Commissioner Williams to Meet with Expungement Board to Streamline Record Clearing

Police Commissioner Chester Williams is expected to meet shortly with the Criminal Expungement Board to streamline the process of wiping criminal records for first-time offenders. The streamlining process will look at timelines and synergies to ensure that the clearing of offences would be reflected on police records.  Once the process is in place, Chairman of the Board, Leslie Hamilton, says the board will convene twice per month to review applications.  He added that each application would then have a 90-day period for processing.  In an interview with Love News, Hamilton noted that there is a prescribed list of convictions that will be reviewed.

Lelise Hamilton, Chairman, Criminal Expungement Board: “The board is looking at a time period of ninety days. However if it can be done within a shorter period of time I could assure you that that would happen. So it does not necessarily mean that ninety days. Ninety days would be the max.  So It could be much lesser than that period of time but we are looking forward. Schedule two you will find the offense of wounding that’s one. Schedule three you probably would find offenses like common assault, intentional harm, again wounding, so all those offenses the board is empowered to look at those offenses.”

The four-member Criminal Expungement Board is comprised of  Attorney Leslie Hamilton as the Chair; Melissa Miralda as the Deputy Director of the Community Rehabilitation Department for the Ministry of Human Development, and Arturo Lui as the representative from the Ministry of Home Affairs.