Smart push for rehabilitation

January 29, 2008

MOST discussions of crime policy center on how to punish those who break the law. Just as crucial to public safety, though, is how Massachusetts government agencies and the private sector deal with offenders who finish up their sentences. As Governor Patrick noted in his State of the State speech last week, 97 percent of inmates end up back in society. Over the years, though, the state's Criminal Offender Record Information system, a valuable tool for law enforcement, has been used in ways that deprive offenders of the chance to establish themselves in legitimate jobs.

Earlier this month, the Patrick administration announced a package of reforms that would tune the system up, without putting the public at peril. Patrick's team deserves credit for taking a nuanced approach.

Politically, the safest course is to do nothing; there is no broad public outcry, after all, on behalf of ex-convicts. But problems with the criminal records system, better known as CORI, are legion. The data are hard to read and sometimes inaccurate. Regulations of the Executive Office of Health and Human Services restrict or forbid the hiring of offenders by the department or its many contractors - effectively shutting ex-cons out of a major sector of the Massachusetts economy. Surely there is a way to open up opportunities for ex-offenders while still keeping ex-drug-dealers out of hospital pharmacies.

Toward that end, the governor has issued an executive order that calls for delaying a criminal background check by state agencies until after an applicant is deemed qualified for a position, and for basing decisions on whether an ex-convict's offense is relevant to a given job. The order will force a revision of health and human services rules under which people convicted of a broad variety of offenses - most serious, but some less so - are effectively disqualified for life from working in the health care sector. The order also calls for better education of employers who use CORI.

State lawmakers should be receptive to the parts of Patrick's CORI plan that need legislative action. Under legislation proposed by the governor, the board that oversees the criminal records system would be expanded to include appointees with experience in workforce development and the rehabilitation of former convicts.

Most of Patrick's plans track the recommendations of a task force convened in 2006 by the Boston Foundation. But the governor steps out ahead of the task force in one potentially controversial way: His legislation would allow most offenders to have their records sealed sooner - after 10 years instead of 15 for felonies, and five years instead of 10 for misdemeanors.

This proposal is entirely reasonable. It acknowledges that, while ex-inmates are likely to reoffend in the early years after their release, those who've stayed clean for five or more years are unlikely to get into trouble again. To get their records sealed, ex-cons would have to stay out of trouble. Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies would be given clearer access to sealed records than they have now, and sex offenders would not have the option of sealing their records at all.
Patrick's proposals are only the beginning of a slow process of encouraging employers to use criminal-records data in a more sophisticated way. But they are likely, in the long run, to make CORI data more reliable and easy to use - and to give ex-cons who want to reenter society a greater chance to do so.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/01/29/smart_push_for_rehabilitation/