Conservatives for Criminal Justice ReformSafety, Efficiency, Accountability
Safety, Efficiency, Accountability
** S565 was amended in the House and passed on June 5, 2024. The current version repeals automated expunctions prospectively and retroactively. It was gutted to only allow for District Attorney access while repealing the right to automated expunctions as promised in the NC Second Chance Act.**
Raleigh, N.C. – Right On Crime, and Conservatives for Criminal Justice Reform, both national criminal justice organizations, support North Carolina’s S565 without PCS (Proposed Committee Substitute). This bill, as originally drafted, would have removed barriers to jobs and housing by restarting the automated expunction of not guilty and dismissed charges and implementing recommendations of a bipartisan, 16-member task force.
Last week, the North Carolina House Judiciary II Committee voted to adopt the Proposed Committee Substitute (PCS) of S565. This PCS repeals the automatic record sealing of not guilty and dismissed charges, including the backlog of more than a million eligible cases.
In 2020, S.L. 2020-35 was signed into law after bipartisan support in both chambers of the NC General Assembly, providing automated expunction of dismissed and not guilty charges beginning December 1, 2021.
Due to logistical challenges, the legislation was paused. A 16-member task force was created with representatives from AOC (Administrative Office of the Courts), the Conference of District Attorneys, the State Bureau of Investigation, the Sheriffs’ Association, and DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), and offered recommendations including:
North Carolina legislators created S565 – Removing Barriers to Jobs and Housing, intended to allow for the restart of the automated expunction of not guilty and dismissed charges. The original legislation would implement the task force recommendations, as well. To be clear, the original language in S565 did not clear a person’s record. It simply removes the barriers of individuals found not guilty or who had charges dismissed to reenter the workforce without the stigma surrounding a criminal record. The original bill ensured that dismissed felony charges due to a plea agreement were not expunged.
“Any North Carolinian who leaves a courtroom with absolution from a judge or jury should not carry the burden of a criminal record for a lifetime,” says Maggie Horzempa, Right On Crime Director of North Carolina. “An estimated one million of these criminal records are active as citizens apply for jobs or attempt to pass credit checks for housing. S565 is a sound and conservative approach to fortifying North ‘Carolina’s economy.”
“When the Second Chance Act passed, it was touted as a job bill to help North Carolinians get back to work, and the automated record clearance for dismissed/not guilty charges was a critical component,” says Tarrah Callahan, Founder and Executive Director of Conservatives for Criminal Justice Reform. “While the charges addressed in S565 of dismissed/not guilty charges are eligible to be expunged by petition, the process is often very costly and time-consuming, sometimes taking years to conclude. Removing these records from public view allows hundreds of thousands of people to access this relief.”
Right On Crime is a national criminal justice campaign offering conservative and data-driven solutions for reducing crime, restoring victims, reforming offenders, and lowering taxpayer costs.
Conservatives for Criminal Justice Reform is a national and conservative-led criminal justice organization based in Raleigh focused on pragmatic criminal justice solutions.
The 2021 report “Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review” by Damon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Jonson, and Francis T. Cullen, looks at 116 studies that have been published comparing people who received non-incarceration sanctions (such as probation), and those who received incarceration sanctions (jail or prison). These studies comprehensively found that putting individuals in jail or prison makes them either more likely to engage in criminal behavior or has no impact on their probability of reoffending. These findings reiterate that “tough on crime” policies do not work.
There are two competing perspectives on imprisonment. The first is that incarceration is a specific deterrent to committing crimes, otherwise known as “tough on crime.” For this to work, there must be an effective way to ensure that punishment is not only swift, but certain. However, evidence shows that in light of not being able to achieve both of these two qualifications, the justice system is focused only on the severity of punishment, which is proven to not be as effective. Ultimately, the evidence demonstrates that the underlying effective deterrence is the certainty of punishment rather than the severity. Since both of the two qualifications needed for the “tough on crime” approach to work are impossible to come by simultaneously, it is undeniable that “tough on crime” policies do not, and will not ever, work.
The second is that incarceration has a criminogenic effect, or contributes to the likelihood that individuals will commit crimes again once they are reintroduced into society. This is supported by evidence that explains that individuals “learn from and imitate others’ behavior in order to adjust to prison life and offending in general; and receive social and tangible reinforcements for adhering to prison culture.” These learned behaviors transition to life after prison which inevitability leads to the likelihood of recidivism. The collateral consequences, such as barriers to employment and housing, also lead to an increased likelihood of returning to criminal acts. The study determines that “the criminological fact of a null effect for custodial sanctions undermines any justification based on specific deterrence.” In other words, the studies once again show that being incarcerated does not have any effect on deterring people from committing crime once they are released from custody. The evidence analyzed for both of the two competing perspectives on imprisonment have reached the same conclusion: “tough on crime” polices do not work.
In the conclusion of the study, the authors provide set of policy implications. One of the implications stems from the history of correctional policies – the effects of custodial settings will continue to produce the same outcome unless the system is fundamentally changed. One idea that was suggested to change this was performance reviews. It was found that a majority of prisons do not conduct performance reviews of their wardens and staff, nor for the institution in its entirety. Nor are institutions “generally… evaluated for their effectiveness in changing inmate behavior.” Another potential policy implication comes from the need to change prisons from punishing institutions to people-changing institutions. The authors argue that institutions must implement new policies on the inside before results are seen on the outside.
The main arguments against these suggested changes are that they are too costly and that they would be too difficult to implement. The authors write that many practices “are not expensive, but simply require greater professionalism” and that with access to the internet, most of the staff training and inmate assessment can be done online and often at low expense. In sum, if correctional institutions’ purpose is not changed to reflect a purpose of rehabilitation, recidivism will continue to plague our communities.
The meta-analysis provides concrete evidence in support of finding alternatives to incarceration. In North Carolina, steps have been made to help those reentering society after incarceration a little easier through the Second Chance Act, but NC has another opportunity to make meaningful change through promoting alternatives to incarceration. Such alternatives range from community service and house arrest to inpatient rehabilitation and psychiatric treatment. If incarceration is necessary, placing an emphasis on the rehabilitation of individuals is likely to achieve far better outcomes not only for the individuals and their families, but for their communities as well. Like the authors argued, prisons need transformed into people-changing institutions so that when individuals re-enter their communities, they are functioning, contributing members of society.
Petrich, Damon M., Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Jonson, and Francis T. Cullen. “Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Crime and Justice, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1086/715100.
Urban Institute Releases Report “Assessing North Carolina’s Changes to Supervision Revocation Policy”
This week, the Urban Institute released a report reviewing the impact of North Carolina’s changes to revocation policy as part of the Justice Reinvestment Act. These changes were prompted by bipartisan leadership in 2009 upon realizing the dramatic cost of the increasing prison population, coupled by estimates that the prison population would increase by another 10% by 2020, at a cost of $378 million to taxpayers.
North Carolina leaders requested technical support from the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, a public-private partnership funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and Pew Charitable Trusts. The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center provided technical support. The CSG Justice Center found that probation revocations were a huge contributor to the prison population:
“…in 2009, 53 percent of prison admissions in North Carolina were for probation revocations, and 76 percent of these did not involve a conviction for a new offense. Probation and parole officers also had limited options for responding to technical violations of supervision other than revocation to prison (Council of State Governments Justice Center 2011). In light of these findings, the CSG Justice Center reviewed options for addressing supervision revocations with more effective and less costly responses.”
The key finding presented in this updated analysis is that North Carolina has successfully reduced revocations since adoption in 2011 of the 90-day cap on revocation time and implementation of the Confinement in Response to Violation (CRV) centers.
Specifically:
Particularly as we see a dramatic spread of covid-19 throughout NC prisons and jails, incarcerated individuals and the state employees that run these facilities are at increased risk when new individuals enter the prison system. By eliminating revocations for technical violation, this risk is decreased and the collateral consequences of incarceration are limited for individuals striving for success.
The Governor’s Task Force on Racial Equity and Criminal Justice recently released a report that recommended eliminating incarceration for technical violations of supervision and many other reforms to reduce the number of people on felony probation who are subject to costly revocations.
Conservatives for Criminal Justice Reform welcomes this comprehensive data from the Urban Institute and hopes to see these findings lead to evidence based reforms in North Carolina that both keep our communities safer, while relieving the burden on taxpayers.
We applaud the passage of the Second Chance Act.
We’re honored to be a part of the bipartisan coalition formed to combat COVID-19 in the North Carolina criminal justice system. We sent out letters to Governor Cooper, the Commissioner of Prisons, North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys, North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police Regional President and Regional Directors and the President of the Sheriffs’ Association. If you’re interested in reading the letters, please see the link below.
What is the Second Chance Act?
The North Carolina Second Chance Act (Senate Bill 562) is legislation that would automate the expunction of certain dismissed criminal charges and allow individuals to petition the court for expungement of any nonviolent misdemeanor convictions if they have remained crime free for seven years.
The Second Chance Act passed the North Carolina Senate unanimously in May 2019 and is up for a vote in the North Carolina House of Representatives.
Second Chance Polling
To get a better idea of how much the public supports this issue, we had Public Opinion Strategies conduct a statewide survey of 800 registered voters in North Carolina, January 4‐7, 2020 (+ 3.5%). Fully 50% of respondents were contacted via cell phone and the other 50% were contacted via landline. Here are the results:
Key Takeaways:
For official memo see: NC Poll Memo
