A criminal record creates a lifetime of barriers for impacted individuals and their families. The Community Reinvestment Project is funding civil and criminal legal assistance to provide post-conviction relief and case assistance for communities disproportionally harmed by the war on drugs.
Areas for strategic investment
The Community Reinvestment Plan allocated funding in this program through two strategic sets of investments: vacating criminal records and legal financial obligations relief, and legal representation.
Grant funding
CRP’s legal representation grant program aims to address the needs of Black, tribal and Latine individuals impacted by the criminal justice system through:
- Outreach and navigation ($400,000): This initiative focuses on providing immediate relief to individuals not currently impacted by the criminal justice system. It supports outreach and legal navigation initiatives, with an emphasis on peer-to-peer navigation and strategic partnerships. The goal is to establish a unified team actively participating in the development of an automated system and assisting impacted individuals.
- Expansion of reentry legal services ($4.1 million): This funding enhances the legal reentry capacity within community-based organizations, By and For organizations, and existing legal aid providers. Collaboration with embedded in-house attorneys leverages their expertise in reentry legal services. The program is tailored to each organization’s capacity and includes explicit pathways for engagement beyond the existing CLEAR system.
- Integrated Reentry Legal and Public Defense Services Pilot Program ($1.5 million): This program focuses on integrating reentry legal services with public defense services in targeted areas. Civil reentry attorneys collaborate with public defense attorneys and clients to identify relief and mitigate collateral consequences, such as vacatur, LFO remission, and re-licensure. They work with existing civil legal aid providers and the automated tool project manager to address common concerns.
Washington state offers self-help online court forms and instructions for individuals seeking to vacate a felony drug possession conviction or related charges in a Washington State Superior Court, as well as request a refund of legal financial obligation (LFO) payments. By answering questions, these forms generate a completed motion, order, notice, and proof of service forms.
CRP is funding the Office of Civil Legal Aid to support the vacating of criminal records and LFO relief. Specifically, OCLA will contract for the development of an automatic criminal record-sealing software to vacate criminal records and resolve LFOs.