‘Perception is everything’
Norma, a Camden resident who declined to give her last name, is a nurse who was involved in an incident that resulted in a criminal record. She said finding work, while having a record, can be challenging.
“[Employers] do a more intense background. Even though I don’t have any charges, it still presents as if I’m this type of person, which is not the case,” she said. “They’re only seeing it in black and white. They don’t actually know the story behind it.”
One of the attorneys at the fair Norma spoke with said that she qualified for expungement, but it would take three to six months for it to go through. She described being able to clear her record as “very much” life changing.
“Now … nothing [is] going to come up versus having it dismissed and having these allegations on me when that’s not the case,” Norma said. “In today’s world, perception is everything.”
Expungement process was reformed as part of ‘second chance agenda’
In 2019, Gov. Phil Murphy signed two major criminal justice reform packages. A bill that restored voting rights to those on probation or parole, received more attention. The second measure reformed New Jersey’s expungement system.
The latter law, which took effect in 2020, created a petition process for those who have not committed an offense in 10 years and have not been convicted of serious crimes.
Deputy Public Defender Stephen P. Hunter said the role of the public defender’s office in expungements has expanded in recent years.
“We have a team of attorneys and paralegals that assist every pro se person in New Jersey who files an expungement and who gets an objection from the prosecutor,” he said. “In addition to that … we do events like this where we go into the community and we directly assist people with filing expungements,” he said.
Hunter said the system was not ready for the influx of requests. Previously, expungements were “more like a rare thing that happened once in a while,” he said.
The piling up of requests led to its own sets of legal complications.
The public defender’s office sued New Jersey State Police in 2023 over the mounting backlog of requests. The agency was up to four years behind, in some cases.
A settlement was reached last March. State police now must process requests within four months.
The public defender’s office also recently settled with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office. The North Jersey county accounted for nearly a quarter of the state’s backlog, according to an NJ Advance Media review.
County prosecutors review every expungement request and must make a decision within 60 days. Hunter said “that just hasn’t happened because of resource issues between the different county prosecutors and each county’s different.”
