The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has taken the lead in enforcing the Landmark Clean Slate Act, a rule known in Spanish as the “Ley de borrón y cuenta nueva,” prevents extra-judicial damages to persons who have been involved in cases against the law, but who were absolved.
Attorney Larry Krasner, announced today that his office is implementing a new policy to provide “confidentiality” under the figure of “automatic sealing” of criminal records.
Pennsylvania’s historic anti-poverty legislation, also known as the “Clean Slate Act,” was passed by the Senate in 2018 and is the first of its kind in the country to require the automatic and retroactive sealing of two types of records:
- A conviction for non-violent misdemeanors after the defendant has been free from conviction for ten years.
- The non-conviction records of a defendant.
Krasner, explained that “Being denied employment, education, or housing opportunities because of a criminal record that did not result in a conviction is the state inflicting extrajudicial punishment on tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians who didn’t even commit a crime.”
According to his view, the “Clean Slate Act” is an extraordinary and long overdue correction of decades of injustice in Pennsylvania. “I am grateful to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and to all of our partners in the legal community who have made Pennsylvania a leader on clean slate policy”.
Limitations activated
Broadly speaking, the Landmark Clean Slate Act, which as a new policy is in use by the district office, will strictly limit the use of sealed information by the office.
According to a news release from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, when a defendant has a sealed criminal record and the assigned Assistant District Attorney (ADA) is calculating his or her previous record score, the ADA will review the sealed materials and use its discretion to lower the sentencing recommendation or offer to ensure that the defendant’s sealed past is not unduly taken into consideration, in accordance with the spirit of the Clean Slate Act.
Jordan Harris, Democrat and 2018 bill, Pennsylvania State Representative, pointed out that the “clean slate” self-sealing portion represents the culmination of a tremendous “amount of hard work and collaboration between Representative Sheryl Delozier, me, and countless other legislators and advocates who are looking to help those who have paid their debt to society truly get their second chance.”
“This first-of-its-kind legislation put Pennsylvania on the map as a national leader in positive criminal justice reform and shows that we’re serious about the benefits criminal justice reform has for all taxpayers,” the legislator said.
The law and policy of the District Attorney’s Office (DAO) are retroactive, so old “no convictions” and misdemeanors will be sealed in addition to the more recent ones. The Act was sponsored by PA State Representative Sheryl Delozier (R-Lower Allen Township) and PA State Representative Jordan Harris (D-Philadelphia) and signed by PA Governor Tom Wolf in June.
For Sharon Dietrich, Litigation Director of Community Legal Services of Philadelphia (CLS), “Clean Slate is a revolutionary law that will help people move forward. We applaud the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office for taking this important step to recognize that criminal records should not trap people in poverty for life,” she said.
Translated by: José Espinoza
Noticias Newswire
