Scoppe: SC Legislature determined to rewrite even more history

Columbia, SC IMAGINE THAT the Legislature made it illegal for businesses to consider some job applicants’ criminal records.

Imagine that it was illegal to consider someone’s criminal history when deciding whether to let him run the youth program at your church, or to serve as the treasurer of your PTA.

Imagine that it was illegal to consider a politician’s criminal history when you’re deciding whether you want to vote for that person.

Imagine that it was even illegal to consider someone’s criminal history when you decide whether you want to be that person’s friend — or spouse.

Sounds pretty radical, doesn’t it? Not to mention unenforceable, when you get down to political candidates and personal relationships.

Well, our Legislature has done something even more radical than that. Instead of simply making it illegal to consider someone’s criminal history, our Legislature has ordered state officials to rewrite that history. Obliterated all references to some crimes. Made it impossible for us to even know that the crimes were committed.

Under current law, people can have their criminal record expunged if they have been found not guilty, had a charge discharged or dismissed, completed a diversion program or committed one of the long list of misdemeanors. Once this occurs, there is no official record that the person was charged or convicted.

And there’s a pretty significant move on at the State House to make matters even worse, by expanding the list of crimes that can be expunged, and who knows what else.

Now, it might seem reasonable to erase the records of people who weren’t convicted. But consider this scenario: A local politician is arrested after a drunken altercation; the media don’t find out about it at the time, and the charges get dropped. When a witness comes forward later to question the politician’s fitness for office — and whether he got special treatment because of his political connections— there are no official records to prove that the arrest occurred.

That sort of thing probably doesn’t happen very often, but a lot of the expungements involve convictions, and those expungements happen every day. Scores of times. In the fiscal year just ended, SLED Chief Mark Keel testified before a legislative committee last week, his agency processed more than 84,000 expungements. That’s 230 per day.

Since criminal penalties for some crimes increase for each subsequent offense — think criminal domestic violence, and many drug crimes — purging the record of a conviction means that someone who commits the same crime again later is subject to a lighter sentence than he should be.

Already people can get the records erased for magistrate’s court convictions or convictions under the youthful offender act or passing fraudulent checks or failing to stop for police or simple possession of marijuana. They can get the records of their crimes erased if they complete an alcohol-education program to avoid a conviction for disorderly conduct, underage drinking or a whole list of other alcohol-induced crimes. They can get their records erased if they complete a traffic-education program to avoid a traffic conviction or — here’s a big one — a pretrial intervention program, which some solicitors are quite promiscuous about offering to first-time, non-violent offenders.

Last week, a special House-Senate study committee heard testimony on proposals to allow more crimes to be expunged, and even some of the more tough-on-crime legislators seemed to be leaning toward lying to the public about still more criminal records.

The emotional heart of the matter was highlighted after Chief Keel reminded the panel that 70 percent of people convicted of a crime later commit another crime, when a Greenville businessman who served prison time in the 1990s for drug crimes asked, “What about the 30 percent of us who are doing a good job, and out here doing the right thing?”

It is a difficult question. Our criminal justice system is based on the idea that people who violate just about any law can serve their sentence and in so doing pay their debt to society. We say that our prisons are supposed to rehabilitate rather than merely punish.

And so yes, it does seem wrong that would-be employers would hold a criminal record against a job applicant — particularly when the crime was minor, or occurred years or even decades ago. It seems even more wrong that would-be employers would refuse to hire someone who was charged but never convicted of a crime.

But if lawmakers want to prevent that from happening, then they need to pass a law that makes that illegal.

What they do not need to do is prohibit us from even knowing that someone was charged with a crime. Or convicted of a crime. Because that has implications far, far beyond the job market.

When the Legislature literally erases criminal records, it takes that information away from individuals who are making private decisions about their personal lives. It protects people who use political influence to avoid criminal responsibility.

There’s a difference between forgiving and forgetting. Forgiving means you give people a chance to start over. Forgetting is rewriting history. It’s saying a crime never occurred, that a sentence never was imposed. It is a lie. It is a lie that should not be permitted in any cases. And it certainly shouldn’t be permitted in even more cases.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached

at cscoppe@thestate.com.

This story was originally published September 8, 2014 at 9:00 PM with the headline "Scoppe: SC Legislature determined to rewrite even more history."