State Rep. Doug Wozniak and the House Judiciary Committee today voted overwhelmingly to approve a plan to expand Michigan’s expungement laws and give hundreds of thousands of residents with old, low-level criminal convictions a new opportunity to start fresh.

Wozniak, a member of the committee, said the innovative proposal would make Michigan a leader in criminal justice reform.

“People who have served their time and turned their lives around should not continue to be punished just because of a mistake they made when they were younger,” said Wozniak, of Shelby Township. “This plan removes barriers so people who have earned a second chance can access better jobs, housing options and opportunities to better their lives through education and job training programs.”

A University of Michigan Law School study published earlier this year found that people whose criminal records are cleared tend to experience a sharp upturn in their wage and employment trajectories. On average, wages went up by 25 percent within two years of the expungement.

Wozniak said these results were observed under Michigan’s current expungement law, which is very narrow in scope. Right now, only individuals with one felony or two misdemeanors qualify, and they must wait a minimum of five years before they can start the process.

The plan backed by Wozniak would:

• Expand the number of people who qualify for expungement.
• Allow marijuana convictions and some traffic offenses to be expunged.
• Shorten the eligibility period for expungement.
• Establish automatic expungement for certain offenses. Violent or assaultive crimes would not qualify.

“Giving people who have earned a second chance a clean criminal history will grant them access to new employment opportunities, particularly in skilled trade jobs that have stringent licensure requirements,” Wozniak said. “Too often, these requirements disqualify former offenders based on old crimes that are completely unrelated to the type of work associated with the license.”

House Bills 4980-4985 and 5120 now advance to the full House for consideration.

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