CONVICTIONS CAN STICK FOR TOO LONG

When a kid gets stuck and isn't getting with the program, Peter Slom will
take him into his office and show him his press clippings. He might show
him the one with the headline "Ex-coach's house seized in drug case." Or,
"Portsmouth coach, companion arrested after drug raid."

The clippings are lessons in bad decision-making. Slom was the coach, now
he's the ex-convict. And to inmates of the Rhode Island Training School,
his experience can make it a little easier to connect.

"I was reading The Journal and saw the ad for the job," he says. "It was a
state job. I figured they'd never hire me."

He was used to rejections. There had been dozens of them -- doors slammed
in his face, laughing suggestions that he try McDonald's. But six years ago
the Training School hired him. Conditions were imposed, including random
drug screenings.

"They gave me a shot here," Slom says. "They saw my background as a plus."

He started as a clinical social worker and was promoted to unit manager.

And now he is a working, talking, letter-writing example of why the state
of Rhode Island should reconsider how long a person should carry the burden
of a criminal conviction.

Slom is 47. He runs the juvenile hearing board in Charlestown. He works
with some of the most high risk kids in the state. But he worries that when
his two young children become old enough for things like Little League he
won't be able to be a coach. A background check will turn up his record,
and his record, he believes, will make him unacceptable.

Once, he lived the cocaine life. He traveled, made deals. And in 1990, he
got busted for possession, conspiracy to deliver, and selling cocaine to an
undercover cop. He was a basketball coach in Portsmouth at the time. He
lost his job and his house along with his freedom.

He spent 26 months in the ACI. When he got out, he went to the University
of Rhode Island and earned a certificate in drug counseling. He went to
Rhode Island College and earned a master's degree in social work.

Now, he writes letters in support of a bill that would reduce from 10 to 5
years the time an ex-convict has to wait to have his felony record expunged
in Rhode Island. He presents himself as exhibit A. And he talks about
others he knows who have gotten out of prison, done the right things and
then been put in a holding pattern by the refusal of employers to look past
their records.

With years of probation still to serve, he figures he will not be free and
clear of his criminal past until he is 62. His lone conviction will
overshadow his possibilities until he is closing in on retirement.

Obviously, there are some criminals whose past should always be with them.
But there are others who are valuable members of their communities and it
seems pointlessly vindictive and downright wasteful not to welcome them
back as full citizens after a reasonable time of having "ex-convict"
stamped on all their paperwork. Five years is a reasonable time.

If the bill is approved and the time reduced for record expungement, it
will be up to a judge to decide who is deserving of having an old
conviction officially removed. It will be up to a judge to look at someone
like Peter Slom and decide if his post-prison behavior -- going back to
school and moving on to a job that lets him put hard earned lessons to good
use -- justifies that he be made, again, a citizen in good standing.

It would be a judgment call. And it should be made before other Peter Sloms
decide there is just no return in doing the right thing.