State Representative Pauline Wendzel is hailing final approval of legislation to reform the expungement process in Michigan. She tells WSJM News a bipartisan group of state lawmakers have been working on the plan for more than a year.
“This is going to help a lot of people get jobs and fix our broken criminal justice system,” Wendzel said.
Wendzel’s contribution to the package is a bill to make some traffic offenses expungeable. She says an example would be getting caught driving without a license, something someone could do by mistake.
“I was just talking to a local employer, and they had somebody working for them who didn’t even know that this was on their record from when they were 16 years old. It came up, and they had to move the employee to a different position because they were no longer qualified for their position.”
Wendzel says it also makes sense to expunge marijuana offenses that would not be illegal now, assuming a judge approves the expungement.
