What you don’t know really can hurt you, especially if it’s paperwork in some police department’s files regarding a long-forgotten foolish moment in your youth.
That was the message presented to a small audience at Oak Park village hall earlier this month by Diane Walsh. A legal officer for the Cook County Juvenile Justice Division, Walsh wants adults with prior minor brushes with the law to take steps to assure that what happened in their past stays there.
“Kids do things that maybe should not follow them through their lives,” said Walsh.
Yet the record of a conviction for minor, non-violent misdemeanors-or even an arrest that was tossed out and never made it into court-can crop up decades later.
Many companies require applicants to sign a waiver allowing them to conduct a thorough background check. Refusal to sign the waiver results in being rejected. But once a person signs, anyone contacted, including police departments, must turn over anything in their files about the person.
Walsh related the story of man who did a drug deal as a 17-year-old and got 18 months probation. When the man went to apply for a trucker’s license as a 45-year-old, he was turned down after a background check turned up the 28-year-old conviction.
“It’s really heart-breaking to see,” said Walsh, noting that people have been denied assignment to elite military units and admission to law school due to forgotten but still recorded juvenile misdeeds.
Juvenile convictions aren’t the only threat. Background information can include records of an arrest at 15 years old that was disposed of at the station and never saw a courtroom. But if that arrest report is still in a file somewhere, it must be forwarded to the potential employer, who may or may not be understanding about youthful indiscretions.
“Kids don’t think about that, about 10 years down the road,” said John FS Williams, who heads the Oak Park Township’s Gang and Youth Task Force.
Williams, who has dealt with many hundreds of at-risk adolescents the past 10 years, is qualified in his support of expunging records.
“In the main, it’s a good option so kids have a chance to clear their slate,” he said.
But there are misdemeanors, and there are misdemeanors, he added, noting, “Some misdemeanors are not so minor. It depends on what type. If there’s a cycle of increasing violence … sometimes it’s not a good thing to lose that info.”
The county expungement program does in fact differentiate between such low-grade crimes as vandalism, possession of alcohol or jumping a rapid transit turnstile, and more serious crimes like burglary and possession of dangerous drugs, as well as crimes of violence. The latter are in most cases not able to be expunged.
Williams said he believes that most isolated juvenile missteps have little predictive value for employers or others.
“I don’t believe it’s a good indicator of future criminal behavior,” he said. He added that maturity in one area of a teen’s life doesn’t predict maturity in another area, saying, “The skills don’t necessarily cross over. Kids can be really responsible in one area, and complete buffoons in another. They may be well-disciplined in academics and athletics, but in a social setting with friends, they act irresponsibly.”
Oak Park’s top juvenile officer, Commander Phyliss Howard, said that her department uses court diversionary programs like TIME to keep kids out of the court system whenever appropriate.
“If they do what they’re supposed to do, their files don’t make it to the court,” she said. Williams said that the Oak Park and River Forest juveniles involved in the TIME intervention program can be divided into two groups-those whose cases have been diverted from the court system, and those who enter the TIME program in addition to any other court decision. Most times, involvement in a diversion program like TIME is all a kid needs to begin moderating foolish behavior and avoiding additional arrests.
In any event, the best advice, experts say, is to make certain that all evidence of any brushes with the law are erased completely.