Needed: a real second chance

One of the biggest victories in the last WV legislative session has the passage of Senate Bill 152, which allows for the expungement of some misdemeanor and felony convictions. Recently, the New York Times reported on a Michigan study of what that can mean to people.

Here's the good news:

"...people who get expungements tend to do very well. We found that within a year, on average, their wages go up by more than 20 percent, after controlling for their employment history and changes in the Michigan economy. This gain is mostly driven by unemployed people finding work and minimally employed people finding steadier positions."

and:

"...contrary to the fears of critics, people with expunged records break the law again at very low rates. Indeed, we found that their crime rates are considerably lower than those of Michigan’s general adult population. That may be in part because expungement reduces recidivism."

The bad news was that only small percentage of eligible people actually got the expungements, as in around 2,500 out of possibly hundreds of thousands. Also, they took a long time to get. Only 6.5 percent got them within five years of becoming eligible.

We've had experiences like that here, where legislative or policy victories don't reach as many people as we'd like. The takeaway is that the process needs to be as simple as possible and that people need to know they are eligible.

That may be where the real work begins.