Bill > H1657

This bill proposes several significant changes to juvenile and young adult criminal record expungement laws in Massachusetts. It redefines "expungement" as the permanent erasure of a record so that it is no longer accessible to courts, criminal justice agencies, or other state, municipal, or county agencies, while allowing the maintenance of statistical information without identifying details. The bill removes previous restrictions on the number of records that can be expunged and expands eligibility for record expungement. Specifically, it allows expungement for records with dispositions that did not result in an adjudication or conviction, with different time frames for felonies (7 years) and misdemeanors or juvenile court offenses (3 years). The bill also adds new provisions, such as excluding certain serious offenses from expungement, including those involving death, serious bodily injury, sex offenses, and domestic violence-related convictions. Additionally, the bill introduces a requirement for the commissioner of probation to collect and annually report detailed statistics on expungement and sealing petitions, including the number of petitions, allowances, and denials. The legislation also limits the transmission of arrest records and fingerprints for individuals under the criminal majority age to federal agencies, except for specific sealing and expungement purposes.

Justice

https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/H1657