Touting it as a first-in-the-nation initiative, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty’s office launched a prosecutor-led application process for people looking to have their juvenile criminal records expunged.
Moriarty said her office was primarily examining juvenile misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors and some “low-level felonies like drug or property cases.”
“Cases, in other words, where young people have made mistakes, which kids often do as their brains continue to develop,” Moriarty said. “Criminal records even for minor cases can follow youth forever and impact their ability to further education, seek employment, maintain stable housing and so much more.”
The process runs through the state’s Help Seal My Record portal. So far, more than 800 people have sought expungement for a crime on their juvenile record. The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office has reviewed more than 230 of those requests and has been averaging 20 expungement motions to the courts per month in recent months.
A Hennepin County judge must sign off on any motion to have a juvenile record expunged.
This became an area of focus for the Attorney’s Office because of how juvenile criminal records show up on background checks and hamper a person’s ability to find employment or housing. For example, Moriarty said a person applying to work for the Minnesota Department of Human Services who had a juvenile felony conviction for drug possession or theft could be disqualified for employment with that department for between seven and 15 years, depending on the severity of the charge. Moriarty said those disqualifications for juvenile convictions were identical to the disqualifications for adult convictions.
Justin Terrell, the executive director of the Minnesota Justice Research Center, said that despite the unending efforts of a huge network of people working in juvenile justice in Hennepin County, the response remains inadequate. He pointed to citizens who are worried that if they are the victim of juvenile crime no one will be held responsible, and to people who committed crimes as juveniles who are actively trying to better their lives but are stuck with a criminal record.
“If you just look at crime statistics, a lot of the crimes we’re worried about are crimes that tend to be committed within certain age ranges,” Terrell said. “We don’t want young people ruining the rest of their lives from reckless behavior.