code offenses as sex-related

[laurafeeney]

Code offenses as sex-related, in order to answer questions on expungability excluding sex and murder offenses. Previously these were coded based on string matches to certain terms, but likely missed some offenses that don’t have these terms but are still defined as sex offenses.

Could be done in a crosswalk -- chapter + section + paragraph and sex offense true/false. This could then be merged in with any file of offenses.

• check that the sex-related offenses are all currently coded as non-expungeable!

Joel is working on this and has code on google colab that needs ot migrate to github

[laurafeeney]

Notes left on slack: I committed the merged Middlesex data to github, so you can incorporate that. I think a next step would be to attach the updated sex columns to the 'merged_district' files, so we can re-run the analyses. I think the code would then get incorporated into MA_Data-2_MergeCharges_alt and the corresponding Middlesex creation file.

For the 'SEX OFFENDER FAIL TO REGISTER' type offenses: Itself, it is theoretically expungeable because it is not on the list of non-expungealbe offenses. But one cannot be a sex offender who fails to register without being a sex offender, which means one has non-expungeable offenses, which means other offenses are not expungeable. So coding these as non-expungeable seemed somewhat more intuitive, and either way it shouldn't make a difference, I don't think.

[laurafeeney]

c272 s24 - house of prostitution - we'd coded this as expungeable and not a sex offense. I don't think this appears in the lists of sex crimes in section 178C of chapter 6 or section 1 of chapter 123A

[laurafeeney]

and I think 272 c29 is only a sex offense if it involves a minor