2017 NLADA Annual Conference

Criminal records create barriers to employment, housing, and other basic needs and services. For immigrant clients, a criminal record may be even more damaging, as it can lead to immigration detention, mandatory deportation, and permanent lifetime banishment from the United States. Cleaning up someone's criminal record can provide a new lease on life, but clearing criminal records for non-citizens raises a host of issues with which advocates must be prepared to grapple. Filing record-clearing petitions can, at times, pose potential immigration risks that may outweigh the benefits. However, certain types of record-clearing mechanisms can actually help clients to obtain crucial immigration relief. With the recent changes in immigration enforcement priorities, it is more important than ever for advocates to understand the risks and rewards of clearing criminal records for non-citizen clients.

Come and discuss issues of technology and how we can keep up.

Imagine a world where it is illegal to sit down. Could you survive if there were no place you were allowed to fall asleep, to store your belongings, or to stand still? In communities across the nation, these harmless, unavoidable behaviors are treated as criminal activity for persons experiencing homelessness, often forcing them into health-threatening situations to avoid detection and creating arrest records that put further barriers between these individuals and the access to housing and services they need. Criminalization of homelessness has been condemned by domestic courts and international human rights monitors, and the federal government and a number of communities have demonstrated success in promoting and utilizing constructive alternatives approaches. This workshop will feature those with direct experience of criminalization, share examples of constructive alternative policies and the strategies used to achieve them, and provide specific legal tools for legal aid and defenders to use in advocacy in courtrooms and city council chambers.

To rebuild communities affected by presidentially declared disasters, Congress may appropriate additional funding to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program as Disaster Recovery grants. Featuring civil legal aid providers and community partners who have experience with CDBG Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) grants, this panel will provide an overview of the CDBG-DR program and how legal aid providers can access and utilize this funding to address the significant disaster recovery needs of their clients.

Expungement and sealing of criminal records have become increasingly popular with state legislatures across the country, and they have been expanding eligibility. But there is another level to which record clearing can go: Automated sealing of cases, using technology in lieu of individual petitions. A Pennsylvania bill is pioneering "Clean Slate" with bipartisan support. Hundreds of thousands of cases may be sealed in this way, without requiring lawyers. Learn how the bill was drafted to make maximum use of the available technology and how the bipartisan and stakeholder support was generated. Possible adaptation of the automation concept to other legal areas will also be discussed with the audience.

Immigrant children are affected by many of the areas of law served by both legal aid lawyers and public defenders. This session covers high impact advocacy that attorneys can provide for their child clients or children of their adult clients in conjunction with their primary legal issues that will help to bolster children’s stability and increase the impact of the primary advocacy for the client. Common legal areas where targeted additional advocacy can have great impact are housing, custody and guardianship, public benefits, and juvenile delinquency defense. The session will cover fundamentals of education law including the rights of homeless youth, enrollment, language access, and Child Find; obtaining Special Immigrant Juvenile predicate orders in conjunction with family court petitions or juvenile delinquency petitions; and strategies for assisting children in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody to obtain release.