The Massachusetts House has passed a bill to reform how criminal records are used and available to employers for background checks. Under the new law, a felony conviction is sealed to employers after 10 years, and a misdeameanor criminal conviction after 5 years.

Supporters say this measure is critical to helping people with criminal mistakes in their past move forward and fully reintegrate with society after they have payed their debt, and had no further run-ins with the law.

photo credit: First Daffodils

Known as CORI, which stands for Criminal Offender Record Information, will not seal the most serious crimes, such as murder and manslaughter. A provision in the House version also excludes sex offenses, although that was not in the versions that passed the Senate last year, so that element will have to be reconciled before a final bill reaches the Governor’s desk. Governor Patrick as indicated that he will sign the bill into law.

A criminal conviction can make it very difficult to find a job, since even a minor drug possession conviction  can haunt a person for years.

Many employment applications ask if a person has ever been convicted of a crime. That question will no longer be allowed on job applications, although it is still legal to ask a person about any criminal convictions in an interview.

Statistics show that anyone who has not been in trouble after 6 years is highly unlikely to re-offend. Even in the cases of felony charges like violent assaults.

Newton, MA is now using the latest high tech law enforcement tools to increase parking ticket revenues. Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems are being widely deployed by Massachusetts police departments for tracking down stolen vehicles, drivers with outstanding warrants, and suspended driver’s licenses.

But this is the first reported usage of this technology to specifically target parking violators.

According to the Boston Globe, these systems consist of multiple cameras mounted on police cruisers. The cameras are able to scan and track thousands of license plates per minute within the line of sight of the cameras, even when both vehicles are moving in opposite directions.

The on-board computer system matches plate numbers with a database of parking scofflaws. It will also save the date, time and location of where you are parked, and when they circle back, if you are in the same spot, for example, after a two hour limit, the system can track that violation, even if you’ve been back to “feed the meter”.

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More info on license plate scanning systems.