ATLANTA — Fulton County plans to spend the next year cleaning up more than 200,000 incomplete criminal records filed with the state. This is after state and Fulton officials disclosed to 11Alive that poor recordkeeping told a false story about thousands of people who seemingly have criminal records but may actually not.
That's creating quite the challenge for folks like Earl Bostick, who is trying to get a massage therapy license to accept a job with a cruise line. Bostick said he can’t yet get the license because of an arrest 10 years ago that he describes as a mistake.
"I've been put here on this earth to heal people," he said. "I need my national (massage therapy) license to take advantage of the opportunity."
Bostick specifically mentioned that "background issues" are impeding him.
These issues have become so prevalent in Fulton County that the county held an event this summer where people with inaccurate criminal records could go to try to have those records cleared.
Fulton County has also set up an office in the courthouse where folks can apply to have their criminal records removed from the state database.
According to the GBI, there are more than 217,000 open and incomplete arrest reports from Fulton in the Georgia Crime Information Center database
And, in each of the last five years, Fulton has compiled as many as 49,000 open arrest reports in a single year --- including nearly 45,000 this year.
However, many of those folks appear to have criminal records when they actually don’t, Fulton DA Fani Willis explained. She added "if it looks that way, they will have problems with employment, problems with getting (housing) – apartments won't let you live there."
Bostick said he went on probation on a charge filed a decade ago. That has hindered him for the last year from getting his message therapy license.
"So I’m just trying to do everything they’re asking me to do, follow everything to the 'T', and get my license and hopefully go into business and be successful," he explained.
Fulton County’s project to go over each of the 200,000 plus incomplete criminal records is projected to take a year to complete.