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Comity Of Errors: When Federal Sentencing Guidelines Ignore State Law Decriminalizing Sentences, James A. Shapiro

James A. Shapiro

Many states have sentences called “diversionary dispositions” that are not supposed to count as convictions under state law. The purpose of these so-called diversionary dispositions is to give first-time offenders for relatively minor crimes such as shoplifting a chance to keep their criminal records, or “rap sheets,” clean. If they do not commit another crime during the period of the diversionary disposition, then they usually have the opportunity to erase, or “expunge,” the diversionary disposition from their record. But whether they expunge their record or not, the diversionary disposition is never supposed to count as a conviction under state law. …