and Felix say they each only attained stability once their records were sealed and expunged. But those were hardfought processes, and they now want to make things easier on those who come next. 

Cruz and Felix say they will work together at the statehouse to help people rebuild their lives from prior criminal-legal run-ins—starting next session with a plan to introduce a “clean slate” bill that would automatically seal many people’s criminal records, emulating reforms that other states have adopted since 2018. They also plan to build on Felix’s work last year making sure that legalized cannabis legislation included automatic record expungement.

When people who’ve been incarcerated enter office, “it makes a world of difference,” says Felix, who has also elevated efforts against solitary confinement and cash bail. She stresses the value of “educating colleagues” about the struggles people face when detained and upon re-entry. “It really does change the dynamics in those rooms.”  

Besides promoting climate legislation and gun safety, both also advocate for enabling people to vote from prison, and for better informing people on probation or parole, who, they find, often don’t realize they can vote. Cruz won her primary by only three-dozen votes—which reminded her of the power any one voter can wield. 

What will it mean to have a team of two at the statehouse, where previously there was only one of you?

Leonela Felix: The excitement that I feel is something I can’t put into words. It’s so goddamn exciting. It’s just going to be a powerhouse. We keep joking that they’re not going to sit us together because they know we’re going to start good trouble. It’s going to be so important, in terms of educating colleagues, in terms of tag-teaming. There are days with massive amounts of bills, where I can’t be in all places at once. So, we can organize within the legislature. I’m really excited to be able to see what ways we can maximize the resources that we have, and improve them, to better the lives of folks who have been impacted by the carceral system.

Why did you run for office?

Felix: I never wanted to run for office or be elected, because of my background, my criminal history. It wasn’t something I widely shared with people, or ever really owned, until I decided to run. I had done a lot of organizing and advocacy up at the statehouse, and what I’d noticed was that folks representing us really didn’t look like me. They never looked me in the eye or took me seriously. It was my first introduction into politics and to see the way us as regular folks were being treated really stuck with me. I just got mad enough and decided, let’s do it, let’s run for office. The Working Families Party really helped me connect with all the resources I needed to make it to where I am today.

Cherie Cruz: I grew up in the community where I ran for office, several generations there. Both my parents, growing up, didn’t have the right to vote because they were both formerly incarcerated. I also didn’t have the right to vote for many years of my life, because I had felony convictions, and it wasn’t restored until we passed the Right to Vote Act in 2006, which I was on the ground in advocating for. [Editor’s note: The reform enabled people to vote upon release; until then, people on probation or parole could not vote.] So, I’d never thought about politics, similar to Rep. Felix, because of my background. There were barriers for us. We were pushed out of that. 

I was at the courthouse one day and a mutual friend of Rep. Felix came up to me and said, ‘Hey, there’s someone running from Pawtucket and she’s got a similar background, and I think you need to reach out to her.’ I just called the [Felix] campaign and said I wanted to help. I started knocking doors and thinking that if she could win and get in, it really could pave the way for the rest of us. 

Continuing my advocacy at the statehouse, I was seeing a lot of things in the community not being addressed. We needed somebody who was going to truly be representative of this community—a background in the criminal-legal system, who grew up in poverty, who doesn’t have political ties, and who would really fight. To me, that was the calling.

How does it affect policy debates in the statehouse to have people there who can ground their ideas about sentencing reform or second chances in their lived experience?

Felix: It makes a world of difference. It really does change the dynamics in those rooms. A lot of folks just don’t have that experience and, quite frankly, many of them tend to say that if you got into legal issues, you deserved it. That you’re not deserving of our empathy or of us changing laws to benefit you or others in your position. We tend to blame the individual versus looking at the macro level, at the system that does impact particularly poor people and people of color.

Say, with record expungement—in the minds of many of my colleagues, it’s like it’s easy to get an expungement, where you can just walk in and just petition. So I’ve been giving them the raw experience. Like, have you ever had to get your record expunged? The answer for all of them was no. They don’t know that you have to do this extra step and this other extra step, and it’s still not complete. It was really important to make them see something more than the abstract. It was very powerful for me to be able to communicate to them in that way and to educate them in the realities of everyday life for someone who is formerly incarcerated.

Cruz: I think about when I used to testify at the statehouse, and no one would look at me. I mentioned in my testimony how I had my drug felony and another charge for over 25 years, with children—single mom, on welfare, in and out of homelessness, no employment—and the thing that lifted everyone’s head up was that I had two degrees from Brown University, one with honors. My advocacy, my community work, my policy work was pushed aside until I mentioned the degrees, and then they looked up for a minute.

The lived experience of people who’ve been involved with the criminal legal system—you can’t learn it in a book. You have to go through it to truly understand it. It’s a benefit to any legislature, or any agency, to have people with that type of education. The culture is starting to change a bit, where it’s seen as credibility. 

Whether through prison gerrymandering, or the fact that people cannot vote from prison, incarceration strips people of investment in their communities in Rhode Island. How could those in jail and prison be made to have more of a stake?

Felix: We talk about how voting is your voice. It’s the way that you literally can make change for the better for your community—we want folks to feel more connected to their communities and feel integrated. When we alienate people from these processes, what we’ve created is someone who’s isolated. By allowing them to cast ballots and use their voice for change, what we’re saying is, you are a part of this community.

Representative Felix, you’re a lawmaker now, but does the fact that you were incarcerated still impede you? 

Felix: I was barred from education after I got out. I couldn’t go to school. Housing, forget about it. Employment, forget about it. I had to live on couches or with friends. It impacted every area of my life. I am privileged and I recognize that for many folks it’s a lifelong struggle, a blacklist. Now, luckily, it doesn’t affect me. But it definitely did. That’s the reason I fought to get to where I am, because no one should go through that. How do you start your life over when they continue to shackle you in so many ways?

Lawmakers in Rhode Island make $17,000, and I wonder to what extent that’s a barrier to more people with your backgrounds running for office. What percentage of people coming out of jail and prison could even consider vying for a job that pays a poverty wage?

Felix: It’s not a place for working families, not a place we’re supposed to be a part of. It’s by design. It didn’t happen magically that we are in office; it takes so much effort and infrastructure. We’re really trying to figure out how we can make it work for everyday people. It just takes a little bit more planning, but it’s doable.

Cruz: I’m glad I’m hearing this. My employment now puts me with the most money I’ve ever had in my life, which is still lower-working class, where I can barely pay rent. I’m glad to hear Leo say it’s doable, because it may be I’m unemployed or let go if I can’t go down in hours to do this.

If we’re talking about someone who still has felonies on their record, I’m not sure how, if they still have those housing and employment barriers, they could do this. For me, if the legislature just gave enough to pay rent, it’d be fine. But it’s not enough.

How do your lenses affect your approaches to legislation that may have little, on paper, to do with a jail or a prison or a court system—climate justice issues in areas with poor air, or affordable housing?

Cruz: A family is an ecosystem and a community is an ecosystem. Growing up in poverty, my youngest son was lead-poisoned. What are we doing when children are getting poisoned? These are the kids who are going to start struggling in schools. These are the kids who aren’t going to have opportunities. These are the kids who are going to end up in cages. You have to worry about surviving versus thriving. I think environmental justice, housing justice are directly impacting whether people survive or thrive.

Felix: Having green spaces for adults and kids is better for your mental health, it’s better for your breathing. Slowly but surely, we’re taking away a lot of green spaces, things that benefit communities, and for what? To build luxury housing, or another parking lot?

What advice do you have for anyone who might see themselves in your stories and consider seeking elected office?

Felix: It’s critical that we have folks that are directly impacted by these inequalities we seek to change, and without their presence in the rooms that are deciding on them and their families and future generations, those voices aren’t going to be heard. Despite all the challenges we talk about, don’t let it be a barrier to wanting to be a public servant. And there are so many other ways you can help, in terms of volunteering, knocking doors, making calls. Don’t let your mistakes be an obstacle to that.

Cruz: I want to empower more people to be leaders, in whatever space. It could be in your home, your community, with the school community, with the school board, at the state legislature. It could be anywhere. 

I always joke that I’ve started my succession planning, because this was about giving people hope that you can do it, too. Who’s next? How can we tag-team someone else in, and help mentor them? I didn’t see this in myself at first, and sometimes you need others to point out that you’re incredible and that what you’re saying needs to be heard.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post Rhode Island Pair, Once Dogged by Criminal Legal System, Elected to Statehouse appeared first on Bolts.

Criminal justice reform advocates called for sweeping changes in this challenging year. But state officials and legislatures largely ducked the COVID-19 pandemic that is raging inside prisons and jails, and the protests against police brutality and racial justice that followed Breonna Taylor and George Floyd’s murders. With some exceptions, they forgoed the sort of reforms that would have significantly emptied prisons amid the public health crisis or confronted police brutality and racial injustice in law enforcement.

Still, on other issues there was headway, and states—whose laws and policies control a lot about incarceration and criminal legal systems—set new milestones: They decriminalized drug possession, expanded and automated expungement availability, repealed life without parole for minors and the death penalty, and ended prison gerrymandering, among other measures.

Throughout the year, The Appeal: Political Report tracked bills, initiatives, and reforms relevant to mass incarceration. Just as in 2019, here’s a review of major changes states adopted in 2020.

Jump to the sections on: the death penalty, drug policy, early release and parole, youth justice, policing, fines and fees, pretrial detention, trials and sentencing, voting rights, expungement and re-entry, prison gerrymandering—and then there’s more.

The death penalty

In March, as the Trump administration was preparing to restart federal executions, Colorado abolished the death penalty, fulfilling a longtime goal for state advocates. Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, also commuted the sentences of the three people who were on Colorado’s death row. 

“The country is one state closer to having a majority of states ban the practice,” David Sabados, executive director of Coloradoans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, told the Political Report at the time. Colorado is the 22nd state to repeal the death penalty.

Bills to outright abolish the death penalty did not move forward elsewhere. Virginia did end the secrecy that protected the manufacturers of execution drugs. Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, a Republican, vetoed a bill that would have required that witnesses be allowed to see the entirety of an execution. (Ohio is still considering a bill this month that would restrict the use of the death penalty against some people with mental illness.)

Opponents of the death penalty gained new allies in November with victories by prosecutorial candidates who have pledged to never seek it and advocate for its legislative repeal. 

Drug policy

Oregon broke new ground this year when voters adopted a ballot initiative that decriminalizes drug possession. Measure 110 will treat low-level drug possession as a civil offense, punishable by a fine rather than jail or prison time, and it will fund public health programs. 

Advocates say the measure could transform debates around the county by offering a new model for drug policy, even as more work is needed in Oregon to reduce enforcement and inequalities.

Other states focused on marijuana reform. In October, Vermont’s legislature created a legal system of marijuana sales. Then, in November, voters in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota legalized recreational marijuana. There are now 15 states, plus Washington, D.C., where recreational use of marijuana is legal. 

Also, Virginia adopted a law decriminalizing marijuana possession, but legalization stalled. Political leaders there, as in New York and other states, have signaled they may push further in 2021. Separately, ballot initiatives legalized psilocybin mushrooms for therapeutic purposes in Oregon; mostly decriminalized psilocybin in D.C.; and legalized medical marijuana in Mississippi.

Finally, in Missouri and Oklahoma, voters opted to expand Medicaid, furthering a trend of voters in red states circumventing Republican lawmakers who have blocked expansion via initiatives. These two measures will grant public insurance to an estimated 500,000 people. 

Among many benefits, expanding Medicaid can combat the overdose crisis and assist efforts to reduce the criminalization of substance use by enabling access to treatment programs. This link also resonated in 2018 initiative campaigns in Idaho and Nebraska.

Early release and parole

With the outbreak of COVID-19, prisons and jails that are overcrowded and confined promptly became virulent hotbeds for the virus, making up many of the country’s largest sources of infections. This sparked widespread demands for public officials to take meaningful decarceral measures to protect people in prisons and jails, and the surrounding communities.

Officials responded at a glacial pace, especially when it comes to emptying prisons. The Justice Department made release from federal prisons harder; Pennsylvania and Alabama left medically vulnerable prisoners without recourse when they canceled hearings; Ohio, New York, Delaware, and Vermont officials resisted calls for release or stalled release plans. “States are not even taking the simplest and least controversial steps, like refusing admissions for technical violations of probation and parole rules,” the Prison Policy Initiative wrote in an analysis. 

In the fall, New Jersey was an exception to the general indifference: It adopted a law in October that granted many people incarcerated in the state with early release. As a result, more than 2,000 people were released on Nov. 4, in what the New York Times described as “one of the largest-ever single-day reductions of any state’s prison population,” with more releases to come. 

Other states considered legislation to expand releases, often apart from the immediate context of COVID-19. Beyond the pandemic, those hoping to cut the size of prisons have been pushing for ways to modify the lengthy sentences people are serving around the country. On this front, a significant change may still be on the horizon this year: The D.C. council passed a “Second Look” bill this week that would enable people serving lengthy sentences for a crime they committed before they were 25 to petition for resentencing after 15 years in prison. The fate of the bill remains unclear given the mayor’s opposition, though.

Elsewhere, at least three states expanded parole eligibility. 

California expanded eligibility for the state’s elderly parole process, and made people eligible at age 50 instead of 60. Louisiana, one of the harshest states for life in prison sentences, made some dent in that: Some people convicted for crimes they committed as children will now be eligible for parole after 25 years of incarceration if they fulfill a list of conditions. Then, there’s Virginia: The state eliminated parole in 1995, and did not broadly reinstate it in 2020, but still took incremental steps to revive it. It ended sentences of life without parole for children (see below); it made most people sentenced between 1995 and 2000 eligible for parole; and it did the same for some people who are terminally ill.

But in some states, promising reforms ended up derailing. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves and Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, both Republicans, vetoed bills that would have made some people eligible for parole earlier than scheduled. Maryland lawmakers seemed on their way to ending governors’ effective veto power on anyone serving a life sentence getting parole, but the bill stalled in the Senate. In Arizona and Florida, advocates prioritized curtailing “Truth in Sentencing” guidelines that bar release until people have served at least 85 percent of their sentence, but these bills also did not move forward. 

Youth justice

Virginia abolished sentences of life without the possibility of parole sentences for minors, the 23rd state to do so. “It’s a huge victory,” Heather Renwick, legal director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, said at the time.

The Virginia law, which applies retroactively, will give hundreds of people who have been incarcerated for at least 20 years a shot at petitioning for release. (Ohio may still adopt a reform to end life without parole for minors before the end of the year, via a bill that remains alive as of publication.)

Also, Virginia and Utah narrowed the circumstances in which a minor will be treated as an adult, a designation that triggers harsher punishment; Utah’s law also restricts prosecutors’ authority to unilaterally decide to charge children in adult court. Still, whereas 2019 saw major reforms around the country that significantly cut down on the prosecution of children as adults, and in some states altogether ended the mandatory adult prosecutions of minors, momentum on that front did not build in 2020. Instead, Missouri adopted a punitive law to expand adult prosecutions and punishments for some minors as young as 14; lawmakers in Missouri who opposed the measure warned that it would primarily harm Black children.

Elsewhere, California adopted a law that will phase out its youth prisons; minors will be detained instead in facilities run by county governments. New Jersey ended fines in the juvenile system.

Policing and law enforcement

In many states, police unions and law enforcement groups successfully lobbied to stop the boldest measures filed in the wake of protests against police brutality in the spring and summer.

In California, for instance, a slate of policing reform bills stalled in the legislature, and then two bills that made it through were vetoed by Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. One would have mandated that district attorneys maintain a list of police officers with a history of lying or misconduct, and the other would have set up a pilot program for mental health or medical professionals to answer some 911 calls. Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, said this month that he would veto a provision meant to mostly ban facial recognition. 

But Colorado reached a milestone in June: It adopted a law eliminating qualified immunity, which is the legal doctrine that often shields police officers from civil lawsuits, in state courts.

Colorado’s law, which was introduced by Democratic lawmakers and passed with large bipartisan majorities, also empowers the attorney general to prosecute officers, restricts the standards for use of deadly force, and mandates police departments to disclose more data. Connecticut later limited qualified immunity, with loopholes. Bills to end it in Massachusetts and Virginia seemed in promising shape but died in the legislature. 

Another emblematic policing legislation came from New York: In June, the state repealed Section 50-a, a stringent statute that shielded police officers’ disciplinary records. This repeal was a longtime demand of advocates who protested police departments’ ever-expanding use of the statute. Connecticut also expanded transparency over disciplinary records and eased the process to decertify police officers.

Elsewhere, Virginia became the third state to ban no-knock warrants. New York and Connecticut codified special offices to investigate police killings. Minnesota changed police unions’ ability to interfere with an independent arbitrator. Hawaii required police departments to disclose the identity of officers who are discharged or suspended. And some states, including Connecticut, Iowa, Minnesota, and New York, adopted bans against the use of chokeholds and/or neck restraints. But such statutes can be difficult to enforce amid a culture of impunity, as NPR reported.

Fines and fees 

More states confronted the pervasive practice of suspending drivers’ licenses over court debt. In taking away people’s means of transportation, these suspensions cut off their access to work and make it harder for them to pay off this debt—and those who still use their cars can get prosecuted for it.

Hawaii, Oregon, and Virginia all adopted laws this year to end these suspensions. Overall, this makes 10 states that will not hinder access to licenses over non-payment of fines and fees, according to a national tracker created by the Fines and Fees Justice Center; other states have adopted narrower restrictions on such suspensions, without ending them. (Michigan and New York could still adopt similar reforms before the end of 2020, depending on the fate of bills that remain under consideration.)

These reforms will affect a staggering number of people since suspensions are so widespread. In Virginia alone, more than 900,000 residents were deprived of their licenses over unpaid fines and fees as of 2016, according to a Legal Aid Center lawsuit.

But states could be far more ambitious in stopping the predatory imposition of fines and fees in the first place.

COVID-19 brought the issue into stark relief not only because it has sparked an economic crisis for all, but also because the end of in-person visitations in prisons and jails has compounded the importance of phone and online communication that often cost astronomical prices, as reported this year from Illinois to Alaska and Florida. In October, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have capped the cost of phone and video calls from prison, and capped the inflation of commissary items; this came a year after he vetoed a different bill that would have required judges to determine people’s financial ability before imposing financial obligations.

But Newsom signed into law a measure to eliminate many administrative fees that are imposed on people by California’s criminal legal system.

Expungement and re-entry

The economic havoc brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic compounded the urgency for states to help people re-enter their communities and lift the barriers of a criminal record. But in some regions, public services closed their doors or could not meet the demands of people released from prison who needed assistance.

And legislation to help was met with a chorus of gubernatorial vetoes.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, vetoed a bill that would have shielded marijuana convictions from public records. About 200,000 Marylanders stood to benefit. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, a Republican, vetoed a bill that would have authorized people to expunge some convictions over nonviolent offenses. And Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat, vetoed a bill that would have set up a pilot program to automatically expunge some people’s records, citing budgetary constraints. 

Michigan bucked that trend in October, when it adopted a major legislative package that could enable hundreds of thousands of Michiganders to clear their criminal records. The package expands the range of cases that people can get expunged, including marijuana-related convictions. It also makes expungement automatic for many misdemeanors and some felonies, though only after a prolonged wait time. Eligible Michiganders will see their records expunged without having to apply or file a petition; the vast majority of people eligible for an expungement do not apply because of cost, lack of information, or administrative complexity. 

Michigan is the sixth state to adopt a system to automatically clear convictions, and it will be the most expansive, according to the Collateral Consequences Resource Center. This year, Michigan also eliminated its ban on people receiving food assistance benefits (SNAP) if they have multiple drug-related convictions. .

Other states took some incremental steps to removing barriers for people with past convictions.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, signed an executive order barring employers from asking job applicants whether they have a criminal record, but this will only apply to public sector jobs; broader bills have stalled in the GOP-run legislature. Hawaii expanded partial protections against employment discrimination for people with a criminal record. Kentucky set up automatic expungement for people whose cases are dismissed or who are acquitted. Finally, California adopted a law that loosens the prohibition of formerly incarcerated firefighters becoming civilian firefighters. But the law comes with major hurdles and carve-outs due to the vocal opposition of police unions, state DAs, and firefighters unions.

Pretrial detention 

Criminal justice reform advocates in New York had one of the bigger victories in 2019 when Democrats overhauled the state’s bail system to greatly reduce pretrial detention. This reform significantly reduced jail populations in New York starting just before the COVID-19 pandemic, helping contain some of the spread.

Still, law enforcement groups pursued a yearlong crusade against the measure. In March of this year, Democrats chose to partly roll back the 2019 law by expanding the range of circumstances under which judges can impose bail. Some progressive lawmakers, who increased their clout in the year’s legislative elections, opposed the rollback.

After the pandemic began, some states such as Massachusetts and California adopted emergency measures to shrink pretrial detention during the outbreak—meeting longtime demands of advocates to shrink jails and end cash bail, but only on an exceptional basis. Texas took the opposite route when Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, issued an executive order to block some counties’ efforts to shrink jails to fight the pandemic.

In November, finally, Californians voted to strike down a 2018 law that had eliminated the cash bail system and replaced it with algorithm-driven risk assessments. The bail bond industry opposed the law, and in an unusual twist, so did many advocates who warned that the new system would perpetuate racial disparities in pretrial detention.

Trial procedures and sentencing

California made it harder for prosecutors to exclude Black people from jury pools. As Kyle Barry explains, racial discrimination in jury selection is routine around the country: Prosecutors are not supposed to strike prospective jurors because of their race, but in practice courts allow them to invoke factors that track closely with race—a sleight of hand that California’s new law aims to curtail. 

Separate legislation, also signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in September, will make it easier to appeal a conviction or sentence on the grounds that it is racially discriminatory. And in November, Californians beat back a ballot initiative (Proposition 20) that would have rolled back some decarceral sentencing reforms adopted over the past decade.

Elsewhere, Virginia transferred some sentencing powers to judges to forestall what defense attorneys describe as a “jury penalty,” and Maryland restricted the use of jailhouse informants, Also in Maryland, Governor Larry Hogan’s heated efforts on behalf of punitive measures that would have toughened sentences did not convince the legislature. Oklahoma saw a setback for criminal justice reform when voters rejected State Question 805, which would have prevented prosecutors from seeking harsh sentencing enhancements against some defendants.

Voting rights and disenfranchisement 

Washington, D.C., made history this summer when it eliminated disenfranchisement for anyone with felony convictions, including when they are in prison. It joined Maine and Vermont, which have never barred people from voting because of a criminal conviction.

Elsewhere, though, millions of U.S. citizens were once again barred from voting in this year’s elections. And in the many states that have expanded voter eligibility in recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic stalled outreach efforts and voter registration drives.

Still, some jurisdictions took big steps in loosening disenfranchisement, even if they did so more incrementally than the nation’s capital. California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 17 in November, which enfranchised people who are on parole. In practice, the reform means that all voting-age citizens who are not incarcerated will be able to vote. California is the 19th state to adopt such a rule. 

Over the summer, amid protests against racial injustice in law enforcement, activists amplified the pressure for Iowa to no longer be the only state in the country to disenfranchise anyone with any felony conviction for life. GOP Governor Kim Reynolds issued an executive order in August that restored the voting rights of most people once they finish a felony sentence. The order affected tens of thousands of people, but also kept Iowa among the nation’s harshest states.

Bills against disenfranchisement did not advance in many other states, including Virginia and Washington State, which have harsh rules by the current standards of Democrat-run states. 

Prison gerrymandering 

The next round of redistricting is almost upon us, and most states are poised to once again employ prison gerrymandering, the practice of drawing political maps by counting incarcerated people at their prison’s location, rather than at their most recent address. This disproportionately skews political power toward white and rural communities.

The issue has gained political visibility in recent years. In 2020, three states adopted laws to end prison gerrymandering: New Jersey, Colorado, and Virginia. When they redraw some or all of their maps in coming years, they will count incarcerated people at their most recent residence. 

“The system is set up to take citizens out of their communities … and increase the political power of [other] communities,” Aaron Greene, associate counsel at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, said after New Jersey’s reform. “Having people counted in the communities where they are from and where they will return, where their families are, is extremely important.”

There are now nine states that have taken legislative action against prison gerrymandering. The clock is ticking for other legislatures to act before redistricting.

And there’s more

Regarding conditions of incarceration: New Jersey made incarcerated people eligible to apply for state aid for higher education programs; California provided that transgender people be detained in a prison based on their gender identity, though the law enables correctional officials to override this; and South Carolina banned shackling women who are pregnant, in labor, or recovering from giving birth. This law also mandates that jails and prisons provide menstrual hygiene products, a reminder of the low bar for state reforms meant to change prison conditions. 

Regarding probation: Two states imposed new limits this year on the length of probation terms, which are often interminable, stringent, and can result in incarceration over technical violations. In Minnesota, a notoriously harsh state when it comes to probation terms, the Sentencing Guidelines Commission adopted a presumptive five-year cap, though it comes with carve-outs and will not apply retroactively. And California capped probation terms at one year for misdemeanors and two years for felonies. However, legislative efforts to curtail Pennsylvania’s punitive probation system derailed this year despite some early momentum.

Regarding civil asset forfeiture: New Jersey required that, in some cases, people be convicted before their assets can be seized—a change that falls short of the more comprehensive reform Arkansas adopted last year. Throughout the country, police routinely seize property without trial.

Regarding repression of protests: Tennessee’s GOP-run government toughened penalties for offenses associated with protest activity, part of a wave of recent legislative activity to restrict protests; the new Tenneseee law makes it a felony punishable by up to six years in prison to illegally camp on state property. Florida is considering similar legislation, proposed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. And a Georgia law that created a new offense of “bias motivated intimidation” against a police officer was denounced by the ACLU of Georgia “as a direct swipe at Georgians participating in the Black Lives Matter protests.”

Regarding prosecutors: Their often-unchecked clout suffered some setbacks. A California law will enable judges to steer people charged with misdemeanors into pretrial diversion (so completing a program would result in the dismissal of charges) without a prosecutor’s assent. Virginia somewhat narrowed prosecutors’ unilateral ability to transfer children to adult court (see above). Kentuckyians rejected an initiative to extend DAs’ terms to eight years. And, in California and Virginia, importantly for future legislation, cracks began to show in the state associations that lobby on behalf of local prosecutors, often to stymie reforms bills.

Regarding pardons: Nevada voters passed Question 3, a measure that will make the state’s pardon process a bit easier. It ends the governor’s de facto veto power over pardons, and requires the Board of Pardons Commissioners to meet more often to address a backlog of requests. 

Finally, regarding immigration: Colorado and New York adopted laws to bar ICE from arresting people who are in or on their way to courthouses, amid a pattern of arrests and detentions. No state adopted new protections for immigrants against local law enforcement cooperating with ICE, even though such sanctuary reforms appeared to have momentum earlier during President Trump’s term. Voters took matters in their own hands by firing some sheriffs who were helping ICE arrest and detain immigrants. 

The post How States Transformed Criminal Justice in 2020, and How They Fell Short appeared first on Bolts.

When the Great Recession hit in 2008, the unemployment rate among the general public stood at 6 percent. But it stood at a staggering 27 percent among the formerly incarcerated, according to a study by the Prison Policy Initiative —“higher than the overall U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression.” As the nation now grapples with the novel coronavirus and tens of millions of newly unemployed workers, individuals with criminal records—upward of 70 to 100 million Americans—are bracing for an even more severe crisis, with heightened difficulties obtaining jobs, loans, and housing.

In that context, criminal justice reform advocates in Washington State were all the more disappointed in April when Democratic Governor Jay Inslee vetoed House Bill 2793. It would have initiated the process of automatically expunging criminal records in nearly 2 million eligible cases. 

Advocates have pushed for this type of reform, dubbed “Clean Slate,” around the country. Although expunged records yield major benefits, the vast majority of people who are eligible to get an expungement—over 90 percent of them, according to a University of Michigan study published in 2019—don’t even apply, for a host of reasons ranging from cost and time to legal complexity and a lack of information. Clean Slate bills propose to remedy these obstacles by requiring states to automatically expunge people’s records for eligible offenses. Though specifications vary, these bills typically involve clearing cases promptly if they did not result in a conviction, and clearing convictions after some waiting period.

The economic downturn has amplified the issue’s importance. Applicants with criminal records can be half as likely to get a callback or job offer, research has shown, and nearly nine in 10 employers use criminal background checks when hiring. Even among those who do find jobs, employees with records generally face significant earning penalties, while those with expunged records typically see their wages spike. 

Still, in his formal veto letter, Inslee cited COVID-19 to explain his decision to block HB 2793. He argued that given the health and economic crisis wrought by coronavirus, Washington could not afford to move forward with the bill. Despite the research showing automatic record-clearing boosts economic opportunity for vulnerable people and ultimately saves states money, he insisted, “we must prepare for the effects of the lost revenue that will result from this pandemic.”

“To have Inslee veto our Clean Slate bill was really devastating for all of us who worked so hard and continue to make progress toward the relief that so many individuals need help with,” said Tarra Simmons, director of the Washington-based Civil Survival Project, a criminal justice organization led by formerly incarcerated individuals, and the co-chair of Washington’s Statewide Reentry Council. “Austerity is not going to help us in the economic recession.”

Simmons herself was sentenced to 30 months in prison for theft and drug crimes back in 2011. Six years later, when she graduated from Seattle University Law School, the Washington State Bar Association denied her entry into the bar exam, citing her felony record, but Simmons got the state Supreme Court to affirm her right to take the test. Simmons is now a licensed attorney and is also running for the state House.

The final version of HB 2793 was watered down from what advocates had originally proposed. It would have authorized a pilot program of automatic record-clearing in just one county, as well as a study due in December assessing how to implement the policy statewide, given Washington’s decentralized court system. The total price tag, according to the fiscal note, was $1.2 million over two years. 

When the coronavirus hit, advocates pressed Inslee to sign the bill even if he couldn’t authorize the funding. Though it was limited, supporters still saw the legislation as essential to get the ball rolling in the state. Major philanthropic organizations like the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Arnold Ventures, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative have supported automatic expungement efforts, and Simmons said they were confident they’d be able to secure private resources for the study if needed.

“He could have passed the policy without the funding piece, and it would have at least compelled state agencies to come to the table and collaborate with us,” Simmons told the Appeal: Political Report. “We said we can still do the report and we’ll figure it out, the cost, as a coalition.”

Nevertheless, Inslee nixed the legislation in full.

Mike Faulk, the press secretary for Inslee’s office, told the Political Report that the governor believes record-clearing is “an important issue” and “would like to see work done to move this forward when there are resources to allow for the work.” Faulk noted that Inslee vetoed many bills that he endorsed to control the budget and emphasized that the governor supports Clean Slate, “regardless of whether it got his signature this time around.”

Washington’s setback stands in stark contrast to the wave of momentum reformers have seen over the past few years when it comes to automatic record-clearing.

Pennsylvania was the first state to pass a Clean Slate bill in 2018, with polling showing over 80 percent of Pennsylvanians backed the idea. The law has had a tremendous impact in a short amount of time: Since it went into effect in June 2019, more than 34 million cases have already been sealed, including more than 80,000 misdemeanor convictions. 

Unlike in Washington State, Pennsylvania has a unified court system—meaning that the data was already consolidated from all 67 counties. This aided Pennsylvania’s swift passage of its bill. “It mostly required some programming to make the concept run, and I think the fact that it wasn’t going to cost much of anything was really key,” explained Sharon Dietrich, the litigation director of the Philadelphia-based Community Legal Services.

Then, in 2019, Utah became the second state to pass a Clean Slate bill. California followed suit in October, though unlike in the prior two states, its reform does not apply retroactively. Only eligible offenses that occur after 2021 will be automatically cleared. 

California went further than Pennsylvania and Utah in another way, though. Its law will apply not just to misdemeanors, as in these other states, but to some felony offenses as well. 

Michigan is also advancing a Clean Slate bill, which passed the state’s House in November; the Senate may still take it up this year. If that bill passes, Michigan would have the first Clean Slate law to clear prior felony offenses. Lawmakers have also introduced bills this year in California, which may expand on its 2019 reform, and in Connecticut.

Advocates are pressing states to speed up consideration of these measures, rather than use the pandemic as a reason to slow it down. Workers with criminal records tend to be among those first fired from jobs and last hired during economic crises, they stress.

“This kind of policymaking is going to be more important—it’s not something that should be left as a COVID-19 afterthought,” said Rebecca Vallas, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where she works on automatic expungement. “It needs to be part and parcel of our economic recovery or else we’ll just further compound the inequities we already have.” 

Simmons agrees that discriminating against those with criminal records amid the pandemic puts Americans more at risk. “As the illness continues to spread, we need to beef up our essential workforce,” she said. “Folks with criminal records would be well equipped to step into these delivery and grocery roles.”

The federal government may be paying some attention. In 2019, Representatives Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Delaware Democrat, and Guy Reschenthaler, a Pennsylvania Republican, introduced legislation to automatically seal some people’s criminal records. Vallas says she has also heard of bipartisan interest in offering federal support to states that face greater financial and technological barriers to implementing automatic record-clearing than Pennsylvania did. 

Reschenthaler told the Political Report in an email that Clean Slate-like legislation is important to battling “the revolving door to prison.” He added, “As we recover from the COVID-19 outbreak, eliminating barriers to employment will ensure formerly incarcerated individuals can fully participate and contribute to their communities to help us reopen America and reignite our economy.”

So far, the federal government has only made it more difficult for people with records to benefit from its economic stimulus package, though, by restricting access to forgivable business loans.

The post Washington Governor Vetoes Bill That Would Have Automatically Cleared Criminal Records appeared first on Bolts.

Before adjourning for the year on Friday, the California legislature passed a series of bills reforming the state’s criminal legal system and its law enforcement and detention practices.

These bills are now all on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. Newsom has until Oct. 13 to sign them, veto them, or let them become law by doing nothing.

Here is a preliminary overview of eight of these bills.

1. Rights restoration: “It’s time to allow people with felony convictions to serve on juries,” Vaidya Gullapalli wrote in The Appeal in July. California is currently one of 27 states to permanently bar people with felony convictions from serving on a jury. This could soon end: Senate Bill 310 would allow most people with felony convictions to serve on juries after the completion of their sentence. The bill would not apply to people who are required to register on sex offender registries, however. The Appeal has reported on problems with California’s expansive registry law. 

2. Sentencing (1): California is notorious for automatically expanding prison terms. SB 136 would eliminate one such mechanism: one year-additions to a person’s sentence for each prior felony conviction punished with prison or jail. Proponents of SB 136 organized an exhibit called “What a Difference a Year Makes;” it may seem obvious that it does, but as Vermont prosecutor Sarah Fair George told the Political Report in August, we too often treat prison time as an abstraction, “just throwing out numbers.” 

3. Sentencing (2): Assembly Bill 484 would eliminate the requirement that individuals convicted of distributing some drug offenses receive a sentence that includes an at least 180-day jail stay.

4. Private facilities and immigration detention: AB 32 would ban private prisons and immigration detention centers; it was amended to include the caveat that the state can extend its contract with a private contractor if that is purportedly needed to alleviate overcrowding in state-run prisons. The bill should significantly cut ICE’s detention capacity in the state. It would not terminate the existing contracts of the four privately-run immigration detention centers in the state, which have capacity to detain 4,500 immigrants, but the contracts could not be extended.

Grisel Ruiz, an attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, an organization that advocated for the bill, frames AB 32 as a step toward ending ICE detentions in California. “Due process can’t coexist with detention,” she told the Political Report, noting that there is now only one publicly-run detention center (Yuba County). The San Francisco Chronicle reported in May that ICE was looking for more detention space in California, and that with local governments choosing to end their contracts, the federal agency struck new partnerships with GEO Group, a private company. GEO Group lobbied against AB 32. Ruiz acknowledged some advocates’ concerns that ICE detainees may be transferred elsewhere, but argued that bed capacity matters. “If you build it, they will fill it,” she said. “It makes ICE’s job to engage in enforcement much harder if they don’t have those immediate beds in their backyard.”

5. DA power: In her resistance to reform this year, San Diego DA Summer Stephan went so far as to ask some defendants to waive their hypothetical future rights to seek relief under still-nonexistent reforms. Lawmakers replied with AB 1618: If signed, it would void any deals where defendants forfeit rights derived from future reforms.

6. Fines and fees: Criminal fines and fees are a significant burden on poor people, and AB 927 would require courts to determine defendants’ ability to pay before imposing a financial obligation on them (except restitution); the bill also lists circumstances under which defendants are presumed unable to pay. Sponsors connect AB 927 to a recent court ruling that held that financial obligations are unconstitutional if imposed on people who cannot pay them.

That said, the legislature did not pass another bill (SB 144) that proposed outright eliminating many of California’s fees. The bill may return next year, and some local jurisdictions are stepping in for now. This week, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors voted to suspend criminal court fees imposed in the county. 

7. Surveillance: AB 1215 would ban the use of facial recognition technology in police body cameras over the next three years, a temporary response to worries about surveillance.

8. Expungement: Most people eligible for the cumbersome process of expungement do not apply, so two states have adopted “Clean Slate” laws to automate it. California could be third: AB 1076 creates an automatic expungement process for all misdemeanors and some felonies. “By removing the burden from being on the individual to request a record change (often requiring the services of an attorney), we reduce barriers to success by making the process less bureaucratic and more effective,” Jay Jordan, executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, told the Political Report via email. Expungement “allows people to access jobs, housing, and other opportunities.” Outstanding fines and fees will not be a barrier.

However, the bill was amended to only apply to offenses committed after 2021. Jordan attributed this to budgetary limits and vowed to press ahead. The bill “establishes a pioneering foundation that can be built upon through future budget allocations to make it retroactive,” he said. “There is no longer a debate on whether providing relief to this broad group of people is sound policy, and that’s a pivotal turning point.”

—

The legislature also adopted other bills on matters like early release or health care in prison. 

One measure that remained on the table is the constitutional amendment to restore voting rights for people on parole. The Assembly had passed it, but the Senate adjourned without voting on it.

Since California’s legislative process carries over into 2020, the Senate can adopt it after recess in January. That would place it on the 2020 ballot for voters to approve. Taina Vargas-Edmond, the executive director of Initiate Justice, a group that champions ending disenfranchisement, told the Political Report that she was “fairly optimistic” that the Senate would pass it next year. “I was pleasantly surprised by some of the debate on the Assembly floor,” she said. “We are going to continue working hard to raise awareness of the issue.”

California is one of 32 states to disenfranchise at least some people who are not presently incarcerated. (This is more restrictive than states with a more conservative reputation, such as Indiana or Utah.) This issue has seen significant legislative and political movement throughout this year. 

—

Many of the laws that govern the American criminal justice system are set at the state level. Explore the latest developments on criminal justice reform in state legislatures around the country with the Political Report’s interactive tool on legislative reform.

The post California Legislature Adopts a Flurry of Criminal Justice Reforms appeared first on Bolts.

Criminal convictions have ramifications far beyond the explicit sentences imposed on individuals, impeding their access to housing and blocking them from jobs for the decades that follow. Different states open the door to varying degrees for people to have their records cleared, but even for eligible individuals, the process is so difficult—and costly—that few people take advantage of it.

Reform advocates have had recent success targeting both sides of that problem. Last year, Pennsylvania expanded who is eligible to have their records sealed, and made the process automatic for some. (The latter step is in the implementation phase.) The state may soon have company.

Earlier this month, the Utah Legislature passed a “Clean Slate” bill, similar to Pennsylvania’s, to automate some of its expungement process. And reformers in Delaware are working to increase people’s eligibility for expungement in the first place; state law currently provides adults no opportunity short of a pardon to have past convictions expunged.

“If you address mandatory minimums, and sentencing reform, and prison conditions but neglect to address barriers of re-entry, then people are going to be trapped in cycles of incarceration and reincarceration where they don’t have job opportunities on the other side,” said Rebecca Vallas, the vice president for the Poverty to Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Delaware’s proposed legislation (Senate Bill 37) would delineate cases in which expungement petitions must be granted (arrests where there was no conviction and some lower-level convictions). It would also delineate other situations, including some felony convictions, where expungement is at the discretion of courts. SB 37 intends to “protect persons from unwarranted damage which may occur when the existence of a criminal history continues indefinitely,” according to a draft provided to the Political Report.

State Senator Darius Brown, a sponsor of the bill, told me that removing the “barriers and impediments” that people with convictions will promote “economic opportunity and economic justice,” and provide “opportunity for upward mobility.” “I don’t think that someone’s criminal record should be a life sentence,” Brown said. A new study conducted at the University of Michigan found that Michiganders who received an expungement saw their wages go up by more than 20 percent within a year, boosted by an easier time navigating the job market.

This bill is part of a larger package of proposals announced last week by a coalition of legal, legislative, and associative actors. Proposals include lowering charges for drug offenses, limiting the treatment of minors as adults, and constraining the stacking of charges. Some would codify into law Attorney General Kathleen Jennings’s new guidelines for state prosecutors.

SB 37 would expand eligibility for expungement in Delaware, but individuals would have to take action to benefit. Brown told me that the coalition pushing the bill would need to continue its work to ensure “that people are informed and educated” and organize events to promote access.

Unlike Delaware, Utah already allows adults with misdemeanor or felony convictions to petition for expungement after a set period of time.

But people hoping for expungement must file petitions and face multiple fees and filing requirements. In Utah, as elsewhere, many people do not apply or face obstacles when they do. The University of Michigan study found that 90 percent of eligible Michiganders do not apply for reasons ranging from cost and bureaucratic complexity to insufficient information. These are issues in Utah as well. Noella Sudbury, director of the Salt Lake County’s Criminal Justice Advisory Council, asked impacted individuals why they had yet to apply during an “expungement day” her office organized last year. “The two top reasons were that it’s too overwhelming and complicated, and it’s too expensive,” she said.

Vallas, who helped develop the original Clean Slate bill in Pennsylvania, emphasized the procedural maze that individuals need to surmount to benefit from expungement in nonautomated systems. The point of an “automatic clearing of criminal records,” she said, is for people to not “have to go through that one-off process of having to figure out a bunch of complicated legal documents, going in front of a judge, filling court dockets.”

Utah’s Clean Slate legislation (House Bill 431) would create such an automatic process. It would apply to people who were acquitted and to people who were convicted of some misdemeanor offenses after waiting periods of up to seven years after sentencing. The bill “shifts the burden away from the individual to the government,” said Sudbury, who advocated for the legislation alongside its sponsor, state Representative Eric Hutchings, and a coalition of Utah groups.

“It just says we have the technological tools to identify who you are and give notice to all those agencies that your record is expunged, and if after a period of time, you would have your record expunged anyway, then we will expunge it for you,” Sudbury said.

The bill has passed both legislative chambers unanimously and is now on the governor’s desk.

Major avenues for further reform remain. Pennsylvania’s Clean Slate bill automated the process to seal rather than expunge records, which would still be accessible by some parties such as local law enforcement. Access to Utah’s expunged records would be more restricted. Utah’s legislature also adopted House Bill 212, which bars employers from asking about expunged convictions. In addition, Sudbury said Utah should revisit the connection between debt and expungement. “If you have open debt you wouldn’t be eligible,” she said. Paying off court fines and fees hinges on an ability to gain a stable income, and this is hindered as long as people retain a record.

Clean Slate bills that would automate existing expungement processes have been introduced in a number of other states, including in California, where it is championed by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón. In January, California began implementing a law that automates the initiation of the expungement process for marijuana-related convictions.

Update: The original article has been corrected to reflect that the Utah legislature passed House Bill 212.

The post Reformers Push to Expand and Automate Expungement appeared first on Bolts.