According to the Washington State Expungement Gap study published by Santa Clara Law and the King County Bar Association, the racialized impacts of Washington State’s criminal legal system are significant: African-Americans represent 4.2% of individuals in Washington but represent 11% of Washingtonians with a criminal record, 15% of Washingtonians with any felony record, and 22% of Washingtonians with a Class A felony record.
Latinx individuals are also heavily targeted by the criminal legal system. Washington, like most other states, does not collect accurate data on its Latinx population, instead labeling Latinx people as simply Black or White. This makes it impossible to understand how deep criminal legal system contact is in the Latinx community. Washington’s indigenous population is also subjected to racially disparate criminal legal system contact with the Department of Corrections (DOC) reporting that while only 1.8% identify as indigenous, the indigenous community represents 6.0% of the incarcerated population.
A new funding opportunity is available from the Department of Community and Human Services to fund community-based and/or legal service providing organizations to provide support with record expungement and collateral financial consequences relief for those in King County burdened by drug conviction related criminal records and intersecting collateral impacts.
Funding for Record Expungement and Collateral Financial Consequence Relief
The Record Expungement and Collateral Financial Consequence Relief Request for Proposals (RFP) funding focuses on three basic areas:
- Legal aid to support people seeking to expunge drug convictions
- Funds to assist with collateral financial impacts resulting from criminal legal system contact related to drug enforcement
- Support for community-based organization(s) to address structural and systems barriers to change the conditions that lead to the overcriminalization of Black, Indigenous, Latinx and other communities of color
Funded programs will assist community members with collateral financial consequence relief, and access to record expungement including but not limited to:
- Legal advocacy to support eligible individuals in accessing available drug related record expungement and LFO relief
- Supporting people who have been burdened by drug conviction related criminal records and intersecting collateral impacts to navigate the criminal legal system
- Community engagement, education, and outreach to collaborate with and support communities eligible for record expungement and LFO relief services to learn about available relief
- Collateral financial relief through flexible financial assistance and direct legal financial obligation relief payments on behalf of community members when not otherwise available
- Upstream changemaking including but not limited to the development of continuing best practices, advocacy, and strategic planning to address structural and systems change work
Application details
Available funding: Up to $2.8 million funded by repurposing Marijuana Enforcement Revenue
Questions: Contact Shannon Perez-Darby at sperezd@kingcounty.gov
Applications due: August 17, 2021 by 1 pm
Join us for more information
Bidders Conference
June 25, 2021 | 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Join by Teams
Join by phone:425-653-6586, Conference ID: 197 123 752#
This will be a remote session with speech to text captioning provided. For accommodations to participate, please contact the procurement lead by June 21, 2021.
For more information and to apply visit: https://kingcounty.zoomgrants.com/zgf/recordexpungement
