>Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill allowing inmate firefighters to have their records expunged, clearing the path for them to be eligible for firefighting jobs upon release.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912193742/california-bill-cle...
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912193742/california-bill-cle...
First,
> Law enforcement groups and prosecutors opposed the bill saying the former inmates pose a danger to the public.
The culture that creates these restrictions is still there, it's still the predominant view from law enforcement and prosecutors that prison labor should be punitive, not rehabilitative. None of the people who created and supported that system are gone, and they still have an outsized degree of control over how that system works.
Second,
> The bill, sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes, lets prisoners who received "valuable training and [placed] themselves in danger assisting firefighters to defend the life and property of Californians" to petition the courts to dismiss their convictions after completing their sentences.
A right to petition is not a guarantee that your petition will succeed.
Third,
When you dig into the details, the bill only allows removing the specific convictions that the prisoner was serving time for while they were a firefighter. If they had previous convictions or served time in the past, they'll still be restricted from getting EMT certification.
Fourth,
When you dig into the details, this bill actually doesn't get rid of restrictions on felons. It provides prisoners with a very narrow path to remove their felon status. That's not really the same thing as getting rid of the restrictions, and it's only available to prisoners who have "[placed] themselves in danger assisting firefighters".
Think of it this way: if it's illegal for women to vote, and instead of letting women vote I instead say, "here's a pathway to get the courts to declare you a man", then I haven't really gotten rid of the restriction on voting, and it would be inaccurate to say that my system provided women with the right to vote.
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It's good that prisoners have at least some recourse that they can use to try and benefit from the life threatening work they did in prison, but it's a far cry from solving the overall problem, and it arguably doesn't even fully solve this specific problem.
The amount of forms that need to be filled out is obscene. Determining which forms need to be filled out is a nightmarish exercise all to its own. Many of them need to be submitted in person. Email and online submission forms apparently don't exist. Each step has an absurdly short deadline for the the petitioner, and multiple month turnaround times for the state.
Then comes the fees. I had to pay out several thousand between attorney fees, application fees, filing fees.... Then come additional charges for each certified copy that you need, as you need to send one copy to any facility that would have any record for you. In my case, that came out to be 13 different facilities. Thankfully I've managed to get a decently paying job, but for most of those trying to get their life back in order, this is a complete non-starter.
I'm still in the process of trying to do this, and have been working on it for months now. It was made apparent to me that the process is designed extremely asymmetrically, and is just another form of exerting control.
Edit: This process will likely vary from state to state, but that's just what I've experienced.