Erase All Past Deeds

Just when you think the world can't get any stranger, something comes along that just stops you in your tracks and makes you wonder. These show stoppers usually emanate from cultural centers that are physically gorgeous and fun to visit but are breathtaking in their dislocation from reality. This week's entry comes from, once again, the City by the Bay.

It turns out that if you live in San Francisco and you have committed a crime, you no longer have to live with that stigma on your record. There is a program now in effect from the San Francisco Public Defenders Office (paid for by taxpayer dollars) called, appropriately, The Clean Slate Program. Clean Slate will help you expunge almost anything you have done from your record. Erase it. Wash it clean. Vanish it into nothingness.

The logic behind this is the worry that people with criminal records will be discriminated against when applying for jobs, looking for housing or applying for a loan. The only rules needed to qualify for this stroke of the magic wand are: (1) You cannot currently be serving time in prison nor can you be on probation; (2) You cannot currently be charged with a crime, and (3) Your conviction must have taken place in San Francisco (even San Franciscans, it seems, don't want a flood of convicts arriving from other counties and states looking to be cleansed in the fair judicial waters of San Francisco Bay).

What crimes are we talking about? Well, any drug offense to begin with. That can be taken off the books. No problem. So too murder, rape, and armed robbery. In fact, one of the only crimes that Clean Slate won't remove is a sex offense. But even here, there is a caveat: It cannot be removed if the victim was a child under 14. Which means that if someone rapes a 15-year-old, the rapist can conceivably have his slate rubbed clean if he serves his time, is off probation, and can prove that he is rehabilitated. I'm still not clear how one proves that.

The Web site informs us: "A simple expungement [my spell check tells me this isn't an English word] takes approximately 2-3 months." Some records can be changed from felonies to misdemeanors.

The Web site further informs us "we can remove a conviction from your record so that when you apply for most jobs, you can legally say that you were not convicted of that crime." (I think there was once a "Twilight Zone" episode like this where the purchaser of this service had to pay for it with something similar to a pound of flesh. In San Francisco, it's free.)

The director of this program is an attorney in the Public Defenders Office, DeMaris Evans. Ms. Evans is not without feeling for the victims of crime. In a recent report on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," she told us, "I can understand how someone could be forever kind of stuck in the retribution thing" but she then offers counseling to those individuals who are kind of stuck in that retribution thing.

"I think it doesn't serve anyone including them to have someone forever ostracized and precluded from being able to change their life around and contributing to society," she said.

It turns out Ms. Evans knows something about this personally. She admits that she is a recovering drug addict who "did all those things connected to that life style" including stealing.

I think everyone would agree that what serves us all best is to have someone who committed a crime become a productive member of society. That would include working in an honest job, paying taxes, and following all of the laws and rules of society. But at what point does that society break down when no act can be deemed wrong enough to remain on record? And when any illegal act - with the exception of molesting a 5-year-old - can be removed and the person who, murdered, robbed or raped, can be completely free of that reminder ... how can that society honestly enforce even its most basic rules?

Imagine trying to teach children right from wrong when they learn that you can take a life and then, by serving time and staying clean, you can "legally say you were never convicted of that crime." And what is the logical extension of this concept? Can an S.S. camp guard say he was never there? ... Or a terrorist who sets off a bomb in a cafe say it didn't really happen? Perhaps I'm carrying it to the extreme. Let me just stick with the facts ... like someone who breaks into a home and rapes an elderly lady. That's more realistic.

It has been said that California is the incubator of the nation: Ideas start in the Golden State and move eastward. If that is the case, then this law may be heading to a courtroom in your neighborhood. And then we live in a world where no one is responsible for his or her actions and nothing is ever wrong. Or at least wrong enough remain on record.

Mr. Kozak is the author of "The Rabbi of 84th Street" ( HarperCollins ).