A drug case from her lowest point follows her. KCK courts may give a fresh start
Simone Hill-Parker is nearly seven years sober. She’s served her time in prison, and she’s worked tirelessly to convince employers and landlords that she’s not a bad person.
“I think most employers think, once they see the word ‘felony,’ that it’s a bad person,” Hill-Parker told The Star. “A lot of us aren’t bad people. We were just put in situations where it got different for us.”
She wants a second chance. In a matter of weeks, she might get one.
Hill-Parker is one of numerous people who plan to attend the quickly approaching Wyandotte County Expungement Fair. The fair, hosted by the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office, will offer free legal services to residents who have been convicted of non-violent felonies, who have served their time and who need their record cleared to access the life-altering resources that a felony can stand in the way of.
The fair, which is in its seventh year, is scheduled 4-8 p.m. on July 29-30 at Kansas City, Kansas Community College. Applicants will have to pay a roughly $200 court fee, although legal assistance, which can be costly elsewhere, will be free, according to the district attorney’s office.
Why it matters
When a court grants someone who has been convicted of a felony an expungement, it essentially means that their criminal record has been cleared.
“An expungement helps people shake off collateral damage,” Mark Dupree, district attorney of Wyandotte County, said last week.
This can open several doors. A criminal record notably affects whether someone gets a job, whether their apartment application is accepted and whether they get access to certain grants, scholarships and other opportunities that exclude felons from the pool of contenders.
Dupree told The Star that when he first took office, the county granted dozens of expungements on average annually. His office determined that hiring a lawyer, which can sometimes exceed $1,000 in cost, to handle the expungement case was preventing people from applying.
“We said, OK, how can we financially help individuals?” he said, adding he doesn’t think one mistake should determine the course of someone’s life.
Since then, and since the fair’s founding seven years ago, more than 1,000 people have been granted expungement in Wyandotte County.
Offenders who do not qualify for expungement include people who have committed violent crimes, have new or pending felonies, have committed sexual offenses or crimes against children, Dupree said.
Among local expungement fair applicants that qualify and that have served their time, about 85% will be granted, so long as victims of that crime are no longer suffering as a result of that crime, Dupree said.
Access to housing, work
Hill-Parker, who now lives in St. Joseph but is from the Kansas City, Kansas, area, was in her 30s and reeling from the deaths of two close loved ones when she turned to using narcotics.
“I was going through a lot in life too,” she said of those losses. “...just death after death.”
Her drug use, and a theft charge in Johnson County, would eventually result in a possession charge, jail time in Wyandotte County and prison in Topeka
After getting clean and serving her sentences, Hill-Parker sought and earned certification in culinary arts. In spite of this, she struggled continuously to get work.
She said she’d make it through the first interview and get ghosted by the time background checks came around. She and her husband, Daniel Parker, eventually had to move out of the Kansas City metro and into St. Joseph to find work.
Daniel had his record expunged last year, Hill-Parker said, and it made a huge difference in his ability to find work. At one point, he had options between a few jobs, she said.
The two of them both found solid work in St. Joseph. Hill-Parker is a cafeteria manager at an area school district.
Housing was also a struggle. Although landlords accept some felons, people with drug felonies have a particularly low acceptance rate in her experience, Hill-Parker said.
“It’s also hard to get food stamps … it’s just hard to apply for things if you are a drug felon,” she said.
But she’s excited for what an expungement could mean for her. Maybe she’ll look into work in the medical field, she said. Maybe she’ll be able to use her experience to counsel women who are facing abuse or who are trying to get sober.
“It’s kind of like being a new person all over again,” she said. “Reestablishing yourself all over again.”
