Assembly committee to vote on expungement proposal

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A bill that would make changes to Wisconsin’s expungement law will go before a panel of Wisconsin lawmakers this week for a vote.

Current law has certain requirements that a criminal defendant must meet in order to be eligible for expungement, a process that removes criminal records from the state’s online court records. Besides letting offenders apply for expungement only for crimes committed before they were 25, current law allows expungement to be granted only for crimes that are felonies or misdemeanors and have a maximum prison term of less than six years. Requests for expungement must also be made during sentencing proceedings.

Assembly Bill 33 calls for removing the rule limiting expungement to offenders who had committed crimes before the age of 25. The legislatoin would also allow offenders who had not previously obtained a court order for expungement to petition a court to have a record expunged after they have completed their sentences.

The bill also specifies that if a court grants an expungement petition, the crime in question will not be considered a conviction for employment purposes and that requests asking a potential employee to supply information about an expunged crime would constitute employment discriminate based on a conviction record.

The Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety will vote on the bill at 10 a.m. on Thursday in Room 300 Northeast of the state Capitol.
The committee, meanwhile, will also be voting on two other pieces of legislation, AB 28 and AB 34, which, like AB 33, got a hearing earlier this month.

AB 28 would add protections to statements victims make in criminal cases, making them confidential unless they are exculpatory and allowing disclosure of those statements only after a plea had been entered or after a defendant had been convicted in a criminal case.

AB 34 would require that a $5,000 surcharge be imposed on people who are convicted of soliciting or patronizing prostitutes, keeping a prostitution place and pandering. The money collected from the surcharge would be used for treatment and services for sex-trafficking victims and criminal investigations relating to crimes committed against children using the Internet.

Should the committee recommend any bills for adoption, the next step would be for the full Assembly to take them up. Follow @erikastrebel