Medicaid patients will need to adhere to work requirements starting in 2027. But one of the obstacles people can face when applying for jobs is a criminal record.
Code for America, a nonprofit working with governments to improve their technological systems, said automatic record clearance is more important than ever.
In Hawaiʻi, possession of under 3 grams of cannabis was decriminalized about five years ago. But many people still have arrest and conviction records that are eligible for expungement.
People can petition themselves to have the records cleared. But David Crawford, the senior program director of Code for America’s Clear My Record program, said the process is difficult to navigate, and state-initiated record clearance would be a better option.
“If you have a record that's keeping you from getting a traditional job, you might have to take up multiple side hustles to make ends meet,” Crawford said.
“You could imagine that would be a really difficult way to report on all these things to comply with it. The combination of criminal records blocking people from getting access to jobs and having to navigate a petition process to clear their record and having to navigate a work reporting process, all of these things put people into a double bind.”
Hawaiʻi Island has a pilot program to do state-initiated clearance of non-conviction marijuana possession arrest records. Lawmakers were set to be updated on that program on Tuesday.
