Sign Georgia Banking Permission Slip Later

Industry sign banking georgia permission slip later

morning everyone my name is dana inman i am the president and ceo of the atlanta center for self-sufficiency as well as the chair of the max provider council before we get started i want to a special thanks to the anchor sponsors for max as you see on your screen we want to thank our sponsors for their sponsorship their leadership and their participation in max as i said my name is dana inman i am the chair of the provider council i also work for atlanta center for self-sufficiency we have a great presentation here today that we are excited to share with you i am going to pass it over to daniella perry to introduce our speaker thanks so much dana we are really excited to have brenda smeaton today who is the legal director for the georgia justice project um i know that we're going to hear a lot about what was sb 288 and is now law i'm really excited to see what opportunities are there um and how we workforce developers can really be supportive so brenda we'll turn it over to you um we're really looking forward to it all right thank you daniela are we good to go on the slides can you see my slides i don't think we can see them right now okay let's try again yeah there we go all right um and can you all right there we go sorry it's always always challenging to hand off the technology good morning everyone um thank you to everyone at the metro atlanta exchange for having me as the next minute speaker happy to be here and always happy to partner with you in the chamber we're really excited about sb288 so i look forward to telling you a little bit more about it this will of course be a very brief overview um we it's a complicated law there's a complicated set of laws around um criminal histories in georgia um i'll try to give you the big picture and tell you how you can get some more information if you're interested so the our plan for for the next 45 minutes or so is uh i just want to take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about george justice project not too much i promise um and then the main part of what we want to talk about is what does sb 288 mean for both individuals who have a criminal history and what does it mean for employers and then let you know as a workforce provider how you can connect your participants with georgia justice project if they need um help with their criminal history and then we'll hopefully we'll have some time left for questions as well um i just want to point out that you will see the the logo for our second chance for georgia campaign which was really instrumental in helping to pass sb-288 we worked on expungement reform for a number of years in georgia we were way behind other states 41 other states had some sort of process in place where people could get a conviction off of their criminal history and in georgia there were almost no convictions that you could get off of your criminal history so things would would stick with you forever and potentially be used by employers and housing providers and others to deny you opportunity so this last year we were able to bring together this great campaign 74 organizations probably some of you that are on this call endorse the campaign also um the chamber was instrumental and an early supporter in getting the word out about the need for this um and the fact that you know it's important for georgia businesses in the georgia economy people want an opportunity to commute to compete you know they're not asking for special treatment they just want to be able to be considered based on their qualifications for the job and potentially to move into better employment that they've than they've been able to get with their criminal history previously so the i think we'll probably talk a little bit more later about some of the um the process around getting sb 288 passed but um as i said the chamber was instrumental and they were able to bring in other businesses who helped support the efforts such as coca-cola and ups um newell brands and verizon and and that was instrumental as well all right so i'm not going to go into a lot of statistics or anything but um i do like to start by talking a little bit about the scope of the issue of the criminal justice system in in georgia we have the highest rate of correctional control by far in the country um so about three times the the rate of other states so in in total there are 527 people at any given time 527 000 people approximately um that are under correctional control so they are either in jail or in prison um or on probation or parole um so this just gives you some statistics about sort of the the flow of the criminal justice system and just how many people are impacted you know we tend to focus on those 54 000 people that are in prison and they certainly face a lot of challenges when they get out but you see you're the larger number of people that are on probation and the 4.3 million georgians that have a criminal history if you've ever been arrested for a fingerprintable offense offense in georgia then you have a criminal record so we're talking about 40 of adults in in georgia have something on their criminal history and you know this is this is played out nationwide of course so you know there's over 70 million individuals have a criminal history and we're talking about 50 of kids have at least one parent that has a criminal history so the the impact on the economy and on families is is enormous so who's georgia justice project um if you're not familiar with us we try we show up at every stage in the process um we've been around for 35 years and our work starts before somebody is even convicted in metro atlanta we represent people that have pending criminal cases for free if they can't afford an attorney and we have a holistic model where we combine um we have a team of attorneys and social workers that are working to support our clients and make sure that they get the services that they need and try to get the right resolution for their case if our clients are convicted um we continue to visit them while they are in prison take their family to visit them when that's you know non-coveted times when that's possible help them develop a re-entry plan for when they're released and then of course we started doing our criminal records work which is what we're talking about today about 15 years ago and it's become the largest part of our work and we represent people around the state about 500 people a year and then at least in in pre-code times serving a couple thousand more um through various uh events and summits expungement summits that are held around the state and then we also as soon as we started doing criminal records work we realized just how bad george's laws were in this area and so we started we we jumped into policy that was something that we hadn't done before and to date we've um worked on successful 20 successful changes to the law that have improved reentry possibilities for folks um partnering with many of you on those changes and of course as you know you know the reason that this is so important that we have to address this issue of criminal histories um not just the number of people that are impacted but also the scope of the barriers that they face nationwide there's over 48 000 laws and regulations that impose some kind of barrier to individuals in virtually every area of your life some that you you wouldn't even think of you know you want to um adopt your grandkids your criminal history may be maybe an issue for you you want to go to college your criminal history may be an issue for you so in georgia we've got over a thousand laws that impose some kind of barrier and that doesn't even address like county and local laws so so it's it's daunting um but all the more you know why it's important that we allow some folks who have been rehabilitated to be able to to expunge their criminal history so that it's not an issue and doesn't impose these barriers for them so i want to start as i get into the um the main part of the presentation talking about you know how you can advise your clients or how you can be aware for your program participants what they can do about your record by just making sure that we're on the same page about some of the terms that we use when talking about these issues and some of them you may have heard before so expungement you know when people want to clean their record they they google you how do i get my record expunged which is a term that most states use for record clearing you should be aware that georgia doesn't actually use that term when they um rewrote the law in 2012 they took the word expungement out of it because records are not destroyed in georgia it's just that access to them is restricted but i'll use the terms interchangeably because most people they don't you know know to get online and say hey i want to get my record restricted and sealed they know about expungement so what we do call it is restriction and sealing it's a two-step process which sort of um you know equals what what most states would call expungement first you have to restrict access on your official criminal history which in georgia is called your gcic report the gcic is the georgia crime information center it's a division of the gbi that's the state agency that collects information from all the law enforcement agencies and all the courts around the state and puts them together in a database that's primarily intended for law enforcement but employers can access it as well so first you've got to restrict access so that only law enforcement can see something on your gcic report and then you have to actually go through a process to seal the record so when i talk about sealing we're talking about sealing the the court record so if i if i had a a case down in fulton county there's going to be a file down at the clerk's office about my case um and if it's eligible for restriction and sealing i want to restrict it so nobody can see it on my gcic report if they if they pull that and then i want to actually file a motion to seal it so that it's no longer public record and it can't be reported and just to get into background checks gcic is the official record but most employers are not using gcic they are using a private background check company some of them that you may have heard of sterling infosystems checker adp experian those are some of the larger companies and employers are going to use these because they um they they're cool they're cheap um they're quick to pull a criminal history on somebody and employers want to know if you've got something beyond georgia so gcic is just going to cover your georgia criminal history there are some employers that have access to the fbi database but most of them don't so they want to pull a national background check on you to see if you've got anything in alabama or another state and those private background check companies do not get their data from georgia's official database they get it from the clerks so that's why it's really important that we seal the clerk's records as part of the process of cleaning up somebody's records and i'm hopeful this will all make sense as we go along and i talk about the framework of cleaning up records and then just the last couple of things to mention is a pardon we've all heard about pardons they've been in the news a lot lately for state offenses they are issued by the state board of pardons and paroles um not the governor in georgia and what it is is a certificate of forgiveness from the state on its own it doesn't clear or restrict somebody's record but under 288 we have an opportunity to make that happen so that's exciting and then the last thing to mention first offender um which you know if if you are working in the workforce base with folks with the criminal history um i'm sure you've heard this this is you know if i get in trouble i get arrested for felony drug possession i've never been in trouble before i don't have any prior felony convictions the judge at his or her discretion can decide to sentence me as a first offender and if i successfully complete my sentence then it is it is not a conviction and i've got some ways to make sure that that doesn't show up on either my gcic report or the private background check so those are just the the basic terms in thinking about criminal records in georgia so the way that i've laid this presentation out is the way that we talk to um we do lots of presentations for people that have a record um and you know we try to lay this out in the way for the the most common questions that we get and so this is responsive to those questions so the biggest question is usually can i get a felony conviction off of my record um it's important to be able to get misdemeanors off they impose barriers too and we will talk about that but obviously if you've got a felony um that tends to be the biggest barrier for folks so under sb 288 we have a new remedy to be able to get a felony conviction off of your record and it does fit into the the framework that we had before in some options that we had before so there's three ways to get a felony off your record the first one which we already had since um 2015 is you can get retroactive first offender so if i didn't get first offender you know i went to court 10 years ago on my felony drug case and i didn't know to ask for first offender even though i hadn't been convicted of a felony before and i hadn't used first offender so i didn't get it so i've got a felony conviction on my record under this law i can go back it and i can ask the court to re-sentence me it doesn't mean i have to go back on probation or anything like that it basically just means that they're changing the paperwork out and they're saying well she would have been a good um candidate for first offender it was an eligible offense she successfully completed her um her sentence and hasn't been in any trouble since so let's um as a way to you know clean up her criminal history and make things easier for her remove some barriers let's go back and re-sentence her as a first offender and then she's no longer convicted for that so if i'm asked if i'm convicted if i've been convicted of um of an events then i can i can honestly say no so there are some challenges with this and we do recommend that folks get an attorney for it because you have to reach out to the prosecutor and the prosecutor has to give permission to actually file the petition and then the it will ultimately be up to the judge so sb288 how does that supplement what we had before i mentioned that pardons have a new significance now um and you as getting sb288 passed was we started drafting this bill we've been working on it for years but last year we started over um at the beginning of the year we drafted a bill that included as much as possible as much as we thought it was feasible that people that we could pass and people could get things off of their record and you know the way the process works in negotiation it gets sort of whittled down to what the legislators are willing to support so a more comprehensive scheme for felonies was taken out and we were right up um until you near when the the senate wind up voting on it we didn't think any felonies were going to be included but senator tanya anderson who was the sponsor of this bill introduced an amendment to include some so what is included is if you received a pardon for an eligible felony offense after you get that pardon you can then petition the court so file something with the court to expunge the record of your conviction so then it won't show up on your gcic for employers or housing providers it won't show up on the private background check companies so this is huge because this is our first way to be able to get rid of some felony convictions for those folks that might not be eligible for retroactive first offender maybe they are to use first offender or maybe they have multiple felony convictions and under this law you could petition the court to restrict and steal multiple felony convictions so there are some limitations on it um if you were convicted of a serious violent felony or a serious sex offense then you even if you receive a pardon because you can receive a pardon for those offenses you won't be able to seal the record so we're talking about you know what's commonly known as th the seven deadly's um murder armed robbery kidnapping rape aggravated child molestation and then some other serious sex to crime sex crimes that even if you get that pardon you can't get them off so this is a great way for folks to be able to get a felony conviction or multiple felony convictions expunged from their record so that they are no longer a barrier you do have to get the pardon first which i'll talk a little bit about that process and then you have to file something with the court where you were originally convicted and the judge will decide whether or not they're going to expunge your record so primarily pardons are for felonies um i i did just want to know there are some rare occasions when you can get a misdemeanor pardoned but we won't go into that because it's not too relevant here but to get a pardon when can i apply for a pardon i can apply for a pardon of my felony offense five years after i've completed my sentence so if i was sentenced for my felony drug conviction ten years ago i got a two year sentence um five years after that sentence ended after i was off probation i can apply for a pardon so we are talking about a significant wait time here um but eventually i will be able to apply for a pardon i have to so i have to be off paper for five years um not under any supervision if my sentence ended early say i completed all my requirements and my probation ended in one year then i could apply six years after i was convicted so i have to have lived a crime free life in the five years before i apply for a pardon so the way that the state board of pardons and paroles interprets that is that i wasn't convicted of anything in that anything else in that time and ideally i wasn't arrested for anything other than you know maybe a minor traffic events um we have because pardons are so much more important now we're doing a lot of training um to try to give people the tools that they need to apply for a pardon on their own and we have one coming up next week at the end of the presentation i've got a link to where you can that you can send out to folks in case that's something that they're interested in you also the requirements to get a pardon say that you have to have paid your fines and fees and restitution um but i will say that what we have learned from the board is that if your sentence is completed and you even if you did have some unpaid things in the end they won't hold that against you so that that's important to know obviously can't have any pending charges um if you're eligible or if your clients are eligible for a pardon they need to get working on it right away because it is a process um the application is pretty well it's very expensive it asks for a lot of different information documentation about your cases um it's 11 pages you know asks you to provide documentation if you were in the military and discharged or if you've ever had a a civil if you've ever been involved in in a civil lawsuit if you've ever been in treatment for addiction or mental health issues you need to provide some information about that so it can take several months to to get all that together don't be intimidated by the process it's just a matter of of getting it all together and getting your paperwork together and then you get it all together you answer the questions that they have and then it takes them about six to nine months to make a decision so if you've got a felony conviction and you haven't applied for a pardon now you have a possibility to expunge that conviction so we want to tell our folks to get started on submitting those pardon applications like i said before on its own it doesn't restrict and seal but now under 288 as soon as we get that pardon day one after i get that pardon i can file a motion to restrict and seal it um even so i did mention that there's some exceptions so for those serious violent felonies and serious sex crimes so i might not be able to get my record expunged but a pardon could still be helpful to me because it does provide me with something from the state that says i've been rehabilitated and i get a certificate and that certificate actually provides some liability protection for employers if they hire me i we always like to mention because there's so much misinformation out there about voting and a lot of people think that they need to apply for a pardon to be able to vote that is not the case in georgia so you know over the last year we've done a lot of public education around this issue and if you go to that link down at the bottom gjp.org forward slash voting there's lots of materials there's handouts that you can give to folks the only time of course you have to meet all the other requirements for age and citizenship but in terms of your criminal history the only time you can't vote is when you are currently serving a sentence for a felony conviction so that means um the day after i complete my probation i can go register to vote i don't need to apply for a pardon it also means because a first offender isn't a conviction that if i'm serving a felon um a first offender sentence for a felony i can still vote so um please uh share this with your participants so they're aware of that one of the things we've discovered over the years of traveling around the state is many people are just shocked to know that they can vote um so and one last thing to mention about that is sometimes it's good to be able to demonstrate to um to the to the registrar um that you have completed your sentence particularly if you completed it early they might have some questions so you can request something um your participants can request something from from their probation office called the certificate of sentence completion which shows when their sentence was complete all right so the last way that we have to be able to get rid of a felony to expunge a felony um is the survivor's first act and i won't go too deep into this but just want you to be aware that it is a remedy out there for folks and it's a powerful remedy it also passed this last year and it is a remedy it was part of the the grace commission led by governor kemp's wife marty to address trafficking human trafficking sex trafficking and labor trafficking and georgia was really behind in this area most other states have had some way for people to be able to expunge their record if they were a survivor of trafficking and we did not have any way so now we do um and if an individual was convicted as a result a direct result of their being trafficked then we can actually vacate the record of their convictions so that means it's no longer a conviction goes away and then we can steal it um and even if it wasn't a direct result of the trafficking if they were convicted of something while they were being trafficked then we can restrict and seal that so that it's not visible to folks other than law enforcement so you can apply an individual can apply for that one year after they've completed their felony sentence so feel free to to reach out to me if you've got any questions about that um we've been partnering with some other organizations around the state that serve people who who are survivors of trafficking and one of the powerful thing about it is that it doesn't have any limitations on what the offense is so no matter what you were convicted of if it was related to trafficking you can potentially and probably get it off so that's that's our felonies um i'm going to go through misdemeanors quicker because two of the remedies are the same and focus most of my time on what sb288 does for misdemeanors because really the the centerpiece and the thing that's going to impact the most people from sb288 is misdemeanor restriction and stealing so if you've got a misdemeanor conviction um you can also get retroactive first offender you can use first offender for either a misdemeanor or a felony you just can't use it twice so i can't use it on a misdemeanor and a felony but if i have a misdemeanor on my record and i haven't been in any other trouble um i was eligible for first offender but for whatever reason i didn't know about it i can potentially go back and get to be sentenced as a first offender so that's no longer a conviction for me so that remedy is the same for misdemeanors as well so sb288 um our estimate based on getting data from gcic the georgia crime information center is that potentially about 1.5 million people should be able to clear their record of their misdemeanor conviction or convictions under sb 288 so if an individual was convicted of a misdemeanor um and they finished their sentence at least four years ago and they haven't been convicted of anything else in those four years then they can petition the court so you do have to file something with the court um and then the judge will decide whether or not to restrict and seal the record of that conviction there is a lifetime limit of two misdemeanor convictions under sb 288 um but that covers the vast majority of the people that that have a criminal history um only have misdemeanors and have two or less so that's huge we have a lot of work to do um you may be aware that in some other states there's been a real push towards automatic expungement so that after a certain period of time something just falls off of your record or can't be reported by by background check companies that is we would like to move towards that in georgia right now that is very difficult because georgia doesn't have what's called a unified court record system so fulton county they've got their own record-keeping system to cap county 159 counties multiple um courts in most of those counties they've all got their own system so unlike in some states where they passed automatic expungement like pennsylvania they're all working off the same system so you can say you know with some programming hey we you know we want to expunge all marijuana convictions over five years and you can do that through programming so we've got this petition-based system in georgia which is great but it can be an onerous process for folks so you can do it on your own um we have produced motions for people people to be able to file and sort of fill in the blanks and we're in the process of getting them up on our website there it is something you can do it's probably a lot easier to have an attorney there's no other organization other than us in this in the states that is focused on this so there's lots of private attorneys out there that that help with it but we do work around the state we're also trying to recruit lots of volunteer attorneys and come up with some creative ways where we might be able to help represent and move this forward for a large number of people because we're never going to be able to represent a million and a half people on our own so we've got to work together with um other stakeholders to make sure that people can take advantage of this remedy um there are some misdemeanors that are excluded so family violence and simple assault and simple battery are excluded unless the individual was under 21 when they were arrested so unless they were a youthful offender so they still have to meet the other criteria um now there are some extent some offenses that are excluded for all ages so again some some family violence related offenses some crimes against children public indecency certain sex crimes and also some theft offenses so you can get a misdemeanor expunged if it was stuffed by shoplifting or refund fraud but there are some other theft expen offenses that are excluded and the question that what probably one of the questions i get most frequently is can i get my dui expunged um unfortunately uh dui is not included in this dui tends to be excluded from every remedy like you can't get first offender for dui um and you know there's there's certainly a lot of folks that that feel strongly there's good policy reasons for that i mean i i think there there are some states that are pushing that certainly there's an argument to be made that after a number of years it's unlikely that that's going to happen again and it can be very damaging to folks so hopefully eventually we'll be able to move towards um getting rid of that as well and then the last remedy if you've got a misdemeanor is also the survivor's first act so the only difference that i want to point out there is if you were convicted of a misdemeanor then you don't have to wait until your sentence is complete you can potentially apply even while you are serving your sentence you can apply six months after the sentence was implode was imposed and generally for felony convictions usually you're going to get a 12 month sentence so you could apply to actually vacate that conviction or restrict and seal it if you were a survivor of human trafficking so those are convictions that is our big change for sb 288 that we are super excited about um prior to january 1st when this law went into imp went to into effect the primary thing that people could get off of their record were non-convictions um and some limited misdemeanors if a person was under 21 at the time they were convicted so very small group of people able to be helped by that um so non-convictions a lot of times people ask well why would it even matter um that i have a non-conviction on my record those will still show up on your gcic report it will show dismissed or no process will show that you've been acquitted you know you went to trial and you weren't acquitted um and then the research shows that employers do hold those against folks so you wanna you wanna encourage your folks if there's anything on their record that is eligible to come off that is eligible to be restricted eligible to be sealed that they go ahead and do that um you know if they've got one conviction and three non-convictions and an employer looks at that and they say well there's you know there's a pattern of behavior there so we want to get those non-conv even if we can't get the conviction off we want to get those non-convictions off so they're not being held against the person because of course a non-conviction is not um it means the person wasn't convicted you know for for whatever reason there wasn't enough evidence um maybe they were not valid charges to begin with or maybe the the person completed some kind of diversion program um and the court decided to drop those so so we do want to get those off most non-convictions are eligible to come off of your record there are a few exceptions um but generally they can come off and this just lists the the process out that non-conviction process um starts administratively um to restrict the record um so if you were arrested before july 1st 2013 you have to actually submit this application which you can get on the gcic website if you just google gcic and expungement and it takes about 150 days to to get a response on that if you're eligible they have to do it and then if it's approved so it's been restricted from your gcic that's when you can file the motion to seal it which is important so the private background check companies can't see it and you can also request that the jail records are sealed if you were arrested after july 1st you don't have to fill out that application it's supposed to be restricted when your case was resolved we know very well from experience that that doesn't always happen so we tell folks to to pull a copy of their gcic and let me just mention that for a minute so your gcic report your official criminal history an individual can get a copy of their gcic report by going into almost all law enforcement agencies so if i go into apd and i pay a fee i think their fee is 15 i sign a consent form they can pull a copy of my gcic and i can look at it and i can see you know what's showing up um so i can look and see if if the record of my non-conviction was actually restricted and if it was then i can go ahead and and file that motion to seal and request that the jail records be sealed and then the other non-conviction category that i just want to mention is first offender so say i did get first offender 10 years ago when i had my felony drug drug offense they said you've never been in trouble we're going to give you first offender i successfully completed my two years of probation what's supposed to happen at the end of that two years is the um the record of the offense is supposed to be sealed on my gcic report so most employers can't see it there are some employers where you might be working with a vulnerable population and if it was for certain sex crimes then it would show up but in the vast majority of cases it's not going to show up or shouldn't be showing up so you need to check that gcic and make sure that it's not showing up don't assume that just because you completed your sentence it wasn't and as of 2016 we can then file a motion to seal that record so the private background check companies can't report it so that's the law that's the framework for dealing with criminal records that's those are the remedies that we that we have right now um we will continue to work to expand george's law and to make it more accessible to most folks um but but that's where we are right now and just a couple of other things i want to mention is that sb288 wasn't just about um about an individual's ability to be able to clean up their own criminal history it was also largely about protecting employers and encouraging them to engage in second chance hiring and i think you know be prior to the pandemic we were at such you know we were very low unemployment and a lot of employers were starting to um revisit their policies about not hiring people with criminal histories out of necessity if you've got forty percent of the adults in georgia that have a criminal history you can't just say i'm not gonna hire anybody with a record um so people were getting work um but you know it tend to be often limited to certain industries um and often relegated to more low-wage jobs um so what sb 288 does you know in addition to allowing you to clean up your criminal history is it provides some employers some protections that will hopefully address some of those issues first of all they're just not going to see some stuff on your record so i you know i got my felony drug convictions let's say i had two felony drug convictions and i got them pardoned and then i get them expunged so they're not showing up on my background check report i go to apply for a job they're just not going to see it because it's been sealed so they don't have to consider it and one thing i will say you know is as we talked about before we partnered with the chamber on this um and we've been talking to employers over the last seven or eight years about these issues and talking to them about the importance of expungement reform and there was an event that we had at the chamber i guess a little over a year ago where we had some major employers speak and one of them i thought he he expressed it really well he talked about how when you're an employer you've got kind of three categories of books that you're dealing with in terms of background checks you've got folks that have got no record whatsoever great you know check you know they can move on in the process you've got folks that you absolutely do not meet your criteria maybe they have a more serious crime or a very recent crime um doesn't fit with with your business um and then you've got this huge group of folks in the middle that have a criminal history might be kind of minor might be old might not be relevant you know we have to consider is it relevant to the position that they're applying for and it takes employers a lot of time and effort and resources to consider that middle group so what sb 288 is going to do is going to help employers by vetting them before you ever get to the to apply for the job because the the court has vetted them the court has said this person is rehabilitated they're not a risk they should be able to expunge their record um and for felonies the the state board of pardons and paroles has vetted them they've gone through this intense process to get a pardon and then they've had their record expunged so it's just not relevant to the employer so they won't see it so that that will be good for employers but then the other thing that it does is it actually provides liability protection for employers so what we've heard a lot over the years is that an employer might be um you they might be worried about hiring somebody with a criminal history because they think well what if something happens what if there's an incident a theft or a violent incident and i get sued by whoever was the the victim of that incident and they say you know you engaged in negligent hiring you did not screen this person um and so i'm going to sue you um for you know millions of dollars so how does sb 288 help with that what it does is it says that if an individual was convicted of something or has a criminal history that is not relevant um then it can't be admitted into evidence or if they've received an expungement or a pardon not relevant um or if they were arrested and it didn't result in a conviction then it's not relevant in that log that lawsuit because the employer did their due diligence screening um and it shouldn't be held against the employer that they hired somebody that had a criminal history um because there's no way that they could have foreseen what might have happened um i i will say that there's a lot of great data out there and studies and you can find some of them on our second chance georgia website campaign website that show that those fears are largely unfounded for employers i know it's a very real fear and employers have to deal with insurance companies but people who have a conviction history the studies show that they actually make great employees that they tend to be promoted faster that they tend to stay with the company longer and that there is absolutely no evidence of any additional you know any rise in crime or workplace incidents um from hiring people um and giving them a second chance so one of the things that we try to do is get the word out to employers about that that research so just a couple of um things about getting a job with a record um that people frequently ask um in georgia employers can ask about both arrests and convictions so even if i um there are states where they can only ask about convictions in georgia they can technically ask a lot of employers have moved away from doing that but but that is allowed if an employer asks you that upfront um our advices from what we've heard from employers is don't leave it blank or say we'll discuss at the interview because you just won't make it to that phase so we encourage folks to to just go ahead and be honest and fill that out something else that i wanted to mention is that there's not a time limit on how far back employers can search your criminal history but if an employer is using a private background check company they can only report non-convictions for seven years so if i had a non-conviction and i didn't do anything to expunge it i didn't do anything take any steps to get it off my record the private background check company could still report that for seven years convictions they can go back indefinitely a lot of employers don't do that so as an if i'm an employer and i hire let's say i hire um you know hire right the the largest company in the country to pull background checks for me i as the employer drive that process and i can say to the employer you know i don't i only want to see felony convictions and i don't want to see anything that's older than 10 years because it's just it's not relevant to to my hiring process so don't show me that just show me the the criteria that i've set um so some employers have um so that they can avoid being in that middle category that i talked about and seeing that stuff because once they do see it they have to consider it um many of them limit what they what they ask about one thing that we've heard from employers over the years is that they they treat this as an honesty test and we really discourage employers from from doing that so if i'm asked you know when i go to apply for a job have you ever been convicted um and you know and then what i say doesn't match up with the the record that they pull the problem with this is it's really confusing to understand your criminal history um sometimes it's hard to know that you were actually convicted sometimes you think you were convicted and you weren't because you got first offender or you had diversion but you had to go do stuff you had to complete classes so you're just not really sure how that was resolved so we try to encourage employers from from moving away from that um if an employer does ask about your criminal history we encourage our clients to you know be brief and to the point when explaining um don't go away into the details of the offense to be honest and to take responsibility and focus on how they've moved on and what they've accomplished since they were convicted also only answer the questions asked if you're only asked about felony convictions don't report your misdemeanor convictions so it's really important that you know what's on your record so get a copy of your gcic report get a copy of a private background check report so private background check reports they're consumer reports so just like you can get your credit report you can also get um a private background check company report once a year so go to one of these major companies like hire right and request a copy of that report and see what's showing up um for people that you're working with that may have a more extensive history they may what you may want to assist them with provid with preparing a brief statement and and also i think it's helpful if you're doing job readiness with folks to sit down and talk it out um because you know thinking in your mind about how you might talk about these issues might be different um so so practice talking about your criminal history talking practice talking about you know i i made a mistake um i wish it hadn't happened but since then you know i haven't been in any trouble i've taken these classes i've moved on i'm taking care of my family run through that with them i we have found to be really helpful and also in some instances where there are things you can't get off your record to focus on jobs that aren't necessarily related to your charges so if you had um you know if you had a robbery charge then you're not going to be able to get a job at a bank if you had a child abuse charge you're not going to be able to work in a daycare center and sometimes folks remain in our experience folks remain focused on maybe what they were doing before the conviction um so we have to help them try to forge forge a new path for looking for a career and then um one final thing i want to mention because it's a a new effort that we have well not totally new um a few years ago i think it was 2006 2017 we helped get some occupational licensing reform passed in georgia um because a lot of people were being denied a certification or an occupational license due to their criminal history and the criteria in in the laws were not clear it was hard to know we were you know often talking to people who would go to school for something and then they would go to get licensed and find that you know i i can't be a nurse i can't um be a barber because of my criminal history and i didn't know that when i started training there are a lot of professions that have to be licensed in georgia so as this says here you know one in seven of all workers need some sort of license and there's all these different licensing boards so the law that passed provided some um criteria but anecdotally what we hear is that folks sometimes are still the process is getting delayed or they are being denied so we actually have a fellow who is working with us an attorney who is assisting folks who feel that they might encounter an issue with their occupational license or have encountered an issue and then the other thing that we're trying to do is look at because there's many different laws you know i mentioned there's a thousand and a thousand and six laws to be precise in georgia that impose some kind of barrier to reentry how many of them are related to employment and occupational licensing and how many of them are you know could be reformed so that we could lower some of those barriers and to get folks into those those professions so if you are aware of any particular barriers that your clients are facing to licensing please reach out to emmy we're trying to gather as much information as possible or if you have individuals that could be helped please reach out to her so this is how you can get some more information you can refer your clients to our regular first fridays presentation the next one's coming up february 5th where we do a slightly more in-depth um presentation of just what i went through and answer individuals questions about criminal histories you do have they do have to register in advance and there's the link to do that as i mentioned we've got a pardon training coming up next thursday there's still some spaces for that if you want to recommend that to folks and if you want to refer your clients to us your participants you can give them our our intake number we are not as of merch of last year we are not doing intake in person um until until we're out of the pandemic so they can call and we can we can get them the materials that they need to apply or they can send an email so that is is my presentation um let me go ahead and stop the stop the slideshow and check in with daniella and dana and see if there's any questions that we want to go over thank you brenda that was uh an awesome presentation full of really great information we have a ton of questions and in the chat box and the q a um so i think we'll just jump right in um there was a lot of questions around uh fees and costs so maybe we can start there in terms of filing um any of the applications and so forth or fees associated with any of the processes that you you mentioned can you talk about the fees yeah so if an individual wasn't convicted so they're applying um they're sending in that application to restrict their record um then there is usually a fee it's usually between it's 25 to 50 depending on the jurisdiction but in terms of sb288 and what i just talked about the remedies for convictions one of the things that we are really excited about um is that there are no um fees associated with filing so there are other states where it can cost you know 300 600 to file an expungement application and we don't have any fees um so an individual can just file um or their attorney can file under the prior the case number and there's no cost associated with that someone asked a question about um in the box and how that initiative or that policy initiative uh is related to this or is it related to this and how employers are affiliating the two yeah so ban the box um has been this movement that has really been going on about 20 years and it was a movement that was started by formerly incarcerated people um because they said you know we the second or the third question on any application you fill out is have you ever been convicted and then you're you know what what's the point of implying are they even going to consider my application so they said you know let's um let's ban the box from the initial application doesn't mean that your criminal history can't be considered but let's consider it later on in the process so after an individual has been you know i've had an opportunity to be considered based on my qualifications in the interview um and then they pull my record and and then you know we have to deal with what's on that record um but you know there aren't those um those assumptions and my application doesn't get thrown into the trash right away so like i said it's been going on for for 20 years and 36 states have some sort of ban the box law in place in georgia governor deal signed an executive order to ban the box back in 2015 if i'm remembering correctly if i'm remembering correctly um it applies to the state as an employer so if i go to apply for a job with the state of georgia they can't ask me up front about my criminal history there now there isn't some exceptions to that if the job i'm applying for has like an absolute bar to me working um with a certain criminal history like let's say you know i've got a child molestation conviction and they're like statutori y there's no way i can get this job um if i've got that then they can ask that up front but otherwise they're not considering the the record until after they've made the provisional offer of employment so when governor deal signed that he said you know he wanted to encourage private employers to to do the same thing and institute the same the same practice and 14 states do have laws that apply to private employers so all employers have to ban the box they can't ask before they consider in a pers consider a person's qualifications so what has happened particularly for larger national companies you know if i'm target i don't want to have a different hiring process in 50 different states and i've got 14 states that that ban the box so i'm going to institute that process company wide so mo a lot of larger employers have moved to this process where they're not asking about the record up front they are waiting to see if is this a person i want to hire okay let's go ahead and check your background and then deal with that um so so that's the relation okay there's also a question about docket cases is there anything different related to that yeah a dead docket case um is well they're they're very common in fulton county so if you've got um they couldn't happen other places too but basically it's the the court putting the case on hold so um for whatever reason so say i i had my felony drug charges in georgia and they said we're going to put your case on the dead docket you go complete this treatment program and then we'll dismiss it so we're putting it on hold but what has often happened particularly in fulton county superior court is that those cases they never went back and dismissed those cases so they're still pending cases from 10 20 30 years ago they're on the dead docket so existing there was a law in existence before which we still have that allows us to be able to petition the court to to expunge somebody's dead docketed case and you can apply for that a year after the case has been placed on the dead docket under sb 288 is there ever a case where the records would be reopened or unsealed if they've already been sealed yeah i mean i guess um theoretically i mean there are some um some individuals who still can get access to the records um even if they are sealed so law enforcement prosecutors they can get access to it um some other groups like the judicial qualifications commission you know if you want to be a judge they can get access to it i mean i guess it's it's possible you know i i got an expungement and then two years later i i get convicted again it's possible that the judge could go back and say you know we're going to unseal her record because clearly she was not rehabilitated but i think that that would be the very rare occasion because the research shows us there's this research around this idea called desistance that after an individual has gone a certain number of years depending on how old they were when they got in trouble and what the crime was they're not likely to get in trouble again um and so so it's unlikely that i go through this process um and then you know i get convicted again but i guess it's it's possible looks like we have uh under two minutes left so when i'm trying to make sure we get to all the questions in the chat box and in the q a um daniella is there anything that you wanted to address specifically no i think we've got some great questions from participants i did see one question about um job seekers that have felonies out of state and brenda was curious and what you would recommend for that yeah so every the law in every single state is different um most states um he was 41 last year i think it's up to 43 or 44 um do have some sort of framework for dealing with convictions and criminal histories so i tell folks if you can't afford an attorney to reach out to the legal aid office in the jurisdiction that you were convicted and see if either they assist or they're aware of a non-profit organization in that jurisdiction that might assist that's great advice and then two um i know that we've gotten some questions too about accessing the gc ic report online and just want to make sure that everyone has clarity on how they can access that report if you wouldn't mind just run through that again yeah well thankfully you can't access the gcic report online you do as an attorney if i want to get a gcic for somebody i haven't you know we have an account with a law enforcement agency where we have our clients sign a consent form and we're able to to pull it for an individual to be able to get their criminal history they can go to a law enforcement agency and sign a form and and get a copy of their criminal history um we do encourage folks to ask for what's called a purpose code you report which means that you're going to see everything that law enforcement can see so there's no surprises um on your criminal history um so they can get it themselves if you're a workforce provider and you want to get criminal history on your clients um you can do that by you know setting up an account like we use the shambley police department because it's cheapest um if they sign the consent then then you can pull the the criminal history for them and i will one thing i will say um for the workforce crowd is that you know we are developing partnerships with different workforce providers and sometimes you know we always ask you know do you ask your clients about your criminal history do you you check your clients criminal history and many of them say well we asked them and you know maybe about twenty percent say that they have a criminal history we know that that is not the case because forty percent of adults have a criminal history um the popular population that we're working with um and you know who is struggling with some stuff are more likely to have a criminal history so we think sort of best practice is just to go ahead and pull a copy of everybody's history so you're aware of what they're dealing with and like i said before it's not that they're necessarily trying to be dishonest but they just might not understand because they're like well that was 20 years ago so that doesn't count or you know they just might not be aware of what it means to have a criminal history so we do encourage folks to um to pull records on their participants and you know we do trainings with workforce providers to help them be able to read those records um and you know we're in the process of setting up some sort of partnerships with organizations where we might be able to have a streamlined process where we can represent their clients or review their clients history to to put them in the best position that they can be in to look for work i know we're a little bit over time so i want to make sure that we can wrap this up thank you so much brenda for all the great information for those of you that had questions that we weren't able to get to please feel free to follow up with with max or with brenda directly she had her contact information and we will send out the presentation as well as a recording from today if you all want to go back and review that or share that with other people that are on your your staff or your team um just really quickly i want to um again uh well before we wrap up just mentioned that max has launched as a a membership association starting in january this month we're really excited about that so i want to encourage you all to join us um and as members um we are having a special in january so if you sign up before january 31st there is a savings related to that 21 um all the information is on our website as well as the chamber website um so again just wanted to thank you all for being here this is the what the website looks like um and we'll wrap it up daniella do you have anything else to add no just thank you so much brenda this was so helpful and um just the wealth of services that shall provide you is so invaluable um and thanks to dana two for helping to moderate everything i think was a great session so thank you all for participating and joining us