Lawmakers are in Richmond considering a host of criminal justice reform efforts.
One issue that’s about to be under consideration is allowing people to get old convictions off their records.
Virginia may have decriminalized marijuana. But what about all those old marijuana convictions? The Virginia Crime Commission is about to issue recommendations for how people could have their records expunged.
Delegate Mike Mullin says some convictions should be automatically expunged. “Expungements need to be an automatic process by which people who have served their time, served their debt to society and have been of good behavior for a very long time have got the opportunity to start over in life.”
Mullin says automatic expungements should take place for non-violent, non-sexual and non-DUI crimes.
But that idea is not as popular on the Senate side, where Senator Scott Surovell says automatic expungement is a bad idea. “We’ve been fighting hard to build discretion back into our system, whether it’s giving prosecutors the discretion to drop charges when they want to or giving judges and juries the discretion to impose a sentence they feel is appropriate instead of the General Assembly telling them what they can and can’t do. Automatic expungement is the opposite of that,” Surovell argues.
The Crime Commission is set to consider the issue early next week.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
