By ADAM HYLA
Editor

Every month, a handful of troubled people in need of a place to live get David Chapman to look up their court records and, if possible, clear their names.

If they have been charged with a crime, Chapman checks with city and county courts for any warrants. And if the client, who is referred to Chapman from nonprofits like the Veterans Administration or Lifelong AIDS Alliance, has been on parole or probation out-of-county or out-of-state, he checks for warrants in those areas as well.

People who have been homeless have a hard enough time making it through the day, says Chapman; missing appointments comes with the territory. Unfortunately, missing an appointment with a judge triggers a warrant. And warrants are a black mark on a person’s housing and employment application.

But when a public defender calls, Chapman has found the court will show mercy.

“If I can show that a person is actively involved in seeking solutions or treatment, often times a prosecutor will be persuaded to quash a warrant and close a case.”

If it’s a local warrant for criminal trespass — sleeping on a loading dock, for example — Chapman says he can usually resolve the problem with a phone call.

Doing so can extract a person from a criminal justice cycle that runs from the streets to the jails and back again. The procedure is welcomed by Bill Block, director of Committee to End Homelessness (CEH), who notes that prisons are the more costly alternative to permanent housing. Clearing criminal records is “the stuff we’ve got to do if we’re really going to deal with the things people face.”

Quashing a warrant is a clerical task for many low-level offenses; defendants who have missed a date with Seattle Municipal Court and have warrants set below $10,000 can get their histories cleared by a court clerk. But people with multiple warrants in multiple jurisdictions face a patchwork quilt of judges and prosecutors with disparate attitudes about forgiving a defendant’s failure to show. Some prosecutors, says Chapman, won’t play ball. A Chelan County prosecutor has refused to quash a bench warrant for a man who’s now in Seattle — and homeless, in his early 80s, and dependent on a walker to get around.

“Here’s the issue: How to get the fellow to Chelan County? I’m not going to drive him over to Chelan; I’d love to, but I’m a public defender here. Does it really make sense to bring them out to Chelan to serve time?”

It’s simpler in larger jurisdictions. In the unified city-county court system of San Diego, prosecutors and defenders meet to work out plea deals for people whose warrants are keeping them on Skid Row. The court is in session once a month at area shelters. A five-year assessment of the program in 2005 showed that it reduced recidivism and spurred better relations between courts and the defendants in question.

And there’s another benefit to seeing a judge in the court, which takes place monthly at a San Diego homeless shelter, says Chapman.

“The public defender is there, they’ve talked to the prosecutor, and the calendar is set up so that the person can hear the judge close the case, quash the warrant, and give them some positive feedback about the good things they’re doing to better their lot in life,” he says. “Even when you take little steps, someone should be there clapping.”

Seattle Municipal Court judge Fred Bonner wants to set up a court setting much like this for veterans seeking jobs and housing. Having served in Vietnam, Bonner says, “therapeutic jurisprudence” should balance a desperate person’s criminal act against its circumstances.

“We have to look at the genesis of some of these things,” he says. “Why put a person who dines and dashes in jail for 30 days?”

Block’s CEH, the King County Bar Association, and Harborview Mental Health are taking another stance to open up housing opportunities. Together, they’re working on a pilot project to have courts issue “certificates of rehabilitation” to ex-offenders who have done their time and remain, according to a social worker, on their best behavior. Would-be landlords and employers could consider the certificate an endorsement of the applicant’s recovery — insurance that should count equally, says Block, with the criminal record dredged up in the course of a background check.