Posted on 08/04/2017 3:36:50 PM PDT by buckalfa
For people with criminal records, finding a job can be hard.
Their job applications may go straight to the trash bin if they truthfully answer a question about whether they were ever convicted of a felony.
It usually doesn’t matter if the conviction was a drug charge or other kind of nonviolent crime decades ago when they were young and impressionable. They don’t get the chance to explain.
For years, sympathetic lawmakers and social justice activists have proposed changing South Carolina law to make it easier for people to have certain crimes expunged from their records. But those bills could never overcome the law-and-order argument of the opposition. None passed.
Enter the Greenville Chamber of Commerce, which began lobbying in favor of expanding expungement for the first time this past legislative session.
The chamber’s president, Carlos Phillips, formerly worked for the chamber in Louisville, Ky., at a time when it was leading a campaign to pass similar legislation. That bill ultimately became law thanks in part to the support of Republican Gov. Matt Bevin.
In South Carolina, Phillips and the Greenville Chamber took up an argument used in Kentucky: They reframed the debate as a workforce issue, arguing that expanding the range of crimes eligible for expungement would make thousands of people more employable at a time when many businesses find it hard to find enough workers.
That argument takes on more potency at a time when employers face the tightest labor market since the 1990s.
According to the state Department of Employment and Workforce, South Carolina’s unemployment rate was 4 percent in June, the lowest rate since December 2000.
“We can give folks a second chance, and we can provide a larger pool for employers to choose from, and that’s a win-win,” Phillips said.
In taking up the issue, the Greenville Chamber sought a united front from the state’s business community.
It lined up support from the Upstate Chamber Coalition, an alliance of 11 chambers to which it belongs, as well as the S.C. Chamber of Commerce and the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce.
The Greenville Chamber also worked on legal language with the S.C. Law Enforcement Division, which had opposed previous bills.
Chamber involvement made a “huge difference,” according to Ashley Thomas, an attorney with the S.C. Appleseed Legal Justice Center, a Columbia organization that advocates for low-income residents.
Thomas, who has lobbied for expungement bills for four years, said the business community was never involved in any meaningful way until this year.
“It’s been mostly law enforcement and prosecutors and folks like me who look at it from a systemic poverty issue,” she said.
Once the chambers got involved, “all of the negative voices were a little bit more muted,” she said. “It was very interesting to watch for somebody who’s been fighting this fight for a while.”
The chambers succeeded in getting their bill through the House by a vote of 103 to 0.
The measure stalled in the Senate, however, amid concerns by Sen. Karl Allen, a Greenville Democrat who doesn’t think it goes far enough.
Still, Jason Zacher, vice president for business advocacy at the Greenville Chamber, said he thinks the bill stands a good chance of passing next year.
“It has lots of support in the Senate,” Zacher said. “I think we can get it across the finish line next year.”
The bill favored by the chambers would expand expungement possibilities for first-offense drug possession, whether it’s marijuana, cocaine, or methamphetamine.
Offenders could apply for expungement following three years of good behavior.
SLED would continue to keep a record of their crimes, but it would not be available to employers or the general public.
Violent crimes are not covered, nor are drug dealing and driving under the influence of alcohol.
Allen, the senator from Greenville, knows the expungement issue well, having chaired a legislative committee that studied it.
He said the chamber-backed bill would not help the people most in need of expungement, because those people usually have more serious crimes on their records, especially drug dealing.
Allen said he wants to make sure all stakeholders are part of the discussion, which he said didn’t happen this past legislative session.
“The chamber is one stakeholder,” Allen said. “They are a very important stakeholder, and we need their support, but they are not the only stakeholder who has an interest and a voice.”
Expanding the range of crimes eligible for expungement beyond those included in the chamber-backed bill could prove to be politically problematic.
Laura Hudson, executive director of the S.C. Crime Victims’ Council, a Columbia nonprofit that advocates for crime victims, said she would fight any proposal to allow expungement for more serious crimes.
She said Allen favors expungement for carjacking “and all kinds of dangerous things.”
“Law enforcement and crime victims fight every one of those bills because we know they are a threat to public safety,” Hudson said.
She said she doesn’t buy the chambers’ argument that expungement is a workforce issue.
Businesses have a right to know about the criminal records of those they are thinking about hiring, Hudson said, and they can make their own decisions about whether to give job applicants a second chance.
“I know many, many business people who hire folks who have records, but they hire them fully knowing what their record is,” she said.
Oh God that is horrible!
Do you think it was the awful type of drugs being used these days or him being insane, or both? I have seen stories about bath salts and meth causing people to act like zombies. They shown it on the news around here not long ago.
In any case, cases should have a review process to help ensure against over-prosecutions, etc. There should be a way to bring it back before a judge to be ‘reviewed’ after a set amount of years and expunged if it IS SO DESERVED. This would help ensure cases aren’t just pushed through the courts for convictions. And it may even help rehabilitate many knowing they could have a better life if they behaved.
And whoever thinks that overworked DAs are just taking tons of random, innocent people to Court has lost their mind and is talking out their.... er.... bottom.
Pro tip, employers: If you meet a convicted felon that will tell you all about his crime and how he did it then that is the only one who is being honest with you. All of the rest are liars trying to make themselves look better than they are.
The prosecutor who went after those college athletes for ‘rape’ had higher aspirations. He had a whole college, town, media, etc. behind him best I remember. Thank God those boys’ families had money, huh? Tuned out they were NOT GUILTY. But the prosecutor sure wanted them to be guilty - along with a lot of others.
The Duke lacrosse case:
“The initial prosecutor, Michael “Mike” Nifong, was labeled a “rogue prosecutor” by Cooper, and withdrew from the case in January 2007 after the North Carolina State Bar filed ethics charges against him. In June 2007, Nifong was disbarred for “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation”,”
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case
We don’t know what drugs he went to prison for,but he was caught dealing drugs in parking lot and was fired..He lived next door to the woman he murdered..After it was all over,we found out he had been given the chance because he was the stepson of one of their best employees.
The prosecutor who went after those college athletes for ‘rape’ had higher aspirations. He had a whole college, town, media, etc. behind him best I remember. Thank God those boys’ families had money, huh? Tuned out they were NOT GUILTY. But the prosecutor sure wanted them to be guilty - along with a lot of others.
Or it simply takes being one the people unfortunate enough to be on the wrong end of a corrupt crime lab. Which seems to be more common than an honest crime lab.
Have we gotten up to a million convictions thrown out due to that factor alone, yet? We can’t be far.
I have walked a couple of these cases through, they need lawyers to have that happen.
And as I discovered when my son applied for a LE job, expunged records are never really gone. The troopers can bring them back up.
Failed in Memphis.
My son waits on drug test and background, won’t hire if either come back bad, since it’s CC and cash business he can’t afford to hire petty thieves, you can’t reform them no more than you can the drug addict, a Meth user’s application goes straight to trash bin.
The point is the families had the money to be able to fight to clear their names. A LOT of people are not so lucky to have the money (or knowledge) to fight in court.
Sicko. I believe people have gotten far worse in the past decade or two. Maybe because society has put such a small value on life now. There is such a demand being fought on legalized euthanasia and abortion. Not to mention all the calls for murdering Trump supporters too. Even on talk shows and the streets unsafe for someone just wearing a Trump hat or wearing American Flag apparel.
It is no wonder people like that employee aren’t kept in some type of institution when so many in the general society being stark raving mad.
Isn’t that the reason the Law has specific differences between Misdemeanors and Felonies?
Might as well make everything a Misdemeanor and poof, problem solved.
Meanwhile, Law Abiding Citizens can become Overnight Felons every time a new Law is passed. In CA it is a daily event.
Scary thing is you don’t know what the supervisors know...The woman he killed was next door neighbor..He had moved in with a female employee ,who also didn’t know his temper until too late..He had moved from nights to days..We didn’t know it was because he was harassing the women..We found out after he began harassing women during the day,and they still didnt fire him...Only after they caught him selling drugs on their lot,did they fire him....Only after,it was bad for them,did they fire him...
Sounds like because he was related/had connections to someone working there is the only reason he was kept around. Either that or because it is hard to fire people sometimes (lawsuits and all). I have wondered at times how particular strange or ‘power keg’ ones are allowed to keep working. The crazies are everywhere it seems. Have you ever watched the show ‘Snapped’ or those other true crimes shows? Egads!! Enough to make anyone not ever want to date, hire, or go outside.
“The point is the families had the money to be able to fight to clear their names. A LOT of people are not so lucky to have the money (or knowledge) to fight in court.”
Pleading ignorance or lack of funds just an excuse for not trying because the original charge was accurate.
Believe me, my wife was charged with a DUI by an overzealous cop in Atlanta. We got it cleared up because we were in the right - not because we had spare cash or knew anything about law.
No need to get ‘personal’ and offensive. I am just trying to present another viewpoint for consideration.
Luckily, you or someone you knew were knowledgeable about the laws enough to be able to fight the trumped up charge. And I would think a DUI that is recently received is easier to debunk than something someone may have received many years prior are no longer around.
There are a lot of people who believe everyone charged with something is guilty as sin. The old guilty until proven innocent line of thinking. As someone brought up here, I also remember that ‘crime lab’ scandal in the new many years ago. That is just the one that got caught falsifying records for convenience. They were so backlogged with ‘evidence samplings’ they just sent back reports of ‘positive’ to reduce their workload.
I remember the thinking was they believed the person must have been guilty since they were being charged. Now with the DNA being declared ‘positive’, it was sure a pickle for those folks. Another line of concerns are ones who is underage and get in trouble dating another underage person. Or someone streaking. They are now ‘sex offenders’.
Sure there are LOTS of guilty folks and dangerous ones too. I am not arguing that. But I am saying there are lots of people who are get records who either shouldn’t have one or have ‘paid their debt’ to society years ago, even decades ago, and proven themselves long since.
Nothing that I wrote was personal, or offensive. I can’t imagine why you would think that it was.
You are stating that your POV is built upon zero experience in the legal system or as a L/E professional and is wholly subjective and driven by a couple of brief headlines you may have read a couple of years ago. Correct?
Apologies, but I am totally unmoved by any arguments made with that as the foundation for opinion.
Should've thought about that before committing the crime.
Normally I am not a fan of government programs. But this maybe one case where I might go for it.
We certainly could use a lot of labor to rebuild infrastructure in this country, and perhaps we could provide a program for ex-cons to work on these projects to get a chance to rebuild their lives and reputation so they can be hirable down the road.
We could certainly use them to replace all of the illegal alien labor that hopefully Trump will eventually get rid of.
No worries. No burr in my saddle. Just because I don’t disclose everything I know or out talk someone doesn’t mean I am at a disadvantage of truth.
Just want to leave you with one last thought -—
Those in the deep state are ‘respected professionals and experts’ with agendas.
People with less than honorable actions (intentional or not) does people exist. Being a professionals or so-called “Expert’ has nothing to do with being ‘good’, ‘just’, ‘truthful’, or ‘right’.
Some of the biggest crooks are in three piece suits (or pantsuits).
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