Expungement
Expungement
1. Preliminary Discussion
a. Why do we have laws?
i. Because we need certain rules to help us live in society. I want you all to think of laws as huge contracts that everyone is bound to just because they live in a certain area, a city, state, or country.
These contracts emerged from necessity. For example, lets say we’re in ancient cave man times, living in constant fear of predators and other cave men. You and I understand there is strength in numbers. We agree to watch each other’s back, by taking turns keeping watch so the other can sleep. The agreement has to include a clause where we both take responsibility for not killing the other. That's our contract. Anyone else around us, if they aren’t party to our contract, will try to kill us, because they want our stuff (our wheels or our clubs), because they're not part on our agreement, because we would do the same to them. Eventually, all the cave men realize it is in their best interest to also join our agreement, because if they don’t always have to worry about being robbing or killed, they’ll have more time to hunt wooly mammoths and draw on cave walls
b. How do we decide on what laws we want?
i. It is in this way that laws come from necessity. But they are contracts, and collectively, we have to agree to them. ii. We do that by voting on legislators, that write and vote on laws.
c. But what about…
2. Policy
a. Expunging criminal records involves a trade-off between competing interests. An individual would like to pursue employment, housing, or other major life activities without the stigma of an arrest or conviction record. On the other hand, society has an interest in maintaining criminal histories for purposes of future crime investigations and in order to make hiring, rental, and other decisions about
1. Preliminary Discussion
a. Why do we have laws?
i. Because we need certain rules to help us live in society. I want you all to think of laws as huge contracts that everyone is bound to just because they live in a certain area, a city, state, or country.
These contracts emerged from necessity. For example, lets say we’re in ancient cave man times, living in constant fear of predators and other cave men. You and I understand there is strength in numbers. We agree to watch each other’s back, by taking turns keeping watch so the other can sleep. The agreement has to include a clause where we both take responsibility for not killing the other. That's our contract. Anyone else around us, if they aren’t party to our contract, will try to kill us, because they want our stuff (our wheels or our clubs), because they're not part on our agreement, because we would do the same to them. Eventually, all the cave men realize it is in their best interest to also join our agreement, because if they don’t always have to worry about being robbing or killed, they’ll have more time to hunt wooly mammoths and draw on cave walls
b. How do we decide on what laws we want?
i. It is in this way that laws come from necessity. But they are contracts, and collectively, we have to agree to them. ii. We do that by voting on legislators, that write and vote on laws.
c. But what about…
2. Policy
a. Expunging criminal records involves a trade-off between competing interests. An individual would like to pursue employment, housing, or other major life activities without the stigma of an arrest or conviction record. On the other hand, society has an interest in maintaining criminal histories for purposes of future crime investigations and in order to make hiring, rental, and other decisions about