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Make all charges time-ineligible if a case is meaningfully open
We currently run analysis anyway that "may be inaccurate" because it ignores the open case. Once we're able to change case status with completing issue #1079 , we can make the time analysis accurate by calling everything ineligible, and then allow the user to set the case status to and rerun for a "hypothetical" analysis.
This is mostly just a backend / expungement logic change, plus we'll need to reword the error message for open cases.
This task is done when:
If all dispositions are edited (and none are Unknown), can we assume the case is closed?
If so we could potentially automatically update the case to closed, but this may be confusing to the user. Marking the case as edited may help.
A few notes to clarify this issue.
If a record contains any “meaningfully open” cases, then all charges are ineligible. A case is “meaningfully open” if
- OECI doesn’t say the case is [“Closed”, “Inactive”, “Purgable”, “Bankruptcy Pending”]
- AND there exists a “meaningfully open” charge in the case
A charge is “meaningfully open” if
- it is a blocking charge that is not a violation
- AND missing a disposition or has an unknown disposition
@hmarcks
If so we could potentially automatically update the case to closed, but this may be confusing to the user.
I like this. In fact, I don't think it makes sense to let the user add a new case that is open or edit the open/closed status of an existing case.
@michaelzhang43 Did we still want the summary panel to show the results as if the meaningfully open cases were ignored even if no questions have been answered?
If a record contains any “meaningfully open” cases, then all charges are ineligible. A case is “meaningfully open” if
• OECI doesn’t say the case is [“Closed”, “Inactive”, “Purgable”, “Bankruptcy Pending”] • AND there exists a “meaningfully open” charge in the case
If I heard correctly last meeting, a case can be legitimacy Open even if all charges in the case have dispositions that should result in the case being Closed.
If not then then this sounds good and we could remove the ability to add/edit the Open/Closed status on a case entirely like you mention.
@KentShikama I'm kind of torn about this question. We want to both
- not give inaccurate advice AND
- make the information useful for people who are currently on a conditional discharge (case remains open until end of probation, which then turns into a dismissal or a conviction)
The impacted charges would be Eligible Now and Future Eligible on X date What do you all think about having the analysis on those read: "Eligible upon dismissal of open charge(s) OR 10 years from conviction of open charge(s)" "Future Eligible on X date if open charge(s) dismissed OR 10 years from conviction of open charge(s)" And marking both of these with the blueish color currently used for Future Eligible cases
I think showing that status makes sense.
@michaelzhang43 if a user were to create a case/charge that's "currently on a conditional discharge", would they need to mark the case as Open and the charge as Convicted?
Or should we have a new disposition type for this? The current disposition choices are Dismissed, Convicted, Probation Revoked, Unknown
@hmarcks A so-called conditional discharge is when the court 'discharges' you and your case, and if you meet the conditions of the court, they will dismiss your case. Otherwise they will convict you of the case. So cases on a condition discharge should have combination of Open case and charge with Unknown disposition.
Btw, a person on probation is combination of Open case and charge with disposition of Conviction, with possibility for revocation.
Thanks, so it sounds like we can't automatically mark a case as Closed if the Disposition selected is Convicted, so we'd need the ability to edit the case Open/Closed Status.
@michaelzhang43 So if I understand correctly
Probation = Quantum state between convicted and probation revoked Conditional discharge = Quantum state between dismissed and convicted
@hmarcks @michaelzhang43 In my head, a case can be both "meaningfully closed" and "open" at the same time, and vice versa. Let us change the term "meaningfully open" to "super-blocking".
If a record contains any “super-blocking” cases, then all charges are ineligible. A case is “super-blocking” if
- OECI doesn’t say the case is [“Closed”, “Inactive”, “Purgable”, “Bankruptcy Pending”]
- AND there exists a “super-blocking” charge in the case
A charge is “super-blocking” if
- it is a blocking charge that is not a violation
- AND missing a disposition or has an unknown disposition
@michaelzhang43 @hmarcks @wittejm But I don't think the re-terming hits the fundamental problem where we want to be both entirely accurate and useful at the same time. Here are two suggestions.
- We still haven't maximized the power of our expunger yet. For example, if a charge is older than 20 years and it is ineligible, then we can mark it as ineligible regardless of the disposition. Similarly if we know that it isn't a B Felony an it is older than 10 years and it is ineligible, then we can mark it as ineligible regardless of the disposition. We could chip at various open charges in this fashion.
- We haven't taken advantage of the fact that each charge has an arrest date, and so we know what the newest charge is. We could do some kind of hybrid approach where if the only open case is the newest one (or maybe like ~3 years ? @michaelzhang43 pick a threshold), then we side on being "useful". On the other hand if the open case is from 9 years ago, then we side of being "accurate" (waiting for the user prompt).
After more thought, I feel like the charge summary panel should always side on "useful" as I'm guessing @michaelzhang43 wants to give out PDF print outs before asking the client questions. Maybe we can switch in the future when the main users of the app are people trying to expunge their own records instead of lawyers and legal assistants who are helping others expunge theirs.
Another thing is that even if we marked all cases as ineligible as would be "accurate", we still need to trust the user to take care of the other assumptions like whether they had any out of state cases or whether they owe any fines. In other words, we will always need some minimal cognitive help from the user in terms of knowing how to use this information.
In the future, when we have features like form filling, we can doubly warn the user that they have open cases along with the other assumptions.
I lean towards presenting an entirely accurate analysis, and present an alert that explains any scenarios where the user might want to edit (You have an open case. If this is outdated or you want to see possible future results, you can edit the disposition, etc). Maybe this is what you're getting at with your last comment.
I know we have other assumptions like out-of-state charges, but I think we should limit those as much as possible like you mention chipping away at the expunger improvements.
Also, regarding this logic below, wouldn't it miss the probation scenario (case:open, disposition:convicted )? I'm assuming probations block expungement, that might be incorrect.
If a record contains any “super-blocking” cases, then all charges are ineligible. A case is “super-blocking” if
- OECI doesn’t say the case is [“Closed”, “Inactive”, “Purgable”, “Bankruptcy Pending”]
- AND there exists a “super-blocking” charge in the case
In this scenario we could super-block, and present an alert that they can edit the disposition to see other analysis.
@hmarcks Let's discuss this more on Thursday.
probations block expungement
Just to be clear, "blocking" in this context is about how one charge A "blocks" a different charge B from being expunged. Probation revocations make a charge ineligible (maybe this should be known as "self-blocking" as opposed to "blocking") for 10 years from the date of revocation but they do not further block other charges. Note the charge that had the probation revocation may be blocking for other reasons.
I see, yeah I think we should show whatever the real result is. Although I was referring to the probation scenario Michael mentioned (Open case and charge with disposition of Conviction) which I think we would want to block all since it's an open case, but wasn't sure since it has a conviction (currently on probation).
@hmarcks @wittejm @michaelzhang43 To add to @hmarcks ' mock up above, this is a summary of my takeaways from Thursday from more of a backend perspective along with some additional thoughts.
Charges with unclassified charge types and charges with unrecognized dispositions (on blocking charges) are unexpected in our software. We should be close to eliminating all of them. They are labelled as Needs More Analysis and do not block. They may be edited like any other charge.
Ambiguous charge types and missing dispositions are expected cases (situations) in our software that may require user input. We assume missing dispositions will resolve with a dismissal or conviction disposition in the future. For 90%+ records with open cases (and thus missing dispositions), this means all otherwise eligible charges will have a label of "Eligible X if open charge(s) dismissed or 10 years from conviction of open charge(s)" (as in @hmarks' mock up). However, I expect the composition of the ambiguous disposition logic and our expunger logic to bring out a few exceptions that surpass our collective imaginations. ~~One example that didn't come to mind on Thursday was how if there is a record with a Class B Felony followed by an open Misdemeanor charge, then the Class B Felony will have the label of "Eligible X if open charge(s) dismissed or Ineligible" (instead of "10 years from conviction of open charge") until the user answers the input.~~
I want to highlight how, with this handling, if all assumptions under https://recordsponge.com/manual#assumption1 are fulfilled and there are no bugs in our software, our analysis will always be accurate, albeit possibly not exact.
@hmarcks The following is more of a direct response to your mock up above. I see 5 sections demarcated with thick gray horizontal bars and will address respectively.
In the first section, there is a banner that says "All charges are ineligible because of one or more open case...". In my head, this banner will instead say something along the lines of "These cases need more clarification before a more precise analysis can be given". I've italicized precise because the analysis will already be accurate just not exact ("Eligible this or that"). I'm conflicted on whether we should not show the radio buttons as the mockup suggests: indeed, it is likely that the disposition is still unknown but it seems helpful to have an easier way than the charge edit feature to do common hypothetical resolutions.
I think we need more discussion on the second section. I'm tempted to say we should just "remove this section entirely" and let the user use the edit charge function. In my head, charges with unclassified charge types and charges with unrecognized dispositions are both "bugs" in our software and should be handled in the same fashion. As of now, the mockup implies (through omission) that charges with unclassified charge types will be handled through the edit charge function while the unrecognized dispositions will be handled with the radio buttons. This is inconsistent and it feels weird that we're providing an explicit feature for a thing that should never happen in theory.
The third section is tied to the above.
For the fourth section, I'm not sure if greying out is necessary given how their analysis will be accurate. This is hard to describe in words but I would prefer keeping the original color of the label but toning it down with grey, so it is clear what the original color/eligibility is but still lead the user to the charges that require attention.
The fifth section matches with what I had in mind.
Thanks @KentShikama
1: Open cases - I think I like the “precise” language update, but I think we also need to be clear about what they need to edit (case and charge - it seemed like it was we couldn’t auto-update the case to closed because of the probation scenario).
I feel the same about prompting for input. We also have the complication of having to edit both the charges and case status though. I can look at a way of exposing the cases status as well.
2/3: Unrecognized disposition / charge type - I like the approach of prompting to edit via the standard edit form to limit variations on input, especially in these rare scenarios. I hadn’t considered unrecognized charge types but with the current approach I think we would present the select input in the same place as the disposition radios. These would map to the inputs inside the edit form.
We would still want some messaging in a banner at the top and in the charge. Perhaps just a message explaining the issue and the option to edit.
4: It would be accurate but incomplete if time analysis is blocked though right? I’ll look at some other treatments.
I updated the mockup based on our discussion Thursday.
Can a Need More Analysis on one or more charges block any kind of estimation of a time analysis on a different charge? If so, we would need another kind of category - "Possibly eligible - other charges need clarification" (seen in section 4 of mockup, bottom).
My understanding was that all charges with disambiguating questions on them would have a purple label of NMA.
All blocking charges have a finite set of ways in which they block other charges. So all non-NMA charges have a known but potentially ambiguous time eligibility. Note that "known" includes "ineligible" (e.g. Class A Felony) and "not resolvable even after other charges are all edited" (e.g. junevile charges). In other words, non-NMA charges will only "shrink" but never "semantically change" in terms of label text. We may be vague but we never lie (except for bugs).
My understanding was that all charges with disambiguating questions on them would have a purple label of NMA.
Yeah, we're on the same page here.
So all non-NMA charges have a known but potentially ambiguous time eligibility.
Got it, so we could always offer a time analysis (even if ambiguous) for non-NMA type-eligible charges?
Here's an example of a NMA blocking a full analysis. It sounds like we could always show the bottom non-NMA example "Eligible [date] ... or 10 years from ..." rather than "Possibly eligible - others need clarification", correct?
Got it, so we could always offer a time analysis (even if ambiguous) for non-NMA type-eligible charges?
Indeed