Clean Slate - Data Team

Expungement with Citizens for Juvenile Justice, Code for Boston, and legal aid services.

Expungement: "Having a criminal record expunged means that the record will be permanently destroyed so that it's no longer accessible by the court or any other state, municipal, or county agencies." - https://www.mass.gov/expunge-your-criminal-record

Note: Expungement is different than sealing

What’s Wrong

If you've ever been arraigned for a crime -- even if you were not found guilty or it turns out someone made a mistake -- you’ll have a criminal record. Anyone that does a background check, like an employer, sees that you have a criminal record.

Even something false or small can stop you from getting honest work, housing, education, and other opportunities.

Massachusetts expungement laws were created in October of 2018. It is difficult to determine who may be eligible to have their record expunged, and therefore what the impact this law (or future changes to it) may be.

Citizens For Juvenile Justice is working with Code for Boston (a civic tech volunteer organization) and legal aid services in the Boston area to tackle this problem on a project called Clean Slate.

This is the 'data analysis' part of the Clean Slate team. We are working to understand how many people are (likely) currently eligible to have their records expunged, and how many may be eligible if the law is changed in variuos ways.

We also have a team working on an app to help individuals understand whether their records are eligible: Clean Slate.

Who We Need

We need members of the community, data analysts, legal professionals, project managers, and people passionate about criminal justice reform to help us understand what’s wrong with what we have and to try to make it better.

Get Involved

• Join the Code for Boston slack and talk to us on the #clean-slate channel.
• Contact us by filling out our interest form.
• Look at what we’ve done so far - we’re collecting what we learn in shared folders and some separate repositories.
  • Start with this repo's wiki, which gives an overview of our work on the policy impact data analysis efforts
  • Our shared folders.
  • From our app team, an online juvenile sealing app that's currently under development.

Our Goals

1. Determine how many people are now or may soon be (likely) eligible for expungement.
2. Show what parts of the law are stopping most people from expunging their records.
3. Digitally organize to advocate for changes to the law.

More Resources

Huge document about both expungement and sealing (See item #14) created by Greater Boston Legal Services.