Does being arrested for a crime make you a criminal? Not according to the US constitution. Under the law you must first be convicted of a crime before the state can treat you like a criminal. That is a constitutional guarantee.
Okay, maybe it doesn't really happen in real life but millions of people who have been arrested without being convicted of crimes may soon be able to breathe a huge sigh of relief. States have begun enacting new laws to help people purge their arrests from public records, if they have never been convicted of a crime.
This has become a big thing across the country because criminal records background searches have been hurting people in everyday life, from creating public humiliation on the Internet to hurting their chances of getting a job.
This wave of changes in the law first came to my attention when Alabama made it possible (but expensive) for residents to expunge their arrests from court records. What I don't know is if this will remove your arrest information from all those low-life Websites that publish it.
Michigan has also passed a bill to help its residents get off the Internet's highway of arrest record shame. The Michigan law actually allows some people convicted of crimes to expunge their records. Hopefully they are not gun-toting veterans of the street wars.
Just how bad is the problem with criminal records? According to this study, the fact that the government keeps these kinds of records has hurt millions of people, keeping them in poverty.
So the next time you hear someone say that we have systematized the poverty level, you can believe them. Our criminal justice system is set up to hurt people as much as it is to protect society. We have to change that so that everyone has a real opportunity to improve in life.
