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Comment by swlp21 | Hacker News Reader

I think there is an important word missing from the title, it is Police /Disciplinary/ Records that are being referenced. That is a significant difference and there is a very strong case that these should be retained in exactly the same way criminal records are retained (essentially forever) and for the same purpose - so they can be looked up and referenced should any officer come to attention and a fuller picture of their character is required.

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Good point. Done.

Is this the case with criminal records?

There was a rumor that in the Rittenhouse case, one of the other folks involved had a much much larger actual criminal history then the one they released, but that a lot of the history was hidden in various ways?

This was supposedly misinformation but the details were pretty specific, and they seemed to indicate that there might be a method to basically hide past convictions so a full picture would not be available.

Has anyone heard of something called "Expungement"?

Google got me to these guys: https://www.record-clear.com/

They claim even felonies can be removed, even if there are probation violations etc.

>There was a rumor that in the Rittenhouse case, one of the other folks involved had a much much larger actual criminal history then the one they released, but that a lot of the history was hidden in various ways?

As an aside, there's a ~2hr video floating around the internet of bodycam footage from arm guy's DUI arrest between the shooting and the trail. They dropped it, presumably because an active DUI case makes for a crappy prosecution witness. Police officers don't even get treatment that good. If they get as far as being cited (vs a free ride home, which is what they often get) the prosecution typically makes them plead down and spend thousands doing so rather than just dropping it.

That said, the DUI in question is an example of a lot of things that are wrong with policing (the cops in the video are professional and civil the whole time) and I think it's worth watching just for that.

Looks like those guys only handle California. Seems like it's a CA specific law, unsure if available in other states

Most US states have some form of expungement law which allows past criminal records to be cleared. It's mostly intended to help ex-cons with reintegration, because it can be so difficult to get employment (and in many cases voting rights, public services, housing, etc) with a criminal history. Basically criminal records are a major part of the "cycle of criminality" that causes recidivism because former criminals are unable to support themselves by means other than crime (can't get a job, etc), and so expungement policies are expected to have a positive impact on both crime and social welfare. The details all vary from state to state, often there's a limit on how severe of an offense can be expunged, it has to be a certain time in the past, and typically the records are not really "expunged" but removed from public reports---law enforcement and judges can often still see them, as well as federal background checks, and sometimes anyone can ask for a court order to unseal. The expungement itself usually requires a court order, so the court makes a judgment whether or not expungement serves the public interest (i.e. will allow the person to contribute more fully to society). There are a lot of law firms like that that specialize in expungement because there are many people with criminal records and in most cases the process is a pretty straightforward paperwork exercise, so you can make a steady profit stream with a few paralegals preparing form letters.

It becomes a different matter for people who are charged with crimes and otherwise in court, as courts have rules about what criminal history can or cannot be introduced in the court. There's a general principle that a jury shouldn't know about a person's unrelated previous convictions, since it will bias them towards the person being a criminal despite not actually being evidence relevant to the case in question. But I think there are plenty of exceptions, i.e. if the person has been convicted for pretty much the same crime before it can usually be introduced by the prosecution as circumstantial evidence that they apparently have the skills/means/motivation to commit such a crime. But you can't just tell the jury that they have a rap sheet a mile long. I'm not a lawyer and only know so much about this but I believe that usually pretty much the same rules apply to witnesses. You can bring up that a witness has a criminal record if it's somehow directly relevant to their testimony (i.e. they have lied to a court in the past) but you can't just tell the jury that they have a criminal record to try to ruin their reputation. Although it usually fails in practice, the justice system is at least theoretically built around the principle that people can and do change, and so prior criminality shouldn't be held against them if it isn't somehow contributory to the current situation.

To add to this, a lot of times expungement isn't very useful because there are a ton of private companies that scrape these records (including arrest records) constantly. Some of these companies have business models built around conducting background checks and an unfortunate number of them have business models that rely solely on getting people to pay them to "remove" these records.

Yes, this is a big issue! Part of the reason why e.g. California and other states have introduced "ban the box" legislation to restrict employers asking about criminal history, when they already have an expungement process, is because of this issue exactly. Most pre-employment background checks are done through vendors like LexisNexis that pull records at the time of the incident and then retain them permanently, so expungement doesn't do anything. The whole private background check and criminal records industry can be surprisingly sketchy, including behavior that looks to reasonable people like extortion, but it's resisted almost any regulation or oversight. Some of this comes from an inherent tension between public records and personal privacy (are the actions of law enforcement a matter of public interest or a matter of personal privacy? the line can be very blurry), but a lot of it is also just because this industry is politically and financially powerful and any action against it tends to look "soft on crime."

The accused's criminal history comes up more in sentencing than it does in actual criminal cases - in the US system you're being tried on the crime before the court, not anything from your past. There are obvious exceptions - someone who is suspected of murdering their spouse who has prior domestic violence charges is one you see a lot - but in general, that comes up during the sentencing, where the judge has a lot of leeway to tailor the sentence to the circumstances.

Expungement is a thing, but even more importantly in court it’s usually at a judges discretion whether or not evidence is allowed and criminal history is a type of evidence.

Sometimes evidence is not allowed because it is considered prejudicial.

The purpose of a criminal trial is to determine guilt on a specific crime rather than character. That excluded evidence is sometimes allowed at sentencing.

There was controversy in the Rittenhouse case about his prior comments and actions not being allowed into evidence.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2021/09/17/kenosha...

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