Questions from CfJJ for MA Prosecution Dataset

[jeremylang]

Notes from meeting with Sana on 6/26/20 that generated these questions

For all questions - only concerned with those under 21:

• 1) Who is eligible today? People with only one charge that is not part of the list of (ineligible) offenses.
• 2a) If we only change the number of offenses, how many are eligible based on only having one incident (that does not include an ineligible offense)?
• 2b) How many would be eligible if we only limited to only exclude sex-based offenses or murder?
• 3a) How many would be eligible based on who has not been found guilty (given current offenses that are eligible for expungement)?
• 3b) How many would be eligible based on who has not been found guilty, except murder or sex offenses?

Clarifications from CfJJ:

for 2b and 3a, we wouldn't have the one incident limitation, but how hard is it to estimate if the one incident limitation was taken into consideration? it might be helpful to have a comparison of both variables unless it's too time consuming, and you'd prefer i stick with one

[laurafeeney]

Began writing scripts for this in How many expungable notebook. Not clear that we need a second issue #154 for this -- seems liek that's duplicate tracking, but I'll leave that to you @jeremylang

[jeremylang]

Sent question and status update emails to CfJJ. Started conversation about call or virtual meeting to go over the report.

[laurafeeney]

Updates on the new policing bill from Sana, December 2020:

Just a quick update...the policing bill that is currently being negotiated has an expansion of the expungement law, that if the bill passes these changes would apply:

• eligibility will be based on number of cases, not number of offenses
• increases the number of eligible cases to a maximum of two cases that end in a conviction/adjudication and two cases that end in any other disposition that is not a conviction/adjudication
• we were unable to cut down the categories of offenses that are ineligible. While our original bill would have only kept sex offenses and murder, our most recent negotiation was to not cut the offenses, but only limit ineligibility to those offenses that ended in a "felony conviction", meaning any of the offenses that are misdemeanors would then be eligible, cases that end with a non-conviction would be eligible, and any juvenile case (whether it ended in an adjudication or not would be eligible). We are debating right now what we want to file next session whether we want to go for the "felony conviction" ineligibility and/or removing a few specific offenses altogether.

and a couple other comments from her:

• in the charts where you include the data on juvenile records, it would be great that the percentage uses all juvenile records as the denominator rather than all records, since we're not looking at expanding anything past age 21
• do you have data on the # of offenses per case? what about # of incidents per individual? (i assume the latter is harder because it's hard to track individuals across data sets and years, right?)