Abstract
The United States has the largest prison population in the world with more than 650,000 ex-offenders released from prison every year, according to the United States Department of Justice. But even after time has been served, criminal records persist, limiting their bearer’s ability to qualify for job, rental, loan, volunteering, and other opportunities available to citizens. It is thus not surprising that the US Department of Justice also reports that approximately two-thirds of those released are rearrested within three years of release. In recent years, many laws have been passed to shield past criminal records from future background checks. The Second Chance Gap Initiative at the Santa Clara University’s Law School (paperprisons.org) uses empirical research and analysis to draw attention to the millions of Americans that remain stuck in “the second chance gap” of being eligible for but not receiving their second chance in the realms of expungement, reinfranchisement, and resentencing. In the case of criminal records, it finds that tens of millions of people that have completed their formal sentences are stuck in a “paper prison,”s held back, not by steel bars but bureaucratic and related hurdles that prevent them from assessing a cleaned record. In support of this initiative, the SCU Ethical, Pragmatic, and Intelligent Computing (EPIC) laboratory has developed a flexible tool for ascertaining expungement eligibility. The project hopes to assist those seeking to determine if they qualify via a user-friendly web application containing a rule engine for expungement qualification determination.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Nation behind bars: A human rights solution (2014). https://www.hrw.org
Bala, N., Roehl, K.: The case for clean slate in North Carolina (2020). https://www.rstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Short-No.-85-NC-Clean-Slate.pdf
Bucknor, C., Barber, A., et al.: The price we pay: economic costs of barriers to employment for former prisoners and people convicted of felonies. Technical report, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) (2016)
Calvert, C., Bruno, J.: When cleansing criminal history clashes with the first amendment and online journalism. J. Commun. Law Policy 19(1), 123–148 (2010). https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/cconsp19&i=133
Calvert, C., Bruno, J.: When cleansing criminal history clashes with the first amendment and online journalism: are expungement statutes irrelevant in the digital age? (2010). https://scholarship.law.edu/commlaw/vol19/iss1/5
Chien, C.V.: The second chance gap. Michigan Law Rev. (2019). https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=3265335
Chien, C.V.: America’s paper prisons: the second chance gap. Michigan Law Rev. 119(3), 519–612 (2020). https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7068&context=mlr
Chien, C.V., Duggan, C., Huang, Z., George, A., Shaghaghi, N.: The South Carolina second chance expungement gap (2020). https://paperprisons.org/states/SC.html
Chien, C.V., Duggan, C., Pingale, P., Shaghaghi, N.: The Iowa second chance expungement gap (2020). https://paperprisons.org/states/IA.html
Chien, C.V., Duggan, C., Pingale, P., Shaghaghi, N.: The Rhode Island second chance expungement gap (2020). https://paperprisons.org/states/RI.html
Chien, C.V., Hastings, E., Bathala, H., Shaghaghi, N.: The Minnesota second chance expungement gap (2020). https://paperprisons.org/states/MN.html
Chien, C.V., Hastings, E., Bathala, H., Shaghaghi, N.: The Missouri second chance expungement gap (2020). https://paperprisons.org/states/MO.html
Chien, C.V., Hastings, E., Huang, Z., Wu, J., Shaghaghi, N.: The North Carolina second chance expunction gap (2020). https://paperprisons.org/states/NC.html
Chien, C.V., Kreitzberg, E., Duggan, C., Pingale, P., Shaghaghi, N.: The Connecticut second chance pardon gap (2020). https://paperprisons.org/states/CT.html
Chien, C.V., Shaghaghi, N., Hastings, E., Bathala, H.: The New York second chance sealing gap (2020). https://paperprisons.org/states/NY.html
Chien, C.V., Shaghaghi, N., Hastings, E., Huang, Z., Bathala, H.: The Oregon second chance expungement gap (2020). https://paperprisons.org/states/OR.html
Chien, C.V., Zuyan, H., Kuykendall, J., Rabago, K.: The Washington v. state second chance expungement gap (2020). https://paperprisons.org/states/WA.html
Code for America: Apply to clear my record. https://www.clearmyrecord.org
Federal Bureau of Prisons: Offenses - statistics (2020). https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp
Georgetown University Law Center: Texas fresh start guide. https://georgetown.neotalogic.com/a/FS-Example-temporarylink
Hill, G.: West’s encyclopedia of American law (2008). https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/charge
Johnston, A.J.: Project clean slate report - Detroit (2019). https://detroitmi.gov/departments/law-department/project-clean-slate
Judnich Law Office: Check your Montana expungement eligibility. https://www.judnichlaw.com/montana-expungement-eligibility
Koerner, G., Kettani, H.: Privacy concerns on expungement laws in the digital world. In: Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on Information System and System Management, ISSM 2019, pp. 11–16. Association for Computing Machinery, New York (2019). https://doi.org/10.1145/3394788.3394791
Lee, M.: Do criminal background checks in hiring punish? (2017). https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1162&context=law_jurisprudence
Maryland Judiciary: Maryland judiciary case search. http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch
Maryland Legal Apps, LLC: Bulk Expungements (2016). https://www.mdexpungement.com/bulk.php
Maryland Legal Apps, LLC: Maryland expungement determination and form completion (2016). https://www.mdexpungement.com
Paper Prisons Project: Second chance gap sizing methodology (2020). https://paperprisons.org/methodology.html
Prescott, J., Starr, S.B.: Expungement of criminal convictions: an empirical study. Harvard Law Rev. 19(8), 2460–555 (2020)
Schmitt, J., Warner, K.: Ex-offenders and the labor market (2010). https://cepr.net/documents/publications/ex-offenders-2010-11.pdf
The People’s Law Dictionary: Sealing of Records (2005). https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/sealing+of+records
The Warnock Foundation: Expungemaryland.org [beta]. http://www.expungemaryland.org/b0
United States Department of Justice: Prisoners and prisoner re-entry. https://www.justice.gov/archive/fbci/progmenu_reentry.html
World Prison Brief: Highest to lowest - prison population total. https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All
Acknowledgements
Many thanks are due to Santa Clara University Law School Professor Colleen Chien - who originated the concept of the Second Chance Gap and founded the Paper Prisons initiative. To the many law students working in the initiative including Evan Hastings, Charlie Duggan, and Katie Rabago whose work on creating concise statements of the law and logic flows provided the basis for the expungement tool. To undergraduate student Alexandra George for her tireless research and data acquisition work for the Paper Prisons project. And lastly to the Frugal Innovation Hub as well as the departments of Mathematics & Computer Science, Computer Science & Engineering, and Information Systems & Analytics for their continued support of the criminal history expungement tool’s development at the Ethical, Pragmatic, and Intelligent Computing (EPIC) Laboratory by faculty and students from all three departments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering
About this paper
Cite this paper
Shaghaghi, N., Huang, Z., Bathala, H.S., Azzarello, C., Chen, A., Chien, C.V. (2021). A Tool for Narrowing the Second Chance Gap. In: Shaghaghi, N., Lamberti, F., Beams, B., Shariatmadari, R., Amer, A. (eds) Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment. INTETAIN 2020. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 377. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76426-5_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76426-5_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-76425-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-76426-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)