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Bill would make it easier for trafficking victims to expunge criminal records
Rep. Fred Hawkins
A House panel has licensed a measure that sponsors say would make it easier for human trafficking victims to go back to a society.
The House Criminal Justice Subcommittee voted 17-0 on March 13 to approve HB 841 through Rep. Fred Hawkins, R-Orlando.
“Human trafficking is a modern-day slavery that can happen in any community,” Hawkins advised the panel. “No family is immune.”
Advocates say the largest barrier to restoration is the criminal report that victims gather whilst doing their trafficker’s bidding.
The measure would make it easier for victims to expunge any criminal report this is “directly related” to being trafficked – aside from violent offenses, equivalent to theft, kidnapping, and annoyed attack.
HB 841 would make a human trafficking sufferer’s petition for expungement, “and all related pleadings and documents,” exempt from public records rules.
Without a public records exemption, victims would be uncovered to “possible discrimination due to details of their past lives becoming public knowledge,” the invoice states in a declaration of public necessity.
“Persons who are victims of human trafficking and who have been arrested for offenses committed, or reported to have been committed, as a result of being trafficked, are themselves victims of crime,” the invoice states.
The measure has the improve of the Florida Juvenile Justice Association and the Florida Smart Justice Alliance.
“To put it simply, this is a bill that will give people back their lives,” Hawkins stated.
The invoice faces hearings within the Ethics, Elections & Open Government Subcommittee and Judiciary ahead of achieving the House flooring.
A significant other, SB 1210 through Sen. Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, receives its first listening to within the Children, Families and Elder Affairs Committee on March 14.
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