The Inside Story: Expunging Police Reports

[David]

I thought this might be interesting to some.

We have a policy ( http://so.md/expungeme ) whereby we will redact people's names from police reports if they demonstrate that they were either found innocent, or the charges were dropped (not the same as innocent). The idea is that we do not want to punish people by keeping the arrest report online when they didn't do the crime, or the Man wasn't able to prove they did the crime.

Over time we expanded this to include, at our discretion, cases for which the court ordered an expungement of the records of the case. The court told me that the requirement for an expungement was that the accused must have had a "favorable outcome" in the case. Of course, a favorable outcome might just mean they had a really good lawyer and got off for a crime they really did commit. Please note that no news agency is required to honor a court order of expungement as the arrest information was released into the public domain and that can not be rescinded, especially from the 4th estate.

Anyway, I just cleared out a batch of expungement requests. Some of these requests are very good reflection of the state of our society, IMO.

-- One young woman was charged with 4th degree burglary. She had a favorable outcome and the case was ordered expunged by the court. She noted that it was important for her to get it off the public records because she wanted to pursue a career in "law enforcement."

-- One guy wanted to have his case for assault expunged from the news because the charges were dropped. Further investigation revealed that the charges were dropped because the victim, his wife, exercised her legal right not to testify against her husband and thus the prosecution was unable to prove its case.

-- One young man had 2 stories about him in the news. In the first, he was pulled over and he and his passenger were both charged with possession of marijuana and paraphernalia. He sent me a copy of the judicial database showing that the charges were dropped. Unfortunately, this was for an arrest a month earlier. When I found the right case, he had been found guilty of the marijuana and received 60 days suspended with Parole Before Judgement. The paraphernalia charge was dropped. Nice try.

In the second case, he was pulled over because police were looking for suspects in an attempted, armed home invasion. Turns out his juvenile passenger was the gun toter and had tossed the gun on the road a bit earlier. Our driver had a suspended license and a warrant for missing his court date for a theft case in another county. He said, that because the charges were dropped in that theft case for which he was wanted, the whole news story about him should be expunged. Nice.

-- Our last guy had an arrest for marijuana possession. The court went easy on him and dropped the charges in exchange for 2 days of community service. Unfortunately, that does not qualify as innocent, or not guilty.

[rant]As a side note, pot smokers, please keep it at home. Driving around with pot in your car is just going to lead to trouble and cause the rest of us more money in taxes to run you through the judicial system. Police are on the roads all day. After a few years on the job, they can spot a pot smoker or drunk miles away. Plus, if you're toking while cruising, you're DUI and a menace to the rest of us.[/rant]

Anyway, what is your opinion about arrests being a matter of public record? Aren't people supposed to be innocent until proven guilty? If so, why should they have their names dragged through the mud before the state proves its case? Should the US change its laws to protect the names of people until they are proven guilty. Does somd.com have a responsible policy for expunging people's names from arrest reports? Should all arrest reports be automatically deleted after xx number of years? Chime in...

 

[Tilted]

...

Anyway, what is your opinion about arrests being a matter of public record? Aren't people supposed to be innocent until proven guilty? If so, why should they have their names dragged through the mud before the state proves its case? Should the US change its laws to protect the names of people until they are proven guilty. Does somd.com have a responsible policy for expunging people's names from arrest reports? Should all arrest reports be automatically deleted after xx number of years? Chime in...

Speaking very generally: As a society we don't take the concept of innocent until proven guilty all that seriously. We pay it plenty of lip service, but we don't back up our supposed embracement of that ideal with consistent and meaningful action (or restraint). And I mean that in many different ways; it's manifested in societal tendencies and in actual government policy. The failure to take it seriously is reflected in how we expect our judicial system to work and in how we allow our law enforcement and prosecutorial apparatuses to function. Given what we seem to care most about - what we choose, in practice as opposed to rhetorically, to prioritize - we should be honest with ourselves and abandon the collective pretense of having real reverence for the notion of innocent until proven guilty.

That said, I generally think that law enforcement activities should - at least after the fact - be public record. And that, for the most part, includes arrest records. We should get to know what our government is doing. If it misbehaves in arresting someone, and they suffer harm as a result, the system should be willing to hold itself - and even particular actors - accountable. We should be more willing to hold our government, and particular government actors, accountable. That doesn't mean that someone (or the government generally) should be made to pay anytime that someone is arrested and not convicted of something. That, of course, in itself doesn't mean that the government has behaved badly. But the government does sometimes behave badly in arresting people, and we set the bar too high in my estimation when it comes to what we consider improper enough to justify someone in government, or government in general, paying a price for their actions - for their improper use of sovereign power. We should have a higher bar for what's acceptable justification to arrest someone. That's an extraordinary use of power over someone. And we tend to act like it's not that big a deal when we assess whether that power was appropriately exercised. I guess a lot people think - well, that wouldn't happen to me because I'm a good guy and that only happens to bad guys - so it's okay with us that the power gets used as <not sure what the right adverb is> as it does.

The government should be required to make people whole - whatever we might reasonably determine that meant - when it uses that awesome power on someone and isn't then able to get a conviction against them (or otherwise determines that they were improperly arrested, that the government was wrong about their culpability; and, no, the government should not be arresting people because it thinks they might have done something illegal and it needs time to figure out if maybe they did, it should be arresting people because it has very good reason to believe they did do something illegal or to prevent them from doing something illegal because they've given sufficient indication that they were going to).

As for your own policies, they seem reasonable to me. You can't control how the whole system works, you can only put in place policies that seem reasonable and are conscientious in light of how the whole system works. Lastly, no, arrest reports shouldn't be automatically deleted after a certain amount of time. They should perhaps be updated to indicate that the arrestee was not convicted of or even charged with anything (if that turns out to be the case). And as a society we should then take their arrest (and lack of further action) as not telling us anything definitive about their specific culpability or general character. We can of course use all kinds of indicators to inform our opinion of them. But the government should not be in the business of branding people or considering them as bad or more suspect or whatever because they've been arrested, and it should be clear in that its own actions - absent convictions - don't necessarily tell us much about those it arrested. An official, on behalf of society we (and the individual actors involved) are sorry, whenever someone is arrested and then not charged or convicted would be a good start.

 

[Goldenhawk]

There's a difference between judicially "not guilty" and socially "not guilty". "Innocent until proven guilty" is a legal standard. Once something has been reported upon, the info and the impression is out there, and there's no way to get it back.

You can crush a court case but never survive it socially. Witness the case of AJ Simpson. Whether or not he did it (I don't really care to argue), he's permanently "guilty" in the eyes of society. Same with Bill Cosby. I'm sure there are some white guys in the same boat - I don't mean to be racist by using two black guys as examples.

Is it wise to publicize arrests? Hard to say.

I'd offer this thought: in my view, there's a big difference between reporting on these kinds of straightforward arrests and reporting on unproven, "he said she said" cases like allegations of sexual abuse that are very hard to prove. Take great care in reporting those, because allegations can destroy a life and there's little value in promoting such cases before they're heard by a court.

 

[FED_UP]

I was trying to hire a dude for a cleaning company, a report came back of his minor infractions from years ago in MD. He had to pay 5 bucks to have each one removed from his public record. Of course really bad stuff will not be removed from what I have read before.

 

[wubbles]

I think being able to expunge records is very important, especially for young people. We've all made mistakes, some against the law. I know of at least one person that made a very big mistake as a minor, impressed the judge with the actions they took to correct their behavior and had their record expunged. 10 years later this person is an extremely productive member of society.

I realize this isn't exactly what the topic is about, but I find a lot of people that think we should hang criminals out to dry. Had social media been a big thing when this person made their mistake they probably would have had their life ruined before they even got their day in court. I dislike how we even publish names before convictions but it is going to take a lot to turn that around.

Many people won't make these course corrections, seemingly even fewer in our neck of the woods, but I want to give them at least a shot. Repeat offenders? My empathy starts to run out.

 

[PrchJrkr]

I think being able to expunge records is very important, especially for young people. We've all made mistakes, some against the law. I know of at least one person that made a very big mistake as a minor, impressed the judge with the actions they took to correct their behavior and had their record expunged. 10 years later this person is an extremely productive member of society.

And today he is one hell of a States Attorney!

 

[vince77]

Arrest records are public records and should be. The public has a right to know. If someone in the neighborhood had been arrested for 3 counts of burglary, I want to know.

 

[jrt_ms1995]

Arrest records are public records and should be. The public has a right to know. If someone in the neighborhood had been arrested for 3 counts of burglary, I want to know.

And if they were arrested, but weren't the one who did it, do you want to know that, too? Do/would most of us look beyond the "X was arrested for ..." to find the outcome? :shrug:

 

[migtig]

I have always had more of a problem with the name of victims being released and minors who may or may not have been suspected of a crime, but that's my old school journalism kicking in.

I think your company policy is fair and generous. Especially when you consider that social media is so easily searchable and ramifications of "suspected" activities can make an unfavorable impression.

I realize we humans are all guilty of presuming guilt.

 

[vince77]

And if they were arrested, but weren't the one who did it, do you want to know that, too? Do/would most of us look beyond the "X was arrested for ..." to find the outcome? :shrug:

sure, that's a public record too.

 

[Hodr]

I have always had more of a problem with the name of victims being released and minors who may or may not have been suspected of a crime, but that's my old school journalism kicking in.

I think your company policy is fair and generous. Especially when you consider that social media is so easily searchable and ramifications of "suspected" activities can make an unfavorable impression.

I realize we humans are all guilty of presuming guilt.

I don't think the story should be retracted, or even that the names should be removed, but I feel that if there was a "favorable outcome" (or otherwise) and that person contacts you, you should update the story. As in just a blurb at the top or bottom that say's "so-and-so was found not guilty" or "charges were dropped by the DA for lack of cooperation by a key witness". More information doesn't hurt, but might help the person if they were actually innocent and the story of their arrest is causing them trouble.

 

[bilbur]

I am all for being able to expunge a record for minor infractions such as underage drinking or possession of marijuana. As for more serious offenses such as theft, assault, or sexual infractions, that is a different story. Also, all expunged charges should be able to be accessed by judges and law enforcement. I am sure there are people that would continually get charges expunged only to still commit crimes and get lesser sentences. I am all about rehabilitation, every crook and criminal that is rehabilitated is someone that is not costing tax dollars or still terrorizing the community. On the other hand I am more for protecting the people in the community from known menaces. If a company is hiring a cashier they have every right to know that Jimmy stole $10000 from his last employer no matter how many good deeds he did since the crime. Most of these people committing these crimes are not making mistakes, they are making conscious choices to perform an illegal activity. Most of their remorse is for themselves for getting caught and not for the victims of their crimes. I find it real hard to have any pity or remorse for their situation since they dug their own hole and now can't get out of it. I reserve my pity for the person that has done the right thing their whole (or at least most of their) life and they get laid off, their house burns down, they get into financial trouble due to a medical issue, etc. I have no problem pitching in to help that person out.