Category: Policy

SBA takes one step toward fair chance lending, but needs to take another

The U.S. Small Bujsiness Administration has taken several recent steps that promise to make federally guaranteed loans available to business owners with a criminal history. This is an important policy issue we’ve been following for several years, and it appears there may at last be a breakthrough. How big a breakthrough remains to be seen.

Following up on its omission of “character” and “reputation” as criteria for 7(a) loans, discussed in this post, the U.S. Small Business Administration issued new Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for its 7(a) small business loan program. Effective August 1, 2023, the new SOP omits all mention of “good character” as a requirement for loan qualification. This means that applicants with a criminal history who apply to a bank for a federally guaranteed loan will no longer be put through the SBA’s onerous “character determination” process. (Applicants on parole or probation, or in prison, remain ineligible to apply under 13 CFR 120.110(n).)

At the same time, the issue of prior criminal history appears to remain relevant in deciding whether to make a loan, since applicants for 7(a) loans (including Community Advantage loans) must still complete Form 912, which contains very broad questions asking about an applicant’s criminal history. Questions 7 and 8 on this form ask about pending charges and recent arrests, while Question 9 asks whether the applicant has engaged in any criminal conduct at any time in which there was a disposition:

 Q. 9:  For any criminal offense – other than a minor vehicle violation – have you ever: 1) been convicted; 2) pleaded guilty; 3) pleaded nolo contendere; 4) been placed on pretrial diversion; or 5) been placed on any form of parole or probation (including probation before judgment)?

Applicants responding affirmatively to any of these questions are instructed to “include dates, location, fines, sentences, misdemeanor or felony, dates of parole/probation, unpaid fines or penalties, name(s) under which charged, and any other pertinent information. . . .”

When asked to supply detailed information about such a broad range of criminal matters, no matter how minor or dated, loan applicants may reasonably assume that those matters will be considered – either by the SBA or by the bank that will actually be making the loan — and may be grounds for declination. The only difference now is that it isn’t clear HOW those matters will be considered or by whom, since the new SOP omits the “character determination” process in earlier editions of the SOP.  And those in need of business capital will likely still be deterred from applying.

We think it fair to assume that, despite the SBA’s amendment of the regulation to omit “character” as a loan criterion, and its amendment of the SOP to omit the “character determination” process, any “criminal offense” reported by an applicant (including misdemeanor convictions and diversions, and unpaid fines or financial penalties) may still be considered in deciding whether to make a loan. Even if the SBA itself doesn’t intend to consider an applicant’s criminal history, the agency continues to helpfully collect the information so that the lending bank can consider it.

As we noted in a post last spring, “the good news is that it appears the SBA will no longer bar banks from making loans to otherwise qualified applicants based on their criminal history. The less good news is that the agency seems to expect banks and other lending institutions to step into the void and apply their own restrictions on loans based on an applicant’s criminal history.” Indeed, one can imagine that a bank that otherwise does NOT feel it necessary to inquire into or consider an applicant’s criminal record in its other lending practices, will now feel some obligation to do so because 1) it no longer has the SBA to act as a screen, and 2) the SBA may expect it to use the information it has collected.

In short, we are not at all sure how much progress has been made by removing the loan criterion “character” from the regulations, and the character determination process from the SOP, as long as the broad inquiries about criminal history remain as part of the application process.

What we really need, therefore, is for the SBA to take another step to limit the criminal matters that will serve as the basis for declining a loan, by simply not asking about them.  We believe this next step is most likely the “proposed rule” that is the subject of a letter sent to the SBA Administrator on May 16 by the chairs and ranking members of the small business committees in the House and Senate, asking for a “pause” in issuing the rule. Of course, we are interested in knowing whether the new proposed rule does in fact place limits on inquiry about criminal matters and, if it does, what the reasons are for the requested pause.

We are also interested in knowing whether the SBA will simply pass the buck to the lending banks who either already have or who will soon develop their own policies on criminal background checks if the SBA will no longer serve as a screen.

The same issues about criminal record restrictions are raised by the 8(a) program administered by the SBA, which unlike 7(a) includes rules on a broad range of criminal matters, but which like 7(a) uses Form 912.  We expect we will have a chance to discuss these restrictions before long in the context of the 8(a) program.

Pending federal reforms promise support for justice-affected entrepreneurs

Word is getting around about pending reforms that would make federal support for small businesses more widely available to entrepreneurs with a criminal history. Notably, the U.S. Small Business Administration has recently taken steps to reduce or remove entirely criminal record-related restrictions in its loan and contracting programs.  These are steps that CCRC has been urging ever since the SBA’s restrictive policies first came to public attention during the pandemic.

An article by Michael Friedrich published today by Arnold Ventures (AV) describes a number of reforms recently proposed or adopted by the SBA that will eliminate arbitrary program barriers based on criminal history that are unrelated to any established risk. These reforms should encourage more justice-affected business owners to seek SBA support for their entrepreneurial ventures in the form of federally guaranteed loans or federal contract set-asides for “socially and economically disadvantaged” businesses.

The AV article points out that the near-exclusion from these programs based on criminal history “frustrate[s] federal efforts to contribute to economic development in disadvantaged communities, often the same low-income communities of color that have suffered the most during the era of mass incarceration and tough-on-crime policies.”    

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SBA proposes to ease criminal history restrictions in loan programs

On October 23, 2022, the U.S. Small Business Administration published for comment a rule that would significantly expand the availability of federally guaranteed loans to entrepreneurs with a criminal history. This rule, if finalized, could also transform the SBA’s role in support of urban community development.

The proposed rule, titled ”Affiliation and Lending Criteria for the SBA Business Loan Programs,” 87 FR 64724 (Oct. 23, 2022), eliminates language in the SBA’s formal lending criteria that the agency has relied on for many years to restrict loans to justice-affected business owners.

We have written at length over the past several years about the broad record-based restrictions in the SBA’s lending and contracting programs, restrictions that first became controversial during the pandemic, and that have never been justified by evidence of a link between criminal history and credit risk.

While the proposed SBA rule covers a variety of subjects, its key provision from CCRC’s perspective is its omission of the words “character” and “reputation” from the criteria for small business loans in 13 CFR 120.150(a). It is this language that has been relied on for the “good character” policies in the SBA’s operating procedures affecting both business loans and disaster assistance. In turn, these procedures define “good character” exclusively in terms of a person’s criminal history.

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The Frontiers of Dignity: Clean Slate and Other Criminal Record Reforms in 2022

At the beginning of each year since 2017, CCRC has issued a report on legislative enactments in the year just ended, new laws aimed at reducing the barriers faced by people with a criminal record in the workplace, at the ballot box, and in many other areas of daily life.  These annual reports document the steady progress of what our report two years ago characterized as “a full-fledged law reform movement” aimed at restoring rights and dignity to individuals who have successfully navigated the criminal law system.

In the three years between 2019 and 2021, more than 400 new criminal record reforms were enacted.  Many states enacted new laws every year, and all but two states enacted at least one significant new law during this period.

The modern record reform movement reflected in our annual reports is bipartisan, grounded in and inspired by the circumstance that almost a third of adults in the United States now have a criminal record, entangling them in a web of legal restrictions and discrimination that permanently excludes then from full participation in the community. It reflects a public recognition that the “internal exile” of such a significant portion of society is not only unsafe and unfair, but it is also profoundly inefficient.

We are pleased to present our report on new laws enacted in 2022, titled The Frontiers of Dignity: Clean Slate and Other Criminal Record Reforms in 2022. While this report shows that the legislative momentum gathering since 2018 slowed somewhat in the past year, there has still been progress, with more new laws enacted this year than in 2018 when the current reform movement took off in earnest.

The title of this report is borrowed from the Basic Law adopted by the Federal Republic of Germany after World War II, which declared that “Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of state authority.” Most European countries incorporate this foundational premise, as well as a concern for individual privacy, into their treatment of criminal records, by making them largely unavailable to the public and by limiting how they are used to deny rights and opportunities.

In part because American legal systems are not similarly grounded in respect for dignity and privacy, our progress toward a fair and efficient criminal records policy has been slow and uneven. Yet it has been steady, animated in recent years both by a concern for racial justice and by economic self-interest. This report, like our past annual reports, attempts to capture this steady progress toward recognizing the worth and dignity of the millions of Americans whose past includes a record of arrest or conviction. Read more

Applying for federal disaster assistance with a criminal record

In addition to its lending and other programs in support of small businesses, the U.S. Small Business Administration provides long-term low-interest loans under Section 7(b) of the Small Business Act directly to individuals, businesses, and nonprofits in declared disaster areas. The current devastation wrought by Hurricane Ian in Florida — the subject of a dedicated new page on the SBA’s website — reminded us of some research we published two years ago, at the height of the pandemic, about how people with a criminal record were faring under the SBA’s COVID-related disaster relief program.  The answer initially was “not well.”

Our research indicates that neither FEMA (emergency aid) nor the USDA (farm loans) impose criminal record restrictions on disaster assistance.  But the SBA does.  What’s more, the SBA’s restrictions are not formalized in a regulation but buried in operating procedures.

The criminal history restrictions on SBA economic injury disaster loans (EIDL) under the CARES Act were initially even more restrictive than those that applied to its PPP relief, and they too were never formalized in a rule. The PPP restrictions were rolled back in response to public outcry and lawsuits, and the following year the COVID-related EIDL policy was also rolled back to disqualify the same limited population as the PPP itself (people in prison or on probation or parole, with pending felony charges, or with recent financial fraud and related convictions).  However, criminal record restrictions in the SBA’s general non-COVID lending programs, including its general disaster assistance programs, were not affected.

Now that the SBA’s disaster assistance programs are no longer administered under the exceptional and well-publicized approach of the pandemic-related authorities, we thought it would be timely to take another look at how those programs — presumably including the one that specifically applies to Hurricane Ian relief — are available to people with a criminal record.    

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A closer look at racial disparities in California’s automatic record clearing

Numerous studies have demonstrated how Black Americans are treated more harshly at every stage of the criminal legal system—from over-policing to overcharging to more punitive sentencing. New research from California shows how eligibility limitations on criminal record relief perpetuate racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and have a disproportionately adverse effect on Black Americans.

The study, by Alyssa Mooney, Alissa Skog, and Amy Lerman, and published in Law & Society Review, examined recent legislative changes to criminal record relief laws in California, one of the first states to automate relief. The study assessed the equity of California’s existing automatic record relief laws by examining the share of people with criminal records who are presently eligible for automatic record clearing, and variations across racial and ethnic groups.

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“The High Cost of a Fresh Start”

The High Cost of a Fresh Start: New Report Examines Court Debt as a Barrier to Clearing a Conviction Record

Download the report: https://ccresourcecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Report-High-Cost-of-Fresh-Start.pdf

BOSTON – A new report from the National Consumer Law Center and the Collateral Consequences Resource Center explores the extent to which court debt—such as criminal fines, fees, costs, and restitution—is a barrier to record clearing that prevents poor and low-income people from getting a second chance. For the nearly one-third of adults in the U.S. with a record of arrest or conviction, their record is not simply part of their past but a continuing condition that impacts nearly every aspect of their life. Their record makes it hard to get a job and support a family, secure a place to live, contribute to the community, and participate fully in civic affairs.

“Criminal record clearing must not be reserved only for those who can easily pay for it,” said Margaret Love, executive director of CCRC. “States should ensure people are not being priced out of a chance at a fresh start.”

The High Cost of a Fresh Start: A State-by-State Analysis of Court Debt as a Bar to Record Clearing analyzes whether outstanding court debt bars record clearing under the laws of each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal system. The report finds that in almost every jurisdiction, outstanding court debt is a barrier to record clearing, either rendering a person entirely ineligible or making it more difficult for them to qualify.

In recent years, most states have passed laws aimed at restoring economic opportunity, personal freedoms, and human dignity to millions of people by providing a path to clear their record. But for too many, this relief remains out of reach because of monetary barriers, including not only the cost of applying for record clearing but also requirements in many jurisdictions that applicants pay off debt incurred as part of the underlying criminal case before they can have their record cleared. This debt can include fees imposed for every month someone spends on probation or on GPS monitoring, and for their representation by a public defender—a fee that is levied only on people whom the court has deemed too poor to pay for their own defense. Interest and payment penalties can add to this court debt over time.

“The total amount of court debt can run to thousands of dollars for even minor infractions, which presents a high bar to clear,” said Ariel Nelson, staff attorney at NCLC. “Perversely, because a record makes it much harder to get a job, having an open record makes it harder to pay off court debt and therefore harder to qualify for record clearing.”

This burden falls especially heavily on Black and Brown communities, which are more likely to have high concentrations of both criminal records and poverty because of long-standing structural racism in criminal law enforcement and in the economy.

Based on their research, the authors offer the following recommendations:

  • Court debt should never be a barrier to record clearing.Qualification for record clearing should not be conditioned on payment of court debt, and outstanding court debt should not be a basis for denying relief, regardless of whether record clearing is petition-based or automatic.
  • Costs to apply for record clearing, including filing fees, should never be a barrier to record clearing. States should adopt automatic record-clearing processes that do not require individuals to incur costs to have their records cleared.
  • Jurisdictions should collect and report data on monetary barriers to record clearing.Jurisdictions where record clearing may be denied on the basis of outstanding court debt should collect and report data reflecting the impact of these barriers on record clearing.

Download the full report for report findings, recommendations, maps, graphics, and state-by-state analysis: https://bit.ly/lp-high-cost-of-a-fresh-start-22

The report’s appendix cointains a state-by-state analysis of the role played by outstanding court debt in qualifying for record clearing.  It may be separately downloaded at this link:  https://www.nclc.org/images/pdf/criminal-justice/High-Cost-of-Fresh-Start-Appendix.pdf 

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The nonprofit National Consumer Law Center® (NCLC®) works for economic justice for low-income and other disadvantaged people in the U.S. through policy analysis and advocacy, publications, litigation, and training.

The Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC) works to restore rights and opportunities to people with a history of arrest or conviction through research and policy advocacy.

 

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When banks ask loan applicants about their arrest record

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition reports that its evaluation of small business loan applications from a sample of seven banks in Washington, DC revealed that “some lenders discriminate against applicants who have been charged at any time in their lives with a criminal offense.”  A comment on the NCRC website proposes that these banks consider applicants to be “a lending risk for having been ‘ever charged’ with any crime, other than a minor vehicle violation, no matter when it occurred.”  It goes on to argue that “[t]his practice is not only factually suspect, it is discriminatory.”  The comment, written by Anneliese Lederer, the NCRC’s Director of Fair Lending, was subsequently republished in The American Banker. 

The NCRC findings demonstrate that even interactions with the criminal justice system that do not result in a conviction record can have “lasting implications:”

It is known that having a criminal record is a barrier to both housing and employment. There are few protections for people with a criminal record.

But what about for people who have been charged and found not guilty, or their charges were dropped? What barriers do they face? Unfortunately, they face similar barriers as people who have a criminal record, especially in the small business lending arena.

Citing CCRC’s analyses of lending policies of the Small Business Administration, the NCRC comment highlights how these policies have given banks cover for their discriminatory practices:

Small business loans administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA) have broad criminal history restrictions. Analysis conducted by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC) found that no statute requires criminal history to be used as a factor in determining creditworthiness. Instead, the Small Business Act uses the words “may verify the applicant’s criminal background.” Furthermore, many restrictions that the US Small Business Administration (SBA) implements on interactions with the justice system are not codified. These restrictions are “either unannounced or only disclosed through FAQs published on the agency’s website…..[or] through policy statements and application forms.”

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Reintegration Champion Awards for 2021

Based on our annual report on 2021 criminal record reforms, the bipartisan commitment to a reintegration agenda keeps getting stronger. A majority of the 151 new laws enacted last year authorize courts to clear criminal records, in some states for the very first time, and several states enacted “clean slate” automatic record clearing.  Other new laws restore voting and other civil rights lost as a result of conviction, and still others limit how criminal record is considered by employers, occupational licensing agencies, and landlords.  (The report includes specific citations to each of the new laws, and they are analyzed in the larger context of each state’s reintegration scheme in our Restoration of Rights Project.)

Again this year we have published a Report Card recognizing the most (and least) productive legislatures in the past year. While more than a dozen states enacted noteworthy laws in 2021, two states stand out for the quantity and quality of their lawmaking:  Arizona and Connecticut share our 2021 Reintegration Champion award for their passage of three or more major pieces of record reform legislation.

  • Arizona – The state enacted eight new laws, including a broad new record clearing law, two laws improving its occupational licensing scheme, and a judicial “second chance” certificate. Arizona also repealed a law authorizing suspension of driver’s licenses for failure to pay and authorized its courts to redesignate some felonies as misdemeanors.
  • Connecticut – Enacted a major automatic record clearing scheme, restored the right to vote and hold office upon release from prison, provided for record clearing in connection with marijuana legalization, and broadened expungement for victims of human trafficking.

Another eight states and the District of Columbia earned Honorable Mention for their enactment of at least one major new law: Read more

VIDEO: Governmental Barriers to Small Business Financing for People with a Criminal History

On November 18, the Georgetown Center for Business & Public Policy hosted an informative and provocative forum on “Understanding Governmental Barriers to Small Business Financing for People With a Criminal History.”

A video recording of the program is now available on YouTube.

This event marks the first public discussion of our organization’s new initiative aimed at illuminating and reducing barriers to small business financing based on criminal history. The panelists were Sekwan Merritt, owner of an electrical contracting business in Baltimore, David Schlussel of CCRC, Awesta Sarkash of the Small Business Majority, and Chris Pilkerton, a former SBA general counsel and acting SBA administrator.

Sekwan Merritt, who has built a thriving business and employs several people who also have a record, illuminated the challenges he faces as a justice-affected entrepreneur in gaining access to business capital. Merritt, a graduate of the Georgetown Pivot Program, was one of the plaintiffs in the litigation that led to the SBA’s rollback of its PPP restrictions after he was denied this emergency COVID-19 federal relief. He explained that because he is still on parole he is ineligible for the SBA’s general loan programs and that the kinds of questions asked on SBA application forms frequently deter people from even applying. Merritt also described the need for a holistic assessment as part of an overall credit evaluation, recognizing achievements such as educational attainment, rather than a frequently-disqualifying early inquiry into criminal record.

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