John Blomster: Welcome to 红桃视频. I'm John Blomster. And today we're speaking with Maria Jouravleva, a staff attorney for Volunteer Legal Services at the King County Bar Association. She's here visiting the law school today as part of 红桃视频鈥檚 Social Justice Tuesday series, and we're thrilled to have her here to discuss a landmark piece of legislation and the impact it has on criminal convictions throughout the state. And so anytime we can talk about criminal justice, it's always really exciting. So, we're excited to dive into thank you very much for being here.
Maria Jouravleva: Thank you for having me.
Blomster: So, before we dive in, can you share a little bit about your role at the KCBA and the general mission of the Volunteer Legal Services program?
Jouravleva: Sure. So, I'll start with the program. We aim to provide legal aid to people who are furthest from opportunity, which usually like people who are 200% or below the federal poverty line. They often have faced a number of social economic injustices, racial injustice, lots of barriers of all sorts. Some of them have cognitive disabilities or physical disabilities. Many of them are on a strict income like Social Security or Social Security disability, so it affects their availability to access legal resources. And so our goal is to connect them with volunteer attorneys who can help provide that legal aid at no cost or very, very little cost.
Blomster: And so part of that program is a huge project, a big focus of your work at the KCBA. Can you tell us a little bit about what the Records Project is and what it's all about?
Jouravleva: Yeah, so the Records Project aims to help the same demographic of people who are furthest from opportunity vacate their criminal convictions, so that looks like taking convictions off their record, so long as they're eligible. A lot of times we see shoplifting or marijuana possession, very low-level crimes, but things that get in the way of people finding employment or housing. A lot of my work involves providing direct representation to those clients or connecting them to a volunteer attorney who can provide that representation. If I can kind of funnel up my work to other people, then we can serve more clients.
Blomster: You talk about employment and housing, and I'd like to touch on that a little bit more. What kind of barriers does a criminal conviction set for people who are trying to move on with their life as a regular citizen later in life?
Jouravleva: So many barriers. There are collateral consequences. So those look like things in our state law that says you are prohibited from having a right to a gun or from accessing certain types of financial aid from obtaining federal loans like to go back to school. There's socioeconomic barriers, and there's barriers related to stigma. So, having a criminal conviction, having that loss of community really affects people, makes them less in the eyes of their community, which isn't necessarily the correct approach, but it's a bias that many people harbor and then there's stigma, and just kind of barriers in terms of accessing like private loans to start your own business. So, for a lot of our people or a lot of our clients, they'll often come to us and say, you know, I've applied to 50 jobs, I've applied to 75 jobs, wasn't able to find anything in my wheelhouse, you know, and I'm being repeatedly denied on the basis of a criminal background check, or at that point where they're doing a background check, or my landlord denied me or imposed a higher risk fee, which is technically illegal, to allow me to live in this location for a conviction that, you know, doesn't affect whether or not they're a good tenant, it might be for obstructing a police officer, but that has no bearing on whether or not you're going to pay your rent next month, right?
Blomster: So earlier this year, the Washington Legislature passed a piece of legislation that has had profound implications for people with criminal convictions and the work that you do. Can you tell us a little bit about the new hope act and what changes that it made to existing law in practice?
Jouravleva: Sure. So, the New Hope Act was passed at the end of July. And it was unique in that it was a criminal justice reform bill that was supported both by victims advocacy groups, and then also people who were advocating for criminal reform for people who had perpetrated crimes. So, it was just this massive joint effort to minimize recidivism. And what it does, it's expanded the eligibility. So, before July 28, if you had one misdemeanor on your record, that was the only one you could have vacate in your lifetime. If you had more than that. You were out of luck. And so one issue that we ran into with a lot of clients is they would maybe have at 18, they say, stole a car, or they were caught with some kind of felony conviction. And then since then, you know, in their 20s, maybe they had two misdemeanor convictions. And now in the 30s 40s they are adults, they're really trying to move up in their careers, can't find anything. And they would come to us and we would say, 鈥淪orry, you can only get to your most recent misdemeanor conviction. You can't get to anything else outside of that.鈥 And they would just give up there because if the felony is what's keeping them from finding work, why bother? And so this has now expanded the eligibility so that we can vacate all eligible misdemeanors, and any eligible felonies.
Blomster: I鈥檇 imagine that you were quite happy about that, right? I mean, that's a pretty big shift. And I feel like that may be correcting some of the things that are maybe unnecessary challenges for people trying to better themselves and find employment.
Jouravleva: Oh, yeah, of course. We actually wound up reaching back out to clients that we had previously denied for services because they weren't eligible to get to the felony that they wanted, and telling them 鈥淗ey, your case is up for reevaluation since this law changed. Would you like us to reevaluate it?鈥 And if they said yes, and we found that they were eligible for new convictions, we would go ahead and assist them in vacating those convictions and for a lot of people, it made a world of difference
Blomster: I can imagine. So just to get the definition, right. What exactly does it mean to vacate a conviction and what are the requirements for doing so?
Jouravleva: Sure. So, in one sentence, vacating a conviction is removing a conviction from the watch reports that Washington State Patrol issues. It doesn't affect the public record in terms of what's available through the courts. Doesn't affect what you can see through private third-party businesses. So, its impact maybe isn't as far reaching as some people would like, but it still makes a difference. Since so many employers are turning to Washington State Patrol reports, it does make a difference for our clients. And then in terms of who is eligible, there's kind of like a four-part test. It has to be an eligible conviction. So, for people who maybe have murdered somebody, or just these higher level or very egregious violent offenses, that's not something that's ever going to be accessible to them.
Blomster: Right.
Jouravleva: But it has to be eligible to begin with. They have to have completed all their sentencing obligations. So, that looks like you know, did they complete their jail time? Did they complete probation or parole? Did they complete any drug assessments or mental health assessments? Did they pay off all their legal financial obligations? If you have a felony, did you get the appropriate paperwork after you complete a probation? Like it's all these little things that you have to complete as part of those sentencing requirements. There can't be any current pending charges. So, that looks like active protection orders, active warrants for arrest, or any charges in any court. And then finally, the requisite wait time has to toll. So, what that means is that after you've completed all your obligations, there's still a waiting period where you kind of have to keep your nose clean. And for misdemeanors, that looks like three to five years, depending on the type of misdemeanor, for felonies that looks like five to 10 years.
Blomster: Okay, so I'd like to maybe talk through a practical example of what the process is when you're working with a client. So, either hypothetical or a real-world scenario. What's the process for someone who either you鈥檝e worked with or that you use as an example in terms of, who鈥檚 had a conviction and has gone through the process of vacating it under the new law?
Jouravleva: So, for our clients through the Records Project, we usually require that they do kind of like an intake interview to check for eligibility. Typically, we look for financial eligibility, but also just like a quick screen to see if we're even the right place for them. And that's like a 20 minute conversation with our paralegal and just kind of tell us a little bit about themselves the difficulties that they faced, answer a few questions and then our paralegal starts doing the research and she starts pulling the cases, she starts looking for the certificate of discharge, if that was included as part of the court record. We might look through a couple different databases to check and make sure that we've covered all their convictions because, as you can imagine, for people who come to us with convictions from 40, 45 years ago, the paper works a little sparse, so we have to put some puzzle pieces together. If it was more recent, like 2015, 2016, we might look to see what the obligations were or what the kind of charge was and get an idea of how long they have to wait. We put together a letter for them that explains what each charge was, we tell them if they're eligible to vacate or not, and if not, why, and we try to make it really easy to follow and provided that they're eligible to vacate. Then we kind of reach out to them and say, 鈥淗ey, here's what you're eligible to vacate for or if your whole records eligible to vacate. Do you want anything specifically? Or do you want the whole record vacated?鈥
So, we really try to empower people by putting it back in their hands, and we get mixed responses. But for somebody who is looking to vacate only a felony that they really care about, and they don't care about anything else, then they'll tell us well, I really only care about this one thing. We鈥檒l match them with a volunteer attorney who's available or who might be a good fit. So, if somebody has had a lot of trauma in their past, we'll try to screen to make sure that the attorney we match them doesn't bring that trauma back up to the surface.
Our volunteer attorneys really help us assist in filling out the documents, which usually look like checkboxes and signing their name. But in the case of like if they need some legal financial obligations waived, then providing that declaration, getting that story, figuring out what facts matter to the court and what facts don't matter to the court, and maybe doing a follow up memo of 鈥淗ey, court, these shouldn't have been imposed in the first place. Why are they there?鈥 But we do have more clients than we have volunteer attorneys. So, oftentimes, our team winds up doing direct representation for clients anyways,
Blomster: It鈥檚 like you mentioned, there is a stigma, a lot of times around people with convictions and particularly felonies. And so why is this work, the work that you're doing, and then particularly the law as well, so important, both for these individuals, but then also for our community at large?
Jouravleva: Sure. So, I think the New Hope Act is one small step in the right direction. It's not a massive overhaul of our criminal justice system, and it certainly could use one. But it is a step in the right direction, and I think one of the reasons why this stuff is so important is that if we can set the standard for other communities, for other states, for other municipalities, whatever, showing that vacating criminal convictions doesn't lead to total and utter chaos, that in fact, it helps a lot of people and maybe it promotes an economy or maybe it promotes community because people feel like they are now more involved that they have, that they've been empowered to do things to take back their lives to kind of be in charge of what people can or can't see, to be able to navigate the court system even on, like, a very layman level. When they see that process hasn't totally destroyed our society or however you want to phrase that chaos, then they'll be more inclined to take that step when they've seen somebody else take on the risk, and it turned out to be actually super beneficial in the same way that Washington and Colorado decriminalized marijuana and now so many other states are following suit. Vacating connections is one step in the right direction towards criminal justice reform. And I think that that's where the power comes in. On its own, it's a great change for the citizens of Washington state, maybe not as powerful as some other people would have hoped. But definitely, we're moving in the direction we should be.
Blomster: Lastly, how can listeners and, particularly law students, get involved in this kind of work and all that you're doing on behalf of the region's vulnerable populations, both through the Records Act and then as part of the broader program of which you're a part?
Jouravleva: Sure. So, the King County Bar Association has a lot of opportunities for students to get involved, even if criminal justice is not your thing. We have a lot of volunteer programs that are always looking for students to staff. Specifically for the Records Project, we have interns who assist us with drafting briefs for the court and doing the legal research and conducting intakes with clients. So, actually working with them one on one. For rule nine interns, they have the opportunity to appear in court and to argue cases in front of a judge if that's what they want to do. We also get a lot of benefit from volunteer attorneys who reach out to us. But for students, I would say we definitely benefit from interns, externs, rural nines. We鈥檒l, you know, take anybody who's passionate and interested about this.
Blomster: Well we certainly have a lot of those here, as I know you're familiar with.
Jouravleva: Yay [clapping].
Blomster: Maria Jouravleva is staff attorney for Volunteer Legal Services at the King County Bar Association. You can learn more about her work at the KCBA, all about the records project and many pro bono legal efforts of which she is a part at kcba.org. And check out the show notes on our 红桃视频 podcast page for links to this and more in depth content, and also find ways to get involved.
Maria, thank you very much for joining us.
Jouravleva: Thank you for having me.
