Thousands of Oregon children are referred to juvenile court every year. Even though many of these charges are dismissed, people may still face the ramifications of that contact with the juvenile justice system for years, their record standing in the way of successfully securing housing and jobs.
Portland nonprofit law firm Youth, Rights & Justice (YRJ) aims to help people with juvenile court records eliminate this roadblock and move on with their lives. Thanks to a grant from the Justice Action Network (JAN), YRJ opened a free juvenile record expunction clinic at the beginning of August for people in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington counties.
Amy Miller, YRJ’s executive director, said there is a misconception — even among people who have experienced juvenile court — that charges filed against a youth will be automatically erased after they turn 18.
“The general public thinks juvenile records are confidential and won’t be barriers,” Miller said. “But that’s not true. A juvenile adjudication is treated like an adult criminal conviction, and they have the same collateral consequences.”
Without access to legal assistance from organizations like YRJ, it can be logistically difficult for eligible people to get a juvenile record expunged. Qualifications can be complicated, and some people who do qualify don’t even know their juvenile record shows up in background checks until it has already interfered with a goal like getting a job or securing housing.
Miller said using YRJ’s expunction services should be simple. It takes a lot of time and resources to track down complicated paperwork and figure out exactly the qualifications for record expungement, making this process inaccessible to many people.
Through YRJ’s expunction clinic, people looking into clearing their juvenile charges just need to fill out an online form, and a lawyer will get in touch with them.
“We take care of all the logistics,” Miller said. “We demystify the process. We worked really hard on our online form to make it accessible and understandable so that it wasn’t so challenging.”
Someone doesn’t have to be incarcerated in a juvenile detention facility in order for the event they were charged for to show up on a background check. For instance, if someone had a physical altercation with another student in high school that ended with a police officer filing a report, that report may follow them to adulthood — even if the child was never formally found guilty for the incident.
“I don’t think it’s fair to do something when you’re 14 years old and suffer for the rest of your life. The collateral consequences of convictions for youth can last for the rest of their lives, impacting their housing, education and employment opportunities, which makes them more likely to reoffend.”
April Brix, a paralegal at YRJ who is running the expunction clinic, said she has seen several of these cases. She said when an employer runs a background check on a new employee and finds a juvenile charge, they won’t know exactly how old the person was when they were charged, and they may be legally obligated to fire the employee even if they don’t want to.
“They might like the employee, but they’re restricted by regulations and guidelines, so there’s nothing they can do about it,” Brix said. “Just being able to get that expunged is a huge step for so many people.”
Juvenile record expunction is a key issue in criminal justice reform efforts across the country. The JAN, a national bipartisan nonprofit criminal justice reform organization that provided the grant funding YRJ’s clinic, has focused on this issue nationwide, lobbying to pass laws that make it easier for people to clear their records.
“Children and youth change,” Carl Filler, a state policy analyst for the JAN said. “I don’t think it’s fair to do something when you’re 14 years old and suffer for the rest of your life. The collateral consequences of convictions for youth can last for the rest of their lives, impacting their housing, education and employment opportunities, which makes them more likely to reoffend.”
Advocates say programs like this clinic are the first steps to employing more systemic changes to help people involved in the criminal justice system as youth avoid getting trapped in a cycle for years.
Large-scale reformation in the juvenile court
Recently, the Oregon state legislature enacted Senate Bill 575, which will automatically seal the records for the thousands of Oregon youth who have contact with law enforcement but are not convicted in juvenile court.
According to Sen. Michael Dembrow (D-Portland), chief sponsor of the bill, only 4% of eligible youth successfully apply for expunction. The easiest way for more people to have their records cleared is through automatic processes.
This measure won’t be applied retroactively, however, so people who were charged before the law was put into place will still rely on services like YRJ’s expunction clinic. But to groups who supported this effort, it’s a move in the right direction to eliminate the complex processes that make it difficult for impacted people to move on with their lives.
“It shouldn’t be the responsibility of a child and their family to keep track of all these complicated statutes governing what offense is eligible for expunction and when,” Filler said.
The life-altering impact of interactions with the juvenile justice system are not created equal across demographics. Youth of color suffer disproportionate impacts in juvenile court, and it is more difficult for people in marginalized communities to get the kind of legal aid that will allow them to clear these charges from their record.
Not only does a juvenile charge affect the life trajectory of the person directly impacted, but it’s also a strain on the legal system with collateral economic effects. According to a 2016 report by the Juvenile Law Center, “the reduced outputs of goods and services of people with records results in losses in the range of billions of dollars as compared to the cost of corrections.”
This report also found that barring work and housing opportunities to people with juvenile charges who pose little to no community risk in the name of public safety actually makes communities less safe. Access to housing and stable employment lowers crime recidivism and increases public safety at large.
Deena Corso, the director of Multnomah County’s Juvenile Services Division, said measures like Senate Bill 575 and free expunction legal aid like what YRJ is providing are moves in the right direction when it comes to making large-scale changes in the juvenile court system.
But at a broader level, the goal of juvenile justice reform efforts is to prevent juvenile interactions with law enforcement in the first place and avoid life-altering punitive measures against children. People involved in the mission to change the juvenile justice system as it stands would be happy if this cut into the work they do.
“The ultimate goal would be that my job didn’t exist anymore because we were working upstream to help kids and families holistically to keep them from going down the path that leads to juvenile justice,” Corso said. “The ideal state would be that we didn’t have kids in situations that would lead them to coming to our door.”
To find out more about Youth, Rights & Justice’s juvenile record expunction clinic, visit https://youthrightsjustice.org/youth-family-resources/getting-your-record-expunged/.