One of the most important things a formerly incarcerated person can do to prevent going back to prison is to succeed in obtaining employment. Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick, agrees with this concept, and with the backing of law enforcement agencies, politicians and formerly incarcerated persons, he signed into law a bill that will aid the formerly incarcerated to get a job.
The Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) system was used by employers to examine an applicant’s criminal history. While the new law will still allow this, the system will now be cleared of inaccurate information, acquittals, and dropped charges. Also, if a person does not commit another offense, a felony conviction will be erased after ten years, and a misdemeanor conviction after five. Before this law, a conviction could only be erased by court order, and after a longer period of time. A murder or sexual offense will not be erased. The law also allows nonviolent inmates serving mandatory minimum sentences to be eligible for parole after serving half of their sentences, and, importantly, provides job training while incarcerated.
The new data base is expected to be ready by 2012. Only convictions and pending charges will be stored, and access will be given to a broader spectrum of agencies and individuals such as employers, volunteer agencies, providers of housing, and licensing organizations.
Opponents to the revamping of the CORI system claim that screening for felons would be harder, but employers will still have both criminal conviction information and the option to hire, or not. John Grossman, a state public safety undersecretary and co-writer of the law, stated in an August 7, 2010 article by Jack Nicas in the Globe newspaper that the criminal history box that was on applications “penalized honesty”. Grossman, who supervises the managing board of the CORI system, further stated that “…what we’re trying to do is to get employers…to have conversations with individuals as individuals, not just weed people out wholesale because of a box they’ve checked on their initial job application.”
For additional information, watch Governor Patrick speak on CORI reform in Reentry Central’s Video library.
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