We’re a big state with big challenges. Each morning we explain the top issues and how Californians are trying to solve them.Celina Chapin, associate director of policy and activism at the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, answers questions from people attending a clinic on how to clear their criminal records at the New Beginnings Fellowship in South Sacramento on March 9, 2024.
The final step Nick wants to take is to clear his record, the 37-year-old said on a recent Saturday morning, standing in line inside a south Sacramento church with nearly 200 fellow Californians with felony convictions. California has allowed expungements of misdemeanors and some lower-level felonies, but not crimes that would be serious enough to send the offender to prison. , which went into effect in mid-2023, Californians with most kinds of felony convictions, including violent crimes, can ask for their records to be cleared. Sex offenses are the primary exception. To be eligible, applicants must have fully served their sentences, including probation, and gone two years without being re-arrested.
“They served their time, and they’ve done their own internal work and diligence to come out the other side,” Elizabeth Tüzer, the coalition’s expungement legal project manager, said of her clients. “It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a job, or be able to survive or have housing.” Lisa Duffy scans fingerprints at an expungement clinic at the New Beginnings Fellowship in South Sacramento on March 9, 2024. Photo by José Luis Villegas for CalMattersThe records will still be kept by the state justice department, which will share them with other government agencies, police and prosecutors if an ex-offender is arrested again, or with the state Department of Education if the ex-offender applies for a school job.
Alexis Pacheco at her home in downtown San Francisco, on March 13, 2024. Photo by Laure Andrillon for CalMatters California began automatically sealing old misdemeanors in 2022, in response to a prior law. In the first six months, state records show the Department of Justice directed county courts to shield 11 million cases from public view, helping six million defendants. The agency called it the “the largest record relief carried out over such a short time period in U.S. history.”
Prosecutors and police associations have been vocally opposed, saying in 2022 that it would pose public safety risks.
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