“I got in a lot of trouble as a teenager and in my early 20s. The first time I got arrested I was 17 and the first time I was incarcerated was at 21,” says Christine, a former Mercer student who asked to be identified by just her middle name so she could discuss her past openly.
Christine says when she was a teen and young adult she made impulsive decisions when facing life stressors. She was angry and got influenced by the wrong crowd. Her incarceration at age 21 was the beginning of a complicated future and a lengthy criminal record for this now 35-year-old mother of two.
At the age of 26, Christine began to take steps to turn her life around. She says she was determined to overcome her earlier choices and wanted to pursue an education that could lead her to a career. She went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Rider University and is now in her second year of graduate school at Temple University to complete a Masters of Science in Public Health, yet her past still haunts her.
“I went away and came back and pretty much changed my whole life, and now its almost 10 years later and it’s just…my record, it’s still there,” she says.
The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, along with several other prominent legal and advocacy groups, hosted an event focussed specifically on how to expunge past criminal records at MCCC’s James Kerney Campus on September, 28, 2019.
Expungement is a process that allows people with certain types of criminal records, who have paid their debt to society and kept out of all trouble for five to ten years or more, to get their record erased. If they complete the process and are approved by the court for expungement, they don’t have to indicate that they ever had a conviction when they are applying for jobs or loans, and their previous records are no longer available for anyone to access.
The event was free for locals and attendees received a free expungement packet, which usually costs anywhere from $80-$100. There were speakers who explained the process and participants had the chance to ask questions to a panel of lawyers, including an Assistant Attorney for the Mercer County Prosecutor’s office, who gave advice on the expungement process.
The information session was presented by various groups, including: The MCCC Upward Bound Parent’s Association, the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, the Association of Black Women Lawyers of New Jersey, From the Block to the Boardroom, The Greater Princeton Chapter of Drifters, The Ivy League Educational Foundation, and The National Congress of Black Women.
Attendee Zalika Johnson said she learned about the event through Facebook.
“It really pushed me. ‘Cause I’m like I need a career and they’re [going to] do a lot of criminal background checks at jobs,” Johnson said.
The MC of the event, Nicole Williams, a volunteer at the Greater Princeton Chapter of Drifters, Inc., explained that “People go on about their daily lives, and forget about [their record] until they apply for that one type of job that really does a different type of background check…As long as it never comes up, people don’t often seek to get it removed from their record.”
Williams also said that many people are not even aware of what expungement is, or do not have the financial resources to go through the process. Expungement is a legal process that can take from six months to two years to complete and can cost anywhere from $100-$2,000 according to the information provided.
But for someone like Christine, expungement can be the key to moving forward.
She says, “I would like to start a career and having a criminal record stops you from even getting your foot in the door to a lot of places. The first thing they do on the paper interviews is ask ‘Have you ever been accused of a felony?’ and you have to check ‘Yes’ in case they do a background check, and then most of the times you won’t even make it to a second interview.”
Christine is a strong candidate for expungement. In addition to going to college, getting a degree, and avoiding any further criminal activities for the past decade, she also has made meaningful contributions to her community, something the judge will look at when making the expungement decision.
Christine works with people with autism, has volunteered at a homeless shelter for pregnant and postpartum women, and has volunteered with Caravan of Love to take homemade blankets as gifts to children from birth to age 17.
Other things that the court looks at when individuals seek expungement include the type of crimes they were involved in, the completion of any drug treatment programs, keeping up with parole obligations, and payment of fines. Certain types of major crimes are never eligible for expungement including homicide, sexual assault, robbery and human trafficking among others.
But Christine’s crimes don’t fall into those categories and expungement for her would have long-term benefits that extend beyond her own well-being to the rest of her family.
Stacey Denton, the Director of Upward Bound, a program that prepares high school students for college, says she was inspired to help organize the event because she saw the need for expungement extending beyond just the people who have gotten into criminal trouble in the past.
She said, “When it was time to do financial aid for our students they were saying, I can’t do that.”
According to Denton, students were deciding to not go to college because their parent’s past criminal records could affect their qualification to receive financial aid, making education impossible.
The Upward Bound program collaborated with Tracey Syphax, a Trenton local who runs From the Block to the Boardroom, Inc. and is an expert on reentry programs for former inmates. Syphax knows the experience from the inside out, having gone, by his own account, from being a drug dealer to a successful entrepreneur. Syphax has devoted himself to creating and supporting events like the one held on September 28, focussing on the Trenton community in particular.
Narline Casimir, an Assistant Prosecutor with the Mercer County Prosecutor’s office who participated in the event, says of expungement, “It’s about making our community better and safer, and it’s for people to know, even if things happened in the past, and they made mistakes, there’s redemption.”
