This editorial was published by the Post Register of Idaho Falls.
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Everyone makes mistakes, especially earlier in life. The important part depends on whether we learn from those missteps and don’t make those same mistakes again, or we continue to make those mistakes and we continue to be punished for them.
Along those lines, we have to give some cheers to the Idaho House for passing a truly bipartisan measure in House Bill 149, known as the Clean Slate Act, and giving it nearly unanimous support last week when it came up for a third reading. The vote was 66 representatives in favor with one opposed and three absent.
The bill — co-sponsored by House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, and Rep. Clay Handy, R-Burley, with backing from Sen. Dave Lent, R-Idaho Falls — would permit adult offenders with relatively minor non-violent, non-sexual offenses to petition for sealing of their public records provided they have gone at least five years since the completion of the sentence without any subsequent offenses. Only one offense, or offenses arising from a single incident or transaction, would be eligible for sealing. According to the bill’s statement of purpose, should there be a subsequent felony conviction, the exemption from disclosure would be revoked. If the sealing remedy is granted, the record would still be available to law enforcement and prosecutors for any purpose and could still be used to enhance future penalties.
This is a measure that makes perfect sense, and it’s refreshing that Republicans and Democrats worked together on it and approved it by such an overwhelming margin.
The bill was received by the Senate where it was referred to their Judiciary and Rules Committee. This is one law that should breeze through to the governor’s desk for approval.
What the law would effectively do is help those with relatively minor offenses who have committed themselves to not re-offending to move forward with their lives. A record could involve a decades-old misdemeanor or an arrest that never led to a conviction and still keep a person from getting a job, getting into decent housing, education, keeping them from obtaining a professional license or a loan.
Pennsylvania was the first state to pass such a law in 2018, where millions of people have been helped by it since then. Utah’s statute took effect in February of last year, and back then nearly 500,000 Utahns were able to begin the process of clearing their records.
“Many of these folks deserve a real second chance, but we continue to hand out these collateral life sentences,” the lawmakers sponsoring the Idaho bill said in a statement. “We are proposing legislation ... that would allow those who have committed non-violent, non-sexual offenses, who have completed their sentence (including probation and parole) and who have gone at least (five) years without reoffending to petition a court to have their public record sealed. If they can make their case to the judge that they are no longer a threat to society, they can earn a real shot at getting their lives back on track.”
They noted that in Idaho, if you were 18 or older at the time of the offense, everything — including misdemeanors — would stay in public view “to your dying day.
“The majority of states don’t operate this way,” they said. “In fact, 41 states and the District of Columbia offer some mechanism for record-sealing for adults, and it has proven successful.”
“People learn their lessons. This is something that keeps them on the straight and narrow,” Rubel told the House Judiciary Committee. “The prospect of having that record sealed actually reduces criminal offenses, and once they get it, they don’t want to mess it up.”
That leads to another benefit of the bill: lowering the cost of the state’s correctional system, which the lawmakers said is second only to education in the state.
“We all probably have people we know who would fall in this category … when we demonstrate an ability to improve and continue to contribute to society, these are the sort of things I would hope we would support,” said Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls.
There can be no greater fear among those who’ve been caught making a mistake, thinking how it will affect the remainder of their lives. At a time when lawmakers have been looking at a variety of ways to criminalize things — even down to checking out a book thought to be indecent from a library — it’s good to see lawmakers showing they can have a heart as well.
