California Will Allow People to Clear Criminal Records After Serving Time | Hacker News Reader

California Will Allow People to Clear Criminal Records After Serving Time

nytimes.com

28 points8bitsrule10 comments

On the face it looks pretty balanced. If you don't recidivate within 4 years you get your record sealed with the following [quite necessary exceptions]: "People convicted of serious and violent felonies, as well as those requiring sex offender registration, won’t have their records cleared under the law. And criminal histories would still be disclosed in background checks when people apply to work in education, law enforcement or public office."

That said, there are likely some unintended consequences and hopefully those would get addressed over time.

This sounds great and well thought out to be honest.

How are they going to fine violators? Everything is stored forever by data brokers

"We see that you've cleared your criminal record, could you please explain why?"

"We noticed that your records were cleared and will not be moving forward with your application."

Why would you assume that there’s a record of it being sealed?

Usually that fact is sealed with your record

>And criminal histories would still be disclosed in background checks when people apply to work in education, law enforcement or public office.

So this doesn't seem like it will actually do very much.

In order to be effective, this law would have to not only seal the records, but make it illegal for companies to disclose sealed criminal histories.

Education, law enforcement, and public office are a small subset of fields. I suspect that this will benefit many people still.

Progress. Yesterday I read that from 1547 Britain used human branding (thumbs, chests, faces). Abolished in 1829 (except for deserters, til 1879).

A public criminal record may be more humane than a physical brand, but for someone who's "paid their debt to society", public records are still a brand. Good to see some demonstrated reformed behavior being rewarded, even if it took 2 centuries, and requires an extra 4 years of 'paying'.

In Britain we've had something similar to this California legislation for at least fifty years.

Roughly speaking there's a sliding scale from non-custodial sentence to 4+ years in custody which governs how long you have to disclose (or the government will disclose) your convictions, from a year after completing the sentence to forever.

We have a wider range of excepted jobs though: healthcare, children, vulnerable adults, law, legal professionals, justice, some financial professionals, gambling, firearms, taxi drivers,

How easy would it be to start an education company that does the background checks for your other companies?

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