Making start on CORI

Making start on CORI
By Adrian Walker
Globe Columnist / July 8, 2008
Source

The idea of making it easier for convicts to get jobs has always been a tough sell at the State House.

But even though the Legislature appears almost militantly opposed to passing bills this session, there is a good chance that some changes are in store for the much-maligned Criminal Offender Record Information law, better known as CORI.

Reform would be too strong a description, especially for legislation that has literally been years in coming. The finished product will shorten the period before records are sealed and may make it easier for those who are arrested, but not convicted, to have their record cleared.

People hoping for more are frustrated by what it will not include. Advocates were especially hopeful that employers could be banned from asking applicants right off the bat whether they had ever been convicted of crimes. Employers would have been able to ask about criminal history later in the process.

Most of all, they worry that if a watered-down bill is passed this session, the Legislature will not revisit the issue for years. "It is a major concern, because we know that CORI has not been touched in any significant way in decades," said Aaron Tanaka of the Boston Workers Alliance, which has taken a leading role in lobbying for the bill.

There isn't much dispute in the Legislature that CORI needs fixing, but there is vast disagreement over what is wrong with the law and how to repair it. Before Governor Deval Patrick essentially seized control of the issue, there were more than two dozen bills on file purporting to address it. Some would ease access to records, some would limit it. While the warring bills have been eliminated, the factions that produced them remain vital.

Representative Eugene O'Flaherty, the House chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told me he worries that a flurry of competing and contradictory amendments could still sink efforts to change the law. He said he hopes to persuade his colleagues to stick as closely as possible to the legislation as written.

I realize many people view CORI as a remote issue. But the reality is that almost everyone convicted of a crime will eventually reenter the work force or will try to. There is strong argument for making that path easier than it is now.

One of the great complications in reforming CORI, as O'Flaherty points out, is that different kinds of employers have different needs. Obviously, employers in areas affecting public safety, for example, need to know the background of the people they are hiring, and they may as well know right up front. Some would argue that in other areas, a long-ago conviction for a relatively minor infraction is less crucial. But crafting a bill that takes every possibility into account is impossible. Flaherty says he hopes to persuade legislators to buy into this bill as a first step, which can be refined down the road.

CORI is interesting because it mirrors our whole conflicted view of how to deal with people who commit crime. We struggle with whether we really believe in rehabilitation, whether we want convicts living down the street, whether we want them as co-workers, whether a debt to society is ever really paid.

The bill O'Flaherty is proposing will include several provisions unrelated to CORI, including one that would ease penalties for first-time drug offenders arrested in school zones.
"My whole district is a school zone," notes O'Flaherty, whose district includes Chelsea and Charlestown. "I don't think someone arrested at 3 a.m. should necessarily go to prison because they are arrested within 1,000 feet of a school." Yes, O'Flaherty is a defense lawyer, as many will no doubt point out.

This bill doesn't solve every problem with criminal records, but some action is preferable to the lip service this issue has received to date. Helping criminal offenders restart their lives is no simple task. One hopes that the governor and the Legislature are sincere when they suggest that this bill is just a start, rather than the last word, on how we plan to treat people with prison in their past.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.