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July 28, 2005

Yawu Miller

Like most local black elected officials state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson receives calls and visits from constituents complaining about their inability to secure jobs because of criminal records.

At a State House hearing earlier this month she and other legislators gained a full understanding of the scope of the problem.

In and around Gardner Auditorium were more than 1,000 people from across the state — black, Latino and white.

“It’s turned into a situation where it’s not just an issue concerning blacks and Puerto Ricans,” Wilkerson said. “It used to be an issue people perceived as one for black folks. There was very little sympathy. People said, ‘you should have known better. You do something bad, you pay the consequences.’”

The Criminal Offender Record Information law was created to allow law enforcement the ability to easily track criminal records. Now, however, employers as well as housing authorities and other government agencies have access to the records.

For most Massachusetts residents with criminal records, the consequences mean a lack of access to jobs, college loans and subsidized housing, often regardless of whether they were convicted of the crimes for which they were charged.

“If Jesus Christ wanted a job in Massachusetts, he couldn’t get one,” said Union of Minority Neighborhoods Executive Director Horace Small. “You get a criminal record — you pay for it for a lifetime. It’s an amazing thing.”

While few would argue that employers should not know whether job applicants have committed violent crimes or thefts, many lawmakers in Massachusetts and across the country are now questioning whether non-violent offenses should preclude people from securing gainful employment indefinitely, as is now the case.

As the legislature prepares to break for summer recess, Wilkerson and state reps. Gloria Fox and Byron Rushing are pressing for reforms to the law. There are currently 50 bills before the House and Senate judiciary committees proposing various reforms to the law.

There are several categories of bills aimed at changing CORI including those that would suppress records of arrests that do not end in convictions, those that would seal records of non-violent offenses after a certain amount of time and those aimed at sealing the records of juvenile offenders.

“We’re trying to get CORI laws to reflect what recidivism studies show: that most recidivism is in the first two and a half years,” said Rushing, who has filed a legislation that would automatically suppress records after five years.

State Rep. Gloria Fox is advancing legislation that would help clear the records of juvenile offenders. Fox, who has been working on the issue since the late ’90s, said the MBTA police practices of arresting teenagers for offenses as minor as trespassing left scores of minors with permanent records.

“It was clear that there should be language that deals with the harmful impact of theses arrests,” she said. “Massachusetts has some of the harshest CORI policies in the country. There are hundreds of thousands of good people caught up in the system because of misdemeanors.”

Perhaps more than any other factor, the inability of people with CORI records to secure even menial jobs has driven the efforts to reform the law.

As drugs like heroin and Oxycontin are gaining popularity across the city and state, white elected officials are now beginning to receive calls from job-seeking constituents.

Mayor Thomas Menino and city councilors Michael Flaherty and Stephen Murphy are supporters of CORI reform. Also joining the reform bandwagon are Boston’s Private Industry Council and the Boston Foundation, which held a CORI reform forum earlier this year.

“Half the issues we have on our streets are happening because young men and women don’t have opportunities,” said Menino. “We have an obligation to give people a second chance. We’re pre-judging people.”

Small has helped organize committees lead by people with CORI records in Boston, Cambridge, Worcester, Lawrence, Fall River, Brockton, New Bedford and western Massachusetts.

“It’s a movement that’s building,” he said. “There are hundreds of people involved.”

Criminal offenders are not the only ones who are blocked from access to jobs. Wilkerson says people who have names matching those of people charged with crimes can also be mistakenly caught up in the system. And when people try to straighten out their records, they face an up-hill battle.

“There’s no process, no support, no assistance,” Wilkerson said. “It can take the most aggressive, knowledgeable individual ten years to get that cleared.”

Two years ago Wilkerson filed legislation in the Senate that would require the Criminal History Systems Board to put in place a process that would allow people with CORI records to correct mistakes. The board never acted on the law and this year, Governor Mitt Romney vetoed it.

“They still don’t have a plan to assist people who have wrong information,” Wilkerson commented.

The senator also filed legislation this year that would limit CORI records available to employers to actual convictions and pending cases.

“There are clearly some crimes people commit that should preclude them from certain jobs,” she said. “But it’s not good policy to decide that a criminal conviction for check kiting should bar you from getting meaningful employment for the rest of your life. People have to realize that this is not good policy. This is not working.”

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