7 ms·

Pennsylvania Is First State to Use Automated System to Expunge Criminal Records

110 points by ga-vu 7y ago

danso 7y ago
I was surprised at how cheap, relatively speaking, this system is: > The state police used a vendor to build their program, at an estimated cost of $195,000, and the courts used in-house tech experts at an estimated cost of $50,000. I don't have any experience in government IT, but even in corporate terms, this seems relatively cheap given the scope and lifetime of the system (though I'm assuming these stated costs don't include maintenance and ongoing operation) and the consequences when there's a system failure, e.g. lawsuits.
- Jedi72 7y ago
  Where you see efficiency, a silicon valley MBA sees opportunity.
- bpchaps 7y ago
  Yes, that's extremely cheap. In Chicago, there was a system being developed in partnership with University of Chicago to make city-owned database schemas open to the public through a PHP web app. The system cost 300k to develop, was never finished, and was quietly put into forever-maintenance mode after a few years of use. As a general rule, Government is pretty bad with tech projects and their associated costs.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    Just look at Canada's Phoenix payment system. That thing did wild amounts of damage and cost billions.
- EvanAnderson 7y ago
  I work in county government IT in Ohio, and the $50K number, per county court, seems like a reasonable estimate. I don't know anything about Pennaylvania, but in Ohio each court (of which there could be multiple in each county-- a court of Common Pleas, a Juvenile Court, and one or more Municipal courts) would each have their own disparate court management systems. In my county there are currently 3 different systems covering 3 courts. Each one would need its own integration. A few years ago the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio undertook a multi-year data warehouse project to build a centralized reference database for all state courts. I assisted the vendor in our County and easily had a significant fraction of that $50K in my labor over a period of a couple of years.
  - ilovetux 7y ago
    Pennsylvania has a similar structure as far as the different types of courts, but they have had their Unified Judicial System [0] for quite some time now. It's actually quite usable (once you know where the links you need are) and really ties together all the different courts and provides a web portal [1] where most things one would need to do (except actual court appearances) can be done pretty quickly. [0] http://www.pacourts.us/ http://www.pacourts.us/ [1] https://ujsportal.pacourts.us/ https://ujsportal.pacourts.us/
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Police use grant funds to do everything and usually have a stable of good smaller consulting firms that get shit done. They probably had 2-3 contractor FTEs for 4-6 months and built off an existing system. Government IT is good at building things like this. They suck at large projects and ops.
- Iv 7y ago
  In practice, I agree: this is pretty cheap given the market. But now take a step back and think about it: the actual problem is probably pretty simple. If the databases are well made, it would just take a few requests for this operation to be done. Even with the tests, that's one or two programmers' job for two weeks, and maybe one week of a partial review of results by a legal specialist to validate the quality. Imagine if the state had two in-house programmers up to this task available. $195,000 would cover their salary for a year. > and the consequences when there's a system failure, e.g. lawsuits Another saving grace for doing things in house: you take actions internally. You can correct very quickly, shuffle incompetent people, save all the litigation costs and the bad faiths over misinterpretation of a SoW.
  - gnud 7y ago
    Those two in-house programmers would never get the time to do this. They would be swallowed in various maintenance task on the other 500 custom systems the state owns. (from experience in the private sector)
    - Iv 7y ago
      That's a difference I observed (in France) between the private and public sector. In several administration, public workers have a reputation of being lazy because they don't always have work to do. They are on demand, and work on projects as appropriate. That's what a well-funded public task force looks like. In such a case, a manager would look at the schedule, reserve the time necessary for this dev, take into account the other missions of the devs and get it done.
  - sametmax 7y ago
    > the actual problem is probably pretty simple. Yeah but writing the code is not what's expensive on this project.
    - Iv 7y ago
      That's my point. What is expensive is to interact with a private entity to do it, to manage risks and potential litigation. All these costs would be saved if the solution was developed in house.
- jmartrican 7y ago
  Wow. That's like practically free. Would love to see a case study on how this system was implemented.
save_ferris 7y ago
I known it’s not the main point of the story, but the fact that this legislation was intentionally held up by a congressman (a die-hard Ohio State fan) in committee who relented only after meeting with a famous former Ohio State football player who turned his life around after prison is really interesting given the blowback athletes like Kaepernick have gotten for getting political.
- Dangeranger 7y ago
  There is a kind of person in this world who is only able to empathize with others after an experience is made personal for them. It is frustrating to witness this, yet I’m happy that the player in question recognized that their personal story could make a difference in this instance.
  - justaguyhere 7y ago
    There is a kind of person in this world who is only able to empathize with others after an experience is made personal for them I really wish voters don't elect such people to positions of power
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - dmix 7y ago
      That’s what people always say. Politics never changes. Yet people continually idealize it will be different next time. It’s the nature of the job IMO
    - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
      Yes, so many congresspeople never cared about gay rights till their son came out. Your comment is sad but true.
      - temp-dude-87844 7y ago
        Consider that the political positions they hold may differ from the views they hold in private, both before and after a seeming change of heart. Successful politicians are skilled opportunists. If the politician believes that holding one kind of view plays well with their constituents, they will hold it until the drawbacks begin to outweigh the advantages or the appetite of the electorate shifts. Consider that news of a politician's family member coming out as gay is likely to invite questions about the politician's stance. They now have a choice: embrace the family member and evolve their political views, or reject them and play the hardliner. Fewer of their constituents would be put off by the first course of action than the latter.
microcolonel 7y ago
> ...interesting given the blowback athletes like Kaepernick have gotten for getting political. Colin Kaepernick didn't get blowback for recognizing a cause , he got blowback for dragging it into the game, and choosing a particularly political way of expressing it. In this case, the cause remained personal rather than political, and was not dragged onto the field.
- ebg13 7y ago
  > In this case, the cause remained personal rather than political, and was not dragged onto the field. The cause was literally politics. The difference is that it didn't step on anyone's jingoism. (I'm not sure what else to call people getting frothing mad at someone not standing during an anthem.)
  - microcolonel 7y ago
    Well, all I can ask is that you try to reread what I wrote, but this time do it in good faith; then imagine for a second that people are maybe not being as unreasonable as you assume.
    - ebg13 7y ago
      > Well, all I can ask is that you try to reread what I wrote Well, you could explain how you think I misread "the cause remained personal rather than political". Or you could explain why you think that fighting to change the law isn't politics. Either of those would be a helpful start. > then imagine for a second that people are maybe not being as unreasonable as you assume People who froth over someone not standing during an anthem instead of looking at why he chose to do that are being exactly as unreasonable as I assume. Or did you mean a different group of people?
      - RHSeeger 7y ago
        People who "people who froth over this" instead of "looking at why this was done" can vary wildly depending on what "this" is and who the person is. You may not see standing during the anthem to be a big deal; someone else might. To take it to an extreme, consider the act of killing someone to push forth an agenda. A dictator, to save lives. A senator, to change the politics of something. You may think one of those is ok but not the other, or both. Someone else may believe differently.
Aloha 7y ago
I think this is great, and I hope programs like this expand nationally over time.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  It is a way toward better rehabilitation. Same should be true for financial data. Private prisons the US maintains leave the impression of abusing slave labor.
cascom 7y ago
Unfortunately expungement doesn’t really do much - most questions on employment forms or professional associations (state bar, FINRA, etc) ask about arrests not convictions. Secondly, despite being “expunged” the data still resides in numerous data bases etc. and I don’t believe you have any practical recourse against that. E.g. you go to buy a gun and the NICS system holds you up, or an employer fires you for a conviction found on a third party database what are you going to do?
- duxup 7y ago
  Numerous databases including mugshot sites that will gladly take your money to take down your mugshot from their site.
- flensortow 7y ago
  In the US, most states ban the use of an arrest that did not lead to a conviction for the purpose of excluding you for employment. Many states limit how far you can go back in considering convictions. I believe California allows background checks to look at seven years of history.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Those bans come with loopholes that you could drive a bus through. You can determine from free public records search that somebody has an arrest without even knowing what it is, and people use that to filter folks all of the time.
    - sjg007 7y ago
      You can but the background check is after an offer of employment and given the fair credit reporting act they have to tell you why they rejected you.
    - flensortow 7y ago
      Yes, you can illegally discriminate in hiring if you choose to. Most major companies are very careful not to do this. In every case I have had a background check done on me I have asked for the company doing the check to send a copy and in every case the report sent to me certainly appeared to be following the law (the reports explicitly mention how far back they are reviewing).

110 points by ga-vu 7y ago

I was surprised at how cheap, relatively speaking, this system is: > The state police used a vendor to build their program, at an estimated cost of $195,000, and the courts used in-house tech experts at an estimated cost of $50,000. I don't have any experience in government IT, but even in corporate terms, this seems relatively cheap given the scope and lifetime of the system (though I'm assuming these stated costs don't include maintenance and ongoing operation) and the consequences when there's a system failure, e.g. lawsuits.

Jedi72 7y ago
Where you see efficiency, a silicon valley MBA sees opportunity.
bpchaps 7y ago
Yes, that's extremely cheap. In Chicago, there was a system being developed in partnership with University of Chicago to make city-owned database schemas open to the public through a PHP web app. The system cost 300k to develop, was never finished, and was quietly put into forever-maintenance mode after a few years of use. As a general rule, Government is pretty bad with tech projects and their associated costs.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  Just look at Canada's Phoenix payment system. That thing did wild amounts of damage and cost billions.
EvanAnderson 7y ago
I work in county government IT in Ohio, and the $50K number, per county court, seems like a reasonable estimate. I don't know anything about Pennaylvania, but in Ohio each court (of which there could be multiple in each county-- a court of Common Pleas, a Juvenile Court, and one or more Municipal courts) would each have their own disparate court management systems. In my county there are currently 3 different systems covering 3 courts. Each one would need its own integration. A few years ago the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio undertook a multi-year data warehouse project to build a centralized reference database for all state courts. I assisted the vendor in our County and easily had a significant fraction of that $50K in my labor over a period of a couple of years.
- ilovetux 7y ago
  Pennsylvania has a similar structure as far as the different types of courts, but they have had their Unified Judicial System [0] for quite some time now. It's actually quite usable (once you know where the links you need are) and really ties together all the different courts and provides a web portal [1] where most things one would need to do (except actual court appearances) can be done pretty quickly. [0] http://www.pacourts.us/ http://www.pacourts.us/ [1] https://ujsportal.pacourts.us/ https://ujsportal.pacourts.us/
Spooky23 7y ago
Police use grant funds to do everything and usually have a stable of good smaller consulting firms that get shit done. They probably had 2-3 contractor FTEs for 4-6 months and built off an existing system. Government IT is good at building things like this. They suck at large projects and ops.
Iv 7y ago
In practice, I agree: this is pretty cheap given the market. But now take a step back and think about it: the actual problem is probably pretty simple. If the databases are well made, it would just take a few requests for this operation to be done. Even with the tests, that's one or two programmers' job for two weeks, and maybe one week of a partial review of results by a legal specialist to validate the quality. Imagine if the state had two in-house programmers up to this task available. $195,000 would cover their salary for a year. > and the consequences when there's a system failure, e.g. lawsuits Another saving grace for doing things in house: you take actions internally. You can correct very quickly, shuffle incompetent people, save all the litigation costs and the bad faiths over misinterpretation of a SoW.
- gnud 7y ago
  Those two in-house programmers would never get the time to do this. They would be swallowed in various maintenance task on the other 500 custom systems the state owns. (from experience in the private sector)
  - Iv 7y ago
    That's a difference I observed (in France) between the private and public sector. In several administration, public workers have a reputation of being lazy because they don't always have work to do. They are on demand, and work on projects as appropriate. That's what a well-funded public task force looks like. In such a case, a manager would look at the schedule, reserve the time necessary for this dev, take into account the other missions of the devs and get it done.
- sametmax 7y ago
  > the actual problem is probably pretty simple. Yeah but writing the code is not what's expensive on this project.
  - Iv 7y ago
    That's my point. What is expensive is to interact with a private entity to do it, to manage risks and potential litigation. All these costs would be saved if the solution was developed in house.
jmartrican 7y ago
Wow. That's like practically free. Would love to see a case study on how this system was implemented.

save_ferris 7y ago

I known it’s not the main point of the story, but the fact that this legislation was intentionally held up by a congressman (a die-hard Ohio State fan) in committee who relented only after meeting with a famous former Ohio State football player who turned his life around after prison is really interesting given the blowback athletes like Kaepernick have gotten for getting political.

Dangeranger 7y ago
There is a kind of person in this world who is only able to empathize with others after an experience is made personal for them. It is frustrating to witness this, yet I’m happy that the player in question recognized that their personal story could make a difference in this instance.
- justaguyhere 7y ago
  There is a kind of person in this world who is only able to empathize with others after an experience is made personal for them I really wish voters don't elect such people to positions of power
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dmix 7y ago
    That’s what people always say. Politics never changes. Yet people continually idealize it will be different next time. It’s the nature of the job IMO
  - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
    Yes, so many congresspeople never cared about gay rights till their son came out. Your comment is sad but true.
    - temp-dude-87844 7y ago
      Consider that the political positions they hold may differ from the views they hold in private, both before and after a seeming change of heart. Successful politicians are skilled opportunists. If the politician believes that holding one kind of view plays well with their constituents, they will hold it until the drawbacks begin to outweigh the advantages or the appetite of the electorate shifts. Consider that news of a politician's family member coming out as gay is likely to invite questions about the politician's stance. They now have a choice: embrace the family member and evolve their political views, or reject them and play the hardliner. Fewer of their constituents would be put off by the first course of action than the latter.

microcolonel 7y ago

> ...interesting given the blowback athletes like Kaepernick have gotten for getting political. Colin Kaepernick didn't get blowback for recognizing a cause , he got blowback for dragging it into the game, and choosing a particularly political way of expressing it. In this case, the cause remained personal rather than political, and was not dragged onto the field.

ebg13 7y ago
> In this case, the cause remained personal rather than political, and was not dragged onto the field. The cause was literally politics. The difference is that it didn't step on anyone's jingoism. (I'm not sure what else to call people getting frothing mad at someone not standing during an anthem.)
- microcolonel 7y ago
  Well, all I can ask is that you try to reread what I wrote, but this time do it in good faith; then imagine for a second that people are maybe not being as unreasonable as you assume.
  - ebg13 7y ago
    > Well, all I can ask is that you try to reread what I wrote Well, you could explain how you think I misread "the cause remained personal rather than political". Or you could explain why you think that fighting to change the law isn't politics. Either of those would be a helpful start. > then imagine for a second that people are maybe not being as unreasonable as you assume People who froth over someone not standing during an anthem instead of looking at why he chose to do that are being exactly as unreasonable as I assume. Or did you mean a different group of people?
    - RHSeeger 7y ago
      People who "people who froth over this" instead of "looking at why this was done" can vary wildly depending on what "this" is and who the person is. You may not see standing during the anthem to be a big deal; someone else might. To take it to an extreme, consider the act of killing someone to push forth an agenda. A dictator, to save lives. A senator, to change the politics of something. You may think one of those is ok but not the other, or both. Someone else may believe differently.

Aloha 7y ago

I think this is great, and I hope programs like this expand nationally over time.

raxxorrax 7y ago
It is a way toward better rehabilitation. Same should be true for financial data. Private prisons the US maintains leave the impression of abusing slave labor.

cascom 7y ago

Unfortunately expungement doesn’t really do much - most questions on employment forms or professional associations (state bar, FINRA, etc) ask about arrests not convictions. Secondly, despite being “expunged” the data still resides in numerous data bases etc. and I don’t believe you have any practical recourse against that. E.g. you go to buy a gun and the NICS system holds you up, or an employer fires you for a conviction found on a third party database what are you going to do?

duxup 7y ago
Numerous databases including mugshot sites that will gladly take your money to take down your mugshot from their site.
flensortow 7y ago
In the US, most states ban the use of an arrest that did not lead to a conviction for the purpose of excluding you for employment. Many states limit how far you can go back in considering convictions. I believe California allows background checks to look at seven years of history.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Those bans come with loopholes that you could drive a bus through. You can determine from free public records search that somebody has an arrest without even knowing what it is, and people use that to filter folks all of the time.
  - sjg007 7y ago
    You can but the background check is after an offer of employment and given the fair credit reporting act they have to tell you why they rejected you.
  - flensortow 7y ago
    Yes, you can illegally discriminate in hiring if you choose to. Most major companies are very careful not to do this. In every case I have had a background check done on me I have asked for the company doing the check to send a copy and in every case the report sent to me certainly appeared to be following the law (the reports explicitly mention how far back they are reviewing).