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Reform Rights Restoration Process

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By MARK SCHLAKMAN Special To The Tampa Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 1, 2008

Gov. Charlie Crist recently announced that the state restored the civil rights of 115,000 ex-offenders since certain clemency rules were changed in April 2007. But that number may be somewhat illusory.

The Parole Commission, the investigative arm of the Clemency Board, advised that 90,000 were older cases that date back to the early 1980s and the remaining 25,000 were more recent cases pending final action by the governor and Cabinet sitting as the Clemency Board.

Many of the corresponding notification letters sent out by the Office of Executive Clemency were returned unopened because the addresses on file were out of date. Consequently, those ex-offenders are unlikely to register to vote because they don't know that their civil rights have been restored.

While the governor and Cabinet should be commended for making it easier for largely nonviolent ex-offenders to regain their civil rights to vote, serve on a jury and hold public office after they complete their sentences, more than 300,000 older rights restoration cases identified by the Department of Corrections were deemed ineligible under the new rules.

Aside from the older cases, the Parole Commission acknowledged a current backlog of about 60,000 recent rights restoration cases that had been set aside to process the older ones. This backlog will be difficult to eliminate since its request for 42 additional staff positions was ignored by the 2008 Legislature and its budget was eventually cut by 20 percent. Ironically, the new positions were requested to ensure the timely processing of rights restoration cases.

Aside from the backlog, the Department of Corrections transmits the names of about 4,000 ex-offenders to the Parole Commission each month for rights restoration review after release or termination from probation. Moreover, recent trends suggest that many of the rights restoration cases that now go before the board for a hearing will be denied.

Simply put, the rights restoration process must be re-engineered to address the public interest and the needs of ex-offenders.

And here's what the state needs to do: (1) The governor and Cabinet should modify the long-standing clemency rule that requires ex-offenders to pay court-ordered restitution obligations in-full before their rights can be restored. (2) The connection must be broken between rights restoration and eligibility for certain state occupational licenses and other public jobs.

Ex-offenders should be required to pay all court-ordered victim restitution, but full payment should not be a pre-condition for rights restoration. Apart from clemency, state officials should re-evaluate relevant enforcement mechanisms to ensure that crime victims receive restitution payments along the lines of previous action taken to address delinquent child-support payments.

Once employment restrictions are decoupled from the rights restoration process, more meaningful employment criteria could be established outside of clemency by state regulators that would facilitate appropriate post-release employment for ex-offenders and more effectively address related public safety or other licensing concerns.

State Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink made this point during a Cabinet meeting earlier this week when talking about the problems that have been brought to light insofar as the licensing of mortgage brokers. The rights restoration process was never intended to serve this larger purpose.

There would be no need to distinguish violent from nonviolent offenses for purposes of simply determining one's fitness to vote. The three tiers of review that were established by the 2007 rule changes, which can be cumbersome and costly, could be collapsed into one resembling the standard adopted by Gov. Rubin Askew in 1975 when the state restored ex-offenders' civil rights virtually automatically upon verification of completion of sentence.

With an eye toward the upcoming elections, Crist could issue an executive order, apart from clemency, to require state agencies and boards that he oversees to conform ex-offender employment restrictions to the language contained in S2152, a comprehensive re-entry bill that passed the Senate this year but died in the House. The relevant provision said ex-offenders could not be denied based solely upon the status of their civil rights. However, they could be denied for cause.

CFO Sink and Commissioner Charles Bronson oversee certain state agencies and boards that the governor doesn't supervise. The governor and Cabinet exercise collective oversight in other areas. Similar action could be taken on these fronts and lawmakers could revisit these matters next year.

With another stroke of his pen, Crist, with approval from at least two Cabinet members, could restore the civil rights of many more ex-offenders who have completed their sentences and thereby enable them to register to vote. Only then will the rights restoration process in Florida reflect the kind of fundamental fairness that the governor has been talking about.

Mark Schlakman serves as senior program director at the Center for the Advancement of Human Rights at Florida State University. He previously served as special counsel to former Gov. Lawton Chiles.

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