For Newton, A ‘Clean Slate’ Bolsters Community Productivity

Channeling a newly enacted Pennsylvania law, City Councilman Ernie Newton wants Connecticut to become the second state in the country to enact “clean slate” legislation to “send a clear message that everyone deserves a second chance, people should no longer have to suffer for mistakes they made years ago, they should no longer be subjected to treatment as second-class citizens.” The Pennsylvania law allows for individuals to petition the courts for their records to be sealed if a person has been free from conviction for 10 years for an offense that resulted in a year or more in prison and has paid all court-ordered financial debts.

Newton is familiar with the ways of the Connecticut General Assembly and second chances. It was while he was a state senator more than a decade ago he entered a guilty plea on federal corruption charges. Today he helps ex-offenders prepare for the work force as a “returning citizen navigator” for Career Resources. After two unsuccessful runs for the legislature in 2012 and 2014, Newton won a seat on the City Council in 2017, going back to the roots of his political career that began in 1981 and shortly after his rise as the first African American president of the city’s legislative body.

In the larger picture Newton is hopeful his rally cry generates enough momentum to expunge minor charges that leave a lasting blemish. “Many people are locked out of a path to find work and become productive contributors to their community because of the stigma of past mistakes,” says Newton.

Newton is lobbying Bridgeport’s eight-member state legislative delegation to propose his idea at the next session of the General Assembly in January. He’s also asking community leaders in other cities and towns to do the same.

In part the resolution declares, “for too long society has only sought to be tough on crime, an approach that costs our state millions of dollars annually, and takes an unnecessary toll on the lives of countless numbers of otherwise decent citizens who have paid their legal debt to society but find themselves locked out of a path to productive citizenry … what Connecticut needs to enact is legislation that allows citizens who have paid their debt to society, and proven their rehabilitation, to be truly reintegrated into society by automatically sealing after a period time those records of arrests that did not result in convictions or convictions for lower-level, nonviolent crimes.”