Here at WGBH News, we’ve been revisiting old laws that went on the books with a measure of hype, asking whether they’re working out the way they were supposed to. We’re calling the series “Law and Effect.” In our latest installment, amid an ongoing push for criminal justice reform on Beacon Hill, we’re sizing up a 2010 law that reformed the state’s criminal records system. Click on the audio player above to hear the radio version of this story.
It’s a dreary spring morning in Worcester, but at a makeshift office in the gritty Main South neighborhood, the mood is upbeat. Two activists with the group
EPOCA
“All right, so I don’t have to go in front of a court?” the older woman asks.
“Not with that form, nope,” one of the activists replies. “You mail that in, mail it to the address —
Ashburton Place
Afterwards, she doesn’t share her name. But she talks a bit about why she’s cleaning up what’s known as her CORI, which is short for Criminal Offender Record Information.
“I’m retired, and I want to look at some volunteer positions that the CORI might come up, and then they might not let me do things like that,” she explains. “Like in a hospital or something like that.”
For years, advocates have said the criminal justice system makes it too hard for people with a record to find work and resume ordinary life. Seven years ago, then-Governor Deval Patrick signed a bill aimed at changing that.
“What we do with this bill,” Patrick
said at the time
The 2010 CORI reform law barred employers from asking about criminal history on job applications — the so-called “
ban the box
“Your application ended up in the trash can,” Bensahih recalls. “No one got in the door to sell their self; no one got to meet you face to face; no one got to judge who you are, or to talk about evidence of rehabilitation even. So we wanted to be able to present our self, and our best self, not the worst to start off with, you know?”
The law also created a new, online
criminal records system
In addition, the law made it easier to
seal
Actually, though, it might not be quite that simple.
At the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, senior economist Osborne Jackson and his colleagues have been working to
quantify
The bad news, they say? Both those provisions have also reduced employment, for ex-offenders, by a small but statistically significant amount.
While they aren’t sure why, they have a theory.
“After the reform compared to before,” Jackson says, “ex-offenders might spend more time searching for jobs in better industries, jobs with higher wages.”
In other words, by making ex-offenders more optimistic about finding work, the law may also have made them more selective. (Jackson, it’s worth noting, stresses that this explanation is by no means conclusive, and requires more research to be definitively proven.)
I ran that Boston Fed theory by Pauline Quirion, who directs the CORI and re-entry project at
Greater Boston Legal Services
“People just want to work,” Quirion told me. “They want to move on with their lives. If they’ve done time, they don’t want to go back.”
Yet Quirion also concedes that the law isn’t working as well as she and others had hoped. Some employers still ask about applicants’ criminal histories upfront, even though that’s illegal, she says.
And, Quirion argues, the 2010 law’s provisions for the withholding and sealing of criminal records could be relaxed even more.
“Ten years is a long time to wait to get a job,” she says, referring to the amount of time after which most felony records are withheld from most employers and most felonies become sealable.
“After seven years, the likelihood of someone committing a crime who has a criminal record is the same as someone who’s never been involved in the criminal justice system.”
Currently, as Beacon Hill weighs a host of
new criminal-justice reforms
In Worcester, activist Cassandra Bensahih says she’d love to see the 2010 law broadened to provide more opportunities for ex-offenders more quickly. But she also says that whether or not such an expansion actually occurs, she considers the 2010 law a breakthrough.
“Any progress in the criminal justice system being improved is a victory,” says Bensahih. “We fought six years to change this law. If 10 people are better because of that law being passed, then that’s a success.”