Touting it as a first-in-the-nation initiative, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty's office launched a prosecutor-led application process for people looking to have their juvenile criminal records expunged.

Moriarty said her office was primarily examining juvenile misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors and some "low-level felonies like drug or property cases."

"Cases, in other words, where young people have made mistakes, which kids often do as their brains continue to develop," Moriarty said. "Criminal records even for minor cases can follow youth forever and impact their ability to further education, seek employment, maintain stable housing and so much more."

The process runs through the state's Help Seal My Record portal. So far, more than 800 people have sought expungement for a crime on their juvenile record. The Hennepin County Attorney's Office has reviewed more than 230 of those requests and has been averaging 20 expungement motions to the courts per month in recent months.

A Hennepin County judge must sign off on any motion to have a juvenile record expunged.

This became an area of focus for the Attorney's Office because of how juvenile criminal records show up on background checks and hamper a person's ability to find employment or housing. For example, Moriarty said a person applying to work for the Minnesota Department of Human Services who had a juvenile felony conviction for drug possession or theft could be disqualified for employment with that department for between seven and 15 years, depending on the severity of the charge. Moriarty said those disqualifications for juvenile convictions were identical to the disqualifications for adult convictions.

Justin Terrell, the executive director of the Minnesota Justice Research Center, said that despite the unending efforts of a huge network of people working in juvenile justice in Hennepin County, the response remains inadequate. He pointed to citizens who are worried that if they are the victim of juvenile crime no one will be held responsible, and to people who committed crimes as juveniles who are actively trying to better their lives but are stuck with a criminal record.

"If you just look at crime statistics, a lot of the crimes we're worried about are crimes that tend to be committed within certain age ranges," Terrell said. "We don't want young people ruining the rest of their lives from reckless behavior.

"We have to hold them accountable and turn their lives around and keep them out of the adult system, because it is not a space for young people."

Hennepin County Managing Attorney Morgan Kunz, who is leading the juvenile expungement review process, said for low-level offenses the waiting period for expungement is typically a year or two of law-abiding behavior.

Serious felony cases involving criminal sexual conduct, domestic violence or gun crimes are not eligible for this expungement process, but a person can still apply and have their case considered. Kunz said the Attorney's Office would write a letter of support for expungement of serious juvenile offenses if an applicant had shown more than a decade of good behavior, but even then it would require a hearing and more direct involvement with the courts.

Deputy Hennepin County Attorney Sarah Davis said this new juvenile expungement process fills a gap but the question remains whether these kinds of juvenile cases should even be part of a background check.

"There has been legislation that has looked at saying, youth cases of certain types should not lead to background studies disqualification," Davis said, noting that even an arrest or citation, not a conviction, can lead to disqualification. "It's really problematic and really excludes a lot of folks. There is an opportunity for the Legislature to act here."

How to approach the lasting impact of criminal records for people who have served their time and remained on good behavior has become an area of focus for politicians in Minnesota.

On Jan. 1, the Clean Slate Act went into effect and began the process of automatically expunging adult arrest and conviction records for more than 500,000 Minnesotans with minor and nonviolent criminal records. That process excludes violent offenses and a long list of other crimes — such as harassment, stalking, DWI, indecent exposure and nonconsensual dissemination of private sexual images.

In 2023, Gov. Tim Walz signed the largest expansion of voting rights in Minnesota in half a century by restoring the voting rights of more than 55,000 convicted felons who had completed their sentence. That expansion came under political fire and was challenged judicially before the Minnesota Supreme Court ultimately upheld the law last year.

Moriarty's office has held three community expungement clinics for adults in Hennepin County as her office continues to pursue ways for people to seal old criminal records in the hopes of removing barriers in housing and employment, but this push into juvenile justice is central to the campaign promises she ran on to become county attorney.

Her office has touted its work in juvenile auto-theft and gang violence intervention. Moriarty noted that, unlike adult crime where her office only handles felony-level charges, the Attorney's Office handles every juvenile criminal charge in the county. That gives the office numerous angles to try to have an impact.

"We try and look at each child who comes in individually and see what their needs are and try to come up with a disposition or plan that fits that particular child's need," she said. "That I think is really helpful in terms of addressing the child and the family's need so that hopefully we can interrupt them from coming into the system."