A mistake doesn’t have to be a life sentence.
That’s the promise of Georgia’s First Offender Act, which is meant to give residents who find themselves facing their first misdemeanor or qualifying felony charge a chance to avoid the stigma that comes with having a criminal record.
First enacted in 1968, the law is a type of deferred adjudication program where a judge can offer certain defendants a reduced sentence – such as a fine or probation – rather than a conviction. There are some limits – with charges like DUIs, serious violent felonies and certain sexual offenses among those that are considered disqualifying – but every year, between 8,000 and 11,000 Georgians enter a first offender plea.
But until this month, records for first offender pleas were generally sealed upon completion of the program instead of at the time of sentencing, meaning that they could be publicly available for years before being removed from public view.
According to Rep. Leesa Hagan, a Lyons Republican who sponsored a bill updating the First Offender Act this year, that meant that private background check companies could gain access to court records before they were sealed and store them in an internal database. Those records could then come up during background checks, causing trouble for participants in the program who were told their records would not be public.