Last-minute bill trades yield new criminal justice measures

In a flurry of last-minute bill trades accompanying last week’s budget settlement, the Pennsylvania Legislature also passed a list of criminal justice measures — including an overhaul of the state’s probation system as well as an expansion of the Clean Slate program that stands to fix a long-running records access problem.

State lawmakers’ sprint to tie up issues left hanging from the summer budget battles also involved a great deal of horse-trading between the Democratic-majority state House and the Republicanmajority state Senate on criminal justice bills, several of which passed in rapid succession this week and were signed by Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Chief among these was a long-discussed trade between a Senate-backed bill to make probation less heavy-handed and a House-backed expansion of the Clean Slate Law, which automatically seals dropped criminal charges and certain convictions if a person remains offense-free for 10 years.

The bills had been teed up in September, but never moved through as the budget standoff between the two chambers continued.

“We wrapped up a lot of unfinished business here together tonight, but on top of that we’re going beyond what the budget I signed this past summer calls for,” Mr. Shapiro said last week, including the criminal justice reform as part of the grand bargain that capped off the state’s extended budget stalemate.

“These commonsense steps are going to help Pennsylvanians who want to rebuild their lives and meaningfully contribute to our communities, making our justice system more fair, more effective, and more just,” Mr. Shapiro said in remarks after lawmakers finished their deal.

The Clean Slate expansion — championed by Rep. Sheryl Delozier, R-Cumberland County, and Rep. Jordan Harris, D-Philadelphia — will allow additional criminal records to be restricted from public view, including certain non-violent felonies, mostly drug offenses. The prior Clean Slate provisions cover only summary and misdemeanor offenses.

The idea of sealing old convictions, as well as charges that don’t result in a conviction, has enjoyed widespread support as a way to eliminate barriers to housing and employment.

“Clean Slate expansion will allow hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians to move past their old mistakes,” Sharon Dietrich, with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, a staunch backer of the bill, said in a statement.

Over 45 million cases have been kept out of public view since Clean Slate started in 2019, according to state court data, with the vast majority of these being summary offenses or charges that did not result in a conviction.

Only about 173,000 misdemeanor convictions have been stricken from the record under Clean Slate thus far, and the new felony expansion has exceptions against sealing violent offenses, sex offenses, firearms convictions, cruelty to animals, and others, potentially limiting the number of additional cases covered.

The new Clean Slate language also contains a provision added by the Senate to address the ongoing issue of local courts sealing entire cases because one of the charges involved was dropped, even if the defendant was convicted of other charges for the same incident — an interpretation of the law that Ms. Delozier has said was not her intent when crafting the original legislation in 2018.

The Clean Slate law now explicitly states that courts cannot deny access to records relating to convictions not covered by Clean Slate “solely because one or more charges arising out of the same conduct or criminal episode have been afforded limited access” by the law.

The agreement on the House’s Clean Slate measure came in exchange for a probation reform bill by Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Luzerne, the ranking Republican on the Senate’s judiciary committee.

Ms. Baker’s bill adds several pages of new language to Pennsylvania’s statute on probation, with the intent of creating clearer parameters to eliminate unnecessary incarceration for minor probation violations, making the system more fair for those seeking a second chance.

Criminal justice reform advocates had been mixed in their views on the bill. The ACLU and Abolitionist Law Center have said the bill’s language limiting when a person can be confined for a technical violation or placed on probation for unpaid fines includes too many exceptions, potentially giving judges more grounds, not fewer, to jail someone or enact restrictive rules.

Other groups, however, have said the new probation parameters will be an overall positive, giving courts the legal footholds to move away from one-size-fits-all probation sentencing.

“My experience on probation reflected millions of other stories that go unheard,” said rap star Meek Mill, a founder of the criminal justice group REFORM Alliance and who was famously jailed on a technical probation violation.

While they were the centerpieces of the legislative deal, the Clean Slate and probation reform measures were not the only bills that became law as part of this week’s action in Harrisburg. Other measures included bills:

• Limiting the use of certain restraints, body searches, and restrictive housing on pregnant inmates in Pennsylvania’s prisons and jails and pregnant children in juvenile facilities. The bill also imposes reporting requirements and requires facilities to provide free menstrual and hygiene products.

• Increasing penalties for organized retail theft, designed to crack down on groups who are systematically stealing from stores. The bill had faced pushback from some Democrats who feared it would be used to go after minor offenders and not major theft enterprises, with the dollar thresholds in the bill being changed multiple times before it was finally passed and signed by Mr. Shapiro.

• Creating a special prosecutor for crimes on the Philadelphia metro area’s SEPTA transit system, which was supported by Republicans and some Democrats, with others expressing concern that the measure would usurp the authority of the city and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, a frequent target of Republicans.

• Requiring testing for fentanyl and xylazine as part of hospitals’ emergency room drug screenings, and requiring health systems to develop education programs around the drugs.