The Wisconsin State Legislature may finally inject some common sense and compassion into our criminal justice system through good ol’ record-scrubbing expunction reform that could benefit thousands of people. Please call your state legislators and tell them to support the expunction reform bill. Then, call your parents, friends, aunts, uncles and grannies and tell them to call their legislators. This is our chance to see positive change. Let’s not blow it.
There is no end to the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction. They can include losing the right to vote, ineligibility for certain vocational licenses, loss of public housing and ineligibility for student assistance. Once convicted of a crime, “that record follows you around forever,” said state Rep. Evan Goyke (D-Milwaukee), a prime mover behind the latest expunction reform push. “People change; people reform themselves.”
The state already allows expunctions in some cases, but the law is so restrictive that it is only slightly better than useless. First, it applies only to offenders who committed their crimes when they were younger than 25 years old (a nice bit of age discrimination written into the statute). The law also requires the judge to decide at sentencing whether expungement should be allowed. The decision must be made, in other words, before the judge can possibly truly know whether the defendant simply made a mistake or is a complete knucklehead who, indeed, poses a “threat to society.”
The new proposal would get rid of the age limitation and allow a defendant—if the judge does not, at sentencing, allow for expunction—to apply for expunction after successfully completing their sentence. The sentencing judge may also order that a record not be made eligible for expunction. But some things would not change under the new bill.
The offender would have to have no previous felony convictions, and the crime at issue could not be a violent felony. Certain traffic crimes (i.e. drunk driving) would not be eligible for expunction, and the crime involved in the expunction request could carry a maximum penalty of no more than six years imprisonment. Most importantly, perhaps, the changes would retroactively apply to people convicted of eligible crimes before the bill’s passage. A woman who wrote a bad check in 1980 could have her record wiped out in 2020; a man who sold weed in 2015 could have his record cleaned in 2024.
No one is sure exactly how many people this change could affect. Rep. Goyke suggests it could be tens of thousands, as does a Wisconsin Policy Forum report on expunction published last June. No one knows, of course, exactly how many people would actually apply for expungement, but drafters of the reform bill, anticipating a potential rush, are proposing a one-year delay before the new law would take effect to allow judges and court staff to get ready.
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“This is a big change for the judicial system,” Goyke said. The benefits to individuals are huge. The court files and records from expunged cases would disappear from public view and access. Expunged crimes would not be considered convictions for employment purposes. Employers and potential employers who ask about them would be committing employment discrimination. But the bill is not flawless.
It does not apply to municipal court records, for example, and the definition of what constitutes a successfully completed sentence is vague, which could mean future battles over who is or is not eligible to apply for expunction. More iterations of the bill may well be offered in the future, Goyke said. “We also see the need to address something now and pass it,” he said.
Gretchen Schuldt is executive director of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for progressive change in the Wisconsin justice system by educating the public about its real-life impacts and partners with other organizations to achieve more just outcomes.
