Why Do We Need CORI Reform?
Our current Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) system is broken and needs to be updated to reflect changes in use. When the CORI system was created, CORI reports were only for exclusively used by law enforcement. Now CORI reports are used by employers, landlords and others in decisions on hiring, housing, student loans and more. The system needs to be updated to reflect these changes.
Problems for employers:
- CORI reports are hard to read because they are written in code
- CORI reports often include irrelevant information, including cases that ended favorably (e.g., dismissed, not guilty) and cases that are too old to be relevant or predictive of future behavior
- CORI reports often include inaccurate information because they are based on a name/date of birth identification system.
Problems for community and law enforcement: When people are barred from housing and employment based on outdated, irrelevant, inaccurate or misunderstood CORI reports, individuals, families and our communities suffer. At the same time, an unnecessary burden is placed on law enforcement. - People are unnecessarily unemployed or underemployed (including people who were never convicted of any crime) and cannot provide for themselves and their families, which in turn increases costs to the state.
- The biggest predictors of whether an ex-offender will successfully re-integrate are whether he or she can find appropriate housing and employment. Thus our current CORI system actually increases the likelihood that ex-offenders will re-offend.
- The current system violates our traditional notions of justice by punishing people long after they have paid their debt to society as well as people who have never been convicted of any crime.
SOLUTIONS PROPOSED BY H3523/S1608
Simplify the Sealing Process:
Over 750,000 records are currently eligible to be sealed. People eligible to seal their dated records encounter a multi-layered, inefficient and costly process.
Stop dissemination of irrelevant, outdated records.
- Shorten the waiting period for sealing CORI to 3 years for a misdemeanor and 7 years for a felony.
- Begin the waiting period when the individual re-enters the community, and when court supervision exceeds the waiting period, delay sealing until the end of that supervision.
- Include only open cases and convictions on CORI reports accessed by employers, with the exception of law enforcement and agencies that work with vulnerable populations.
Help employers better evaluate risks and benefits of hiring an individual with a CORI record by:
- Following the lead of the City of Boston and the Executive Office of Health and Human Services by establishing fair hiring standards in the hiring process for authorized and non-authorized CORI users.
- Encouraging employers to evaluate the whole candidate and the circumstances surrounding the offense that generated the CORI by:
- Allowing employers to check CORI after a qualified pool of applicants has been determined.
- Removing the CORI question as a first-level screen for job applicants.
- Ensuring the accuracy and relevance of the criminal record.
- Applying the same standards to hiring decisions based on information from the state CORI system and from private criminal background check companies.
