{"id":629,"date":"2022-12-07T02:54:56","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T02:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/?p=629"},"modified":"2024-10-10T18:38:38","modified_gmt":"2024-10-10T18:38:38","slug":"cts-clean-slate-law-faces-delay-and-supporters-yearn-for-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/all\/news\/cts-clean-slate-law-faces-delay-and-supporters-yearn-for-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"CT\u2019s \u2018clean slate law\u2019 faces delay, and supporters yearn for answers (Dec. 12, 2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“With full implementation of Connecticut\u2019s clean slate law delayed until late 2023, advocates and lawmakers are urging Gov. Ned Lamont\u2019s administration for more transparency on the\u00a0law<\/a>\u00a0recently passed to help hundreds of thousands of mostly Black residents who still feel the punishing effects of crimes they committed years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut, Sen. Gary Winfield, Rep. Steve Stafstrom, the ACLU\u2019s Connecticut chapter and community members gathered in New Haven\u2019s Community Baptist Church on Wednesday to relay their disappointment about the holdup in the full implementation of the law, which supporters called a last-minute surprise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Supporters of Connecticut\u2019s \u2018clean slate law\u2019 gather for a press conference, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022, in New Haven\u2019s Community Baptist Church. Two monitors in the church flanked the speakers. JADEN EDISON | CT MIRROR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The legislation, signed by Lamont last year, will automatically erase the criminal records of people seven years after the date of a conviction for a misdemeanor or 10 years after the date of a conviction for certain class D, class E or unclassified felonies<\/a> if they have not been convicted of other crimes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full implementation was slated for Jan. 1, but the Lamont administration waited until Tuesday to publicly announce that some erasures wouldn\u2019t happen until the second half of 2023. Instead, the governor said in a press release, only records in approximately 44,000 cannabis-related cases will be fully or partially erased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lamont said in the press release that implementation involves \u201csignificant information technology upgrades\u201d to allow criminal justice agencies to send and receive data, which helps determine whose prior convictions get erased. The delay is also partly a result of several legal and policy questions, according to a letter<\/a> sent last week from the Criminal Justice Information System Governing Board to the Judiciary Committee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now many of the nearly 280,000 people eligible for erasure under the law and who eagerly anticipated the change will have to wait several more months to have their records cleared. The frustration resonates with Black residents, who are more likely than their racial counterparts to experience incarceration and to have felony convictions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a big disappointment to me,\u201d said Mark Douglas, a Black man who told attendees Wednesday about his difficulty keeping a previous job due to earlier misdemeanor charges. Douglas said he was fired on the same day he was promoted. He was also told that he could retain his position with the passage of the clean slate law or any related measure that would clear his record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt definitely affects all of us on a lot of different levels,\u201d Douglas said. \u201cBy putting these things behind us, this is going to be a contribution to society, not a negative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winfield and Stafstrom \u2014 both Democrats who serve as co-chairs of the Judiciary Committee \u2014 told people at the church Wednesday that implementation of the law is a \u201ccomplex\u201d and \u201crobust statutory scheme\u201d \u2014 but that it would have been helpful to have known and talked about any hindrances related to the bill earlier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust as powerfully as we talked about the need to do this just a short while ago, we are speaking to the governor of the state and his staff,\u201d Winfield said. \u201cI will assure you \u2026 real work is going on. It is not just because people don\u2019t want to do this work.\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In his own press conference Wednesday, Lamont did not expand on why the process was prolonged or why the delay was communicated right before the new year. He instead pointed to the thousands of marijuana convictions set to clear at the onset of the new year and reiterated that it\u2019s going to take \u201ca little longer\u201d to get the rest of them right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to make sure that this is properly, and appropriately, and safely implemented, and I think we\u2019re going to have it all done over the next six to eight months,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The clean slate bill advanced<\/a> through the 2021 legislature following multiple objections and changes that lawmakers forced to the legislation. People in opposition to early versions of the bill sought a narrow list of crimes eligible for expungement, rather than more serious felonies as the House initially proposed. Lamont also favored a tapered list of eligible crimes and noted that it could expand after an initial effort proved successful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to passage of the law in Connecticut, erasure of one\u2019s criminal record could either come through submitting a pardons application or both submitting the application and having a hearing before the Board of Pardons and Paroles. The level of the crime determined which option was available to whom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supporters frequently highlighted the need to help people formerly convicted of crimes with earning an education, maintaining a job and attaining housing \u2014 and to not punish them for acts for which they already faced consequences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Race plays a significant factor<\/a> in who\u2019s punished and limited in access to basic needs in the state, as Connecticut\u2019s Black men have a 48% conviction rate, and both Black women and men are more than three times more likely than their white counterparts to have a felony conviction \u2014 despite comprising less than 13% of the state population. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emphasizing public support for a clean slate law, academic research<\/a> in Michigan, which passed clean slate legislation in 2020, found that less than 1% of people who had a violent crime expunged from their records were reconvicted of another violent crime five years after they were cleared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winfield and Stafstrom said Wednesday that there\u2019s a possibility for some kind of clarifying legislation that addresses any of the outstanding concerns that caused the delay. Both lawmakers also said that full implementation of the law remains a top priority ahead of the legislature set to convene in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Douglas, the Black man who lost his job due to prior misdemeanors, told the church crowd made up of dozens that getting people formerly convicted of crimes reacclimated to the state would benefit everyone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to subtract,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to lose anything by people getting jobs and elevating themselves.\u201d “<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read original article.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“With full implementation of Connecticut\u2019s clean slate law delayed until late 2023, advocates and lawmakers are urging Gov. Ned Lamont\u2019s administration for more transparency on the\u00a0law\u00a0recently passed to help hundreds of thousands of mostly Black residents who still feel the punishing effects of crimes they committed years ago.\u00a0 Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut, Sen. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836,"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paperprisons.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}