Detroit – As a mother of three, Quiana Griffin has a passion for child welfare but said decisions made in her younger years prevented her from fulfilling her dream.
“I had a very, I would say, rebellious and tumultuous upbringing,” said Griffin, 42, of Detroit, who said she had run into the law as a teenager. “I was here when I was 40 and those things still haunted me.”
Griffin is among Detroiters who got a second chance on the workforce after their criminal record was cleared under the city’s Project Clean Slate program.
Detroit started the initiative in 2016 and expanded it earlier this year when state law went into effect expanding the number and types of offenses eligible for deletion.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan urged lawmakers to expand the program.
Stephanie LaBelle, senior attorney at Project Clean Slate, said the team is now working to provide more help with handling the influx of applications since the expansion in April. The city has 9,500 applicants.
In addition to LaBelle, the staff includes Carrie Jones, the director of Project Clean Slate, a paralegal and two contract lawyers who oversee court hearings.
“We are in the process of hiring four additional people, that will really help,” said Labelle.
The program receives most of its funding from the city and supplements it with foundation grants, scholarships and fundraising. Efforts connect clients with attorneys to assist them through the deletion process. It also links applicants to job vacancies and preparation programs.
Under the laws that expanded the program, applicants are entitled to automatic waiver of up to two crimes and four crimes in their lifetime. The services are free for eligible applicants.
Crimes such as murder, rape and driving under the influence or driving offenses in which someone has been killed are not eligible.
Project Clean Slate is a five-step process that begins with residents filling out an application. If they are eligible, they will be given an appointment with Project Clean Slate to have their fingerprints taken to verify their identity. Then their police and court records will be requested.
Project Clean Slate’s attorney assigned to each client files a judicial motion to have their convictions set aside. Within about 90 days, the client takes part in a hearing with the lawyer. Four to six weeks later, the client receives notification that the conviction has been overturned.
For Griffin, Project Clean Slate came into play at the end of 2019. She heard about it on the news and immediately called to start her trial. After some delays related to the COVID-19 pandemic, two offenses, one for retail fraud and one for marijuana possession, and one for retail fraud were removed from their records.
She recently began working in the South Redford School District as a teaching assistant for fourth grade at Fisher Elementary School.
“From my fingerprints to filling out all the necessary papers, I literally just showed up and I showed up with a future,” Griffin said.
Duggan hopes the city can process 1,000 deletions in the first year. Last year, Project Clean Slate helped about 300 Detroiters break their records. More than 6,700 Detroiters applied for the program under the program rules prior to the expansion. However, according to the city, only 12% were eligible.
“So many of our customers are now eligible for deletion,” said LaBelle. “We used to have to reject a large percentage of our employees and now have so many eligible Detroiters that we have them in queues because we can only process so many applications at the same time.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed the bipartisan erasure law in October.
On Friday, the governor signed a law allowing first-time drunkards to file a request for deletion. Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan’s bill provides for a five-year waiting period from the time a defendant is convicted or the date of completion of incarceration, parole, or parole to the point at which a person files an application for the offense to be set aside.
Whitmer signed two more bills in this bipartisan package in late August but had to wait for the Senate to approve McBroom’s stake. The bills will take effect in six months.
Hector Santiago, 36, from southwest Detroit, attended Whitmer’s signing of the erasure law last fall.
Santiago, a candidate for District 6 of Detroit City Council, joined the program in Fall 2019. His wife Liz saw a billboard for the Clean Slate project and told him to call, he said.
He wanted a crime charged obtain a controlled substance was fraudulently removed from his file.
Santiago’s process moved quickly after going through the sign-up process, and his file was deleted in October while he was working as a program manager for Greening of Detroit, a not-for-profit city.
“Two years ago… I was blessed with the opportunity to receive a deletion. That was the day I actually made my decision to run for Detroit City Council, ”he said. “It was the most emotional day of my life.”
Residents can visit detroitmi.gov/projectcleanslate to begin registration, email [email protected], or call (313) 237-3024.
Comments are closed.