In Feb. 2015, CDIA’s Senior Vice President of Public Policy & Legal Affairs, Eric J. Ellman, was a panelist at the 1st National Summit on Collateral Consequences.  The Washington, D.C. summit was sponsored by the American Bar Association and the National Institute of Justice.  Eric’s panel, Criminal Records in the Digital Age, was a lively discussion that included topics like sealed cases and expunged records.  CDIA members, as a general rule, do not report sealed cases or expunged records, nor do they report arrests that do not result in convictions.

On collateral consequences, the focus of the conference, Eric noted that too many people are closed off from too many jobs because of absolute bars on work for people that have criminal histories.  Reducing barriers to jobs is not a left/right issue or a Democratic/Republican issue, but a common sense issue.