Here is the link for what will likely become the Kentucky Class D Felony Expungement bill. Here is great coverage from CN2. It still has to be passed, but as it was authored by the Senate President, and our Governor has already voiced his support, it looks like we will, at the very least, get this bill. I appreciate the foresight of Senator Stivers and Governor Bevin to push for this, but I have a few thoughts.

Here are my initial reactions:

1. Ten years after completion of the sentence is just TOO long. There is no empirical reason to pick ten years.  The only basis for this number is the number of fingers on two hands. The reality is that most Class D felons will wait a year to be sentenced after being convicted, and then serve a lengthy probation or parole. While better than nothing, this bill restricts relief to people who have long since aged out of their prime wage earning years. If we want people who make a mistake when they are young to be contributing members of our economy, the right path isn’t to wait until they are 35 to allow for expungement. Forcing people out of the mainstream economy for 15 years just continues to create new felonies.
2. A $500 application fee is steep. While I understand the budget shortfall, the amount of tax revenues that can be generated from getting former felons to higher paying jobs surely must outweigh the short term gains of the few lucky people able to save the high fee.
3. Class D Trafficking SHOULD be expungeable. The felon-creation-industrial-complex started as a reaction to the war on drugs. The vast majority of people who will benefit from this bill were addicted to drugs. To deny petty traffickers the possibility of expungement seems to miss the point. I know that this bill is politically unpopular. Be HARD on high-level traffickers. The dime-bag -selling addicts who cleaned their habits a decade ago deserve a second chance.

I’ll be back tomorrow to offer the plain-language list of offenses that are expungeable under this bill. I do want to say that I sincerely appreciate that Senator Stivers authored this bill. It’s not perfect, and hopefully, after debate, we will get something better. I know he is walking a tight-rope with his constituents and I do appreciate him putting his neck out on this.

More tomorrow friends.

It looks like we may be getting some movement in the near future on expungement, and I am told that the final bill has not been as weakened as we all may have worried. While this article  predicted that we would hear something last week, I suspect that next week may be more likely. If you have ANY time, please contact Senate President Stivers, who will likely be authoring the new law. His contact information is here. I know that as a resident of Manchester, Senator Stivers has seen firsthand the damage that felony-first prosecution has had on our communities. He has seen the pain that drug addiction has caused and the further pain that a felony conviction causes when it disqualifies good people from good jobs.

Please, if you have any interest in this passing, reach out to him this weekend. Class D expungement in Kentucky is about more than getting back to work. It is about restoring gun rights, restoring voting rights, and restoring jury duty. For decades we have case people who have made a minor mistake aside. Now we have the opportunity to fix that. I hope our Senate gets it right the first time, because there may not be a second one.

 

There is no clever or funny or any other way around the sad, sober-reality:

1. There are 243,842 disenfranchised felons in Kentucky. 180,984 have already served their sentences out.
2. There are 56,920 disenfranchised felon African Americans in Kentucky. 42,552 of them have served their sentence out.
3. 3,315,996 is total estimated KY Population in the 2010 census.
4. 254,797 is total estimated 2010 African American KY population.
5. 7% of Kentuckians are ex-felons, are currently serving time, or are on probation or parole
6. 22% of African-American Kentuckians are ex-felons, are currently serving time, or are on probation or parole.
7. If we subtract the number of African Americans who are convicted felons from the total number of convicted felons, and divide by the total population of non-African American Kentuckians, we find that 5.7% of non-African Americans have been convicted of felonies in Kentucky.
8. Therefore, if we consider only race, an African American Kentuckian (22%) is four times as likely to be convicted of a felony as a non-African American Kentuckian (5.7%).

All of these numbers are based on a study by the Sentencing Project.  While we can debate the cause of these disparities, a 400% increase in likelihood of felony conviction is very difficult to innocently explain away. The fact that African Americans are overwhelmingly, disproportionately the target of felony convictions in Kentucky is just another reason to pass Class-D expungement.

I know that many of you out there have been refreshing the blog recently, waiting for a new post. The reality is that we are still waiting for movement in the Senate judiciary committee. Anyone interested in helping make felony expungement happen in Kentucky, I would urge you to look up your Senator here. Contact them ASAP and let them know that you support HB40, and think that it is superior to SB77. Our governor has said that he will sign HB40. Now is the time to really push this issue. Whether you live in Louisville or Lexington, Covington or Catlettsburg, Paducah or Pikeville, lets reach out and make as much noise as we can to get this moved to the floor for a vote.

Tomorrow, I am going to write a post outlining the racial disparity involved in felony convictions in Kentucky. Many have seen this as primarily an issue of economic importance going forward. I see it as a way to reverse some of the negative impacts of racism and the new-Jim-Crow in my lifetime.

I’ll see you all tomorrow.

 

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog talking about the mechanics of expungement in Kentucky, and how it might end up working, but I don’t think I’ve addressed some of the fundamental reasons that expungement is so important right now. While convicted felons and their loved ones are well aware of the crippling effect that a felony record can have on a persons job prospect, many people still don’t understand.

“Go get a job at McDonald’s,” some would reply. But McDonald’s isn’t necessarily taking felons. Especially not in the tough labor market we have been in since the financial crisis. And higher paying jobs are almost certainly out of the question. According to a 2013 article in the Nation, former felons are banned from more than 800 occupations because of laws and licensing rules. Ninety-two percent of employers now run background checks. Because of the potential for being sued for negligent hiring, many business owners who would otherwise be willing to take a chance on hiring a felon chose not to, due to the risk of a law suit.

And the effect of these policies have a staggeringly racial disproportionate effect in minority communities. While only one in thirteen Americans has a felony record, the Department of Justice has projected that a third of black men and one fifth of Latino men born in 2001 will go to prison at some point in their life. Destroying the ability of someone to get a job because of a mistake they made when they were young, and doing so in a staggeringly racially disproportionate amount is a recipe for disaster.

We can do better. And a good start is erasing those mistakes, from those records, where people have shown that they can change. By bringing former felons back into the workforce, we can lower recidivism, and take baby steps toward correcting just one of the many racial injustices in our society.