Category: Legislation

Automated sealing nears enactment in Pennsylvania

[NOTE:  On June 30, HR 1419 was signed into law as Act 56.  Its provisions have been incorporated into the Pennsylvania profile of the Restoration of Rights Project.]

On Friday June 22, the Pennsylvania legislature took its final step toward passage of the so-called Clean Slate Act of 2018, delivering to Governor Wolf a bill (HR 1419) that he has already indicated he will sign.  When enacted, the Act will be the first state law providing for automated sealing of at least some conviction records, sparing individuals with qualifying records the trouble and expense of filing a formal petition for relief with a court.  Congratulations are due to the Community Legal Services of Philadelphia and the Center for American Progress for their sustained efforts over several years to enact this ground-breaking legislation, which will provide relief for “hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians with old and minor criminal convictions or who were arrested but not convicted.”  Their press release, linked here, notes that “[t]he bill enjoyed remarkably broad support, including from legislators and advocacy groups that rarely find common ground.”  

As soon as HR 1419 has been signed into law, we expect to incorporate into the Restoration of Rights Project a full analysis of its relevant provisions, which are fairly complex, and which become effective on different dates.  In the meantime, we note below what appear to be the bill’s most salient features.

Read more

More states enact major “second chance” reforms

In recent weeks, three more states — Colorado, Louisiana and Vermont — have enacted laws intended to make it easier for people with a criminal record to find and keep employment, or otherwise to regain rights and status.

We are just now noting Wyoming’s enactment in March 2018 of general standards for professional and occupational licensure, which impose new restrictions on how criminal record may be taken into account by licensing agencies, and its amendment of more than a dozen specific licensing laws.

In the first five months of 2018 alone, a total of 21 states have enacted legislation to improve opportunities for people with a criminal record, with more similar laws evidently on the way.  States have enacted several different types of “second chance” laws this year, from expansion of voting rights to expansion of judicial authority to relieve collateral consequences at sentencing.

Read more

President Trump supports opportunities for people with a criminal record

In an editorial published on May 21, the New York Times commended President Trump for remarks at a White House conference on prison reform last week, in which he expressed support for improved employment opportunities for people with a criminal record:

“A friend of mine told me that when people get out of prison, they’re all excited.” Mr. Trump said. “And then they go and they have that stigma; they can’t get a job. People don’t want to hire them. They can’t get that chance. When we talk about our national program to hire American, this must include helping millions of former inmates get back into the work force as gainfully employed citizens.”
It appears that most of the relevant discussion at the conference last week was about a House bill aimed at preparing federal prisoners for reentry, addressing such issues as good time credit and halfway house placement.  It also appears that the prospects for federal prison reform this year are dim, given the wide gulf between the pending House bill and the insistence of Senate leadership on including provisions for sentencing reform.  Nonetheless, the President’s words will be very useful for those working in state legislatures to restore rights and status.  Already in 2018, at least 13 states have enacted laws either reforming occupational licensure or extending record-clearing laws, and bills are awaiting the governor’s signature in another five.  We are already starting work on a report summarizing legislative accomplishments in 2018 that will be modeled on “Second Chance Reforms in 2017” published last fall.

New expungement legislation: Maryland and Oklahoma

The trend toward expanding expungement and sealing laws is continuing.  In the last week of April, the governors of Maryland and Oklahoma signed bills enlarging eligibility criteria and reducing waiting periods, joining Florida and Utah with new record-sealing enactments in 2018.  The provisions of these two newest laws are described below.  Similar legislation is well along in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Vermont.  Vermont S 173, enrolled and awaiting the governor’s signature, is of particular interest since it makes expungement automatic in some categories without the requirement of a petition or filing fee (“unless either party objects in the interest of justice”).   We are tracking these pending bills and will add them to the Restoration of Rights Project if and when they are enacted.

Read more

Wisconsin joins crowd of states regulating occupational licensure

On April 16, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed into law Act 278, making his state the sixth in the past two months to establish new rules on consideration of criminal record in the context of occupational and professional licensure.  Effective August 1, 2018, licensing boards in Wisconsin will be prohibited in most cases from denying or revoking a license based on arrests or pending charges, and required to justify in writing any adverse action based on conviction.  Boards will also be required to give applicants a preliminary determination as to whether a particular conviction will be disqualifying.

Indiana, Arizona, Massachusetts, Nebraska and Tennessee have all recently enacted laws regulating how licensing boards treat arrests and convictions, in some cases with strikingly similar features, as described in recent posts here and here.  The conviction-related provisions of the model occupational licensing law proposed by the Institute for Justice are reflected in almost all of these new laws, though many of them go even farther to discourage unwarranted discrimination affecting as much as 25% of the U.S. workforce.   

   Read more

Living with a marijuana conviction after legalization (updated)

Jacob Sullum, senior editor at Reason, has written a fabulous article about expungement of marijuana convictions in places that have since legalized marijuana: so far 10 states, DC, and the Northern Mariana Islands have legalized.  The piece is currently available to Reason subscribers and will be available to the public in the coming weeks (we will update this post with the link).

Sullum tells the stories of eleven individuals, from the jurisdictions that have legalized, who describe how their marijuana convictions have impacted their lives before and after legalization.  He documents the lingering legal and social sanctions that burden people long after they have served their sentences, sanctions that “seem especially unjust and irrational in the growing number of U.S. jurisdictions that have legalized marijuana for recreational use.”

Read more

New report: Roundup of 2017 expungement and restoration laws

A new report from the Collateral Consequences Resource Center shows that states across the country are continuing to expand opportunities to avoid or mitigate the adverse effects of a criminal record.  If anything, the trend first documented last winter in Four Years of Second Chance Reforms, 2013 – 2016 has accelerated in 2017. 

Second Chance Reforms in 2017 identifies 23 states, blue and red, that in the past year broadened existing second chance laws or enacted entirely new ones, enhancing the prospects for successful reentry and reintegration for many thousands of Americans.  Using research from the Restoration of Rights Project, the report describes specific changes to the law in each state during the past year along with relevant citations, analyzing and comparing approaches taken by different states.

The most frequent type of reform involves limiting public access to criminal records: new sealing or expungement laws were enacted in several states that previously had none, eligibility requirements were relaxed for many existing record-sealing authorities, and new limits were imposed on access to non-conviction and juvenile records – all making it easier for more individuals to get relief at an earlier date. However, there is remarkably little consistency among state record-closing schemes, and most states extend relief only to less serious offenses after lengthy eligibility waiting periods. Moreover, eligibility criteria are frequently so complex as to defeat the sharpest legal minds. Other recurring reforms limit employer inquiries into criminal history at the application stage, and a few states enacted administratively enforceable standards for consideration of criminal history in employment and licensing.

The fast pace of reform in the states reflects a dawning realization that the problem of mass conviction is at least as significant in economic and social terms as the problem of mass incarceration.  At the same time, the dizzying variety and complexity of the new provisions indicates that there is still no consensus about the most effective way to avoid or mitigate the adverse effects of a criminal record. Because there has been very little empirical research into the relative effectiveness of different forms of relief, it is not surprising that experimentation seems to be the order of the day.

These new laws and significant reform proposals of the past several years – notably the collateral consequences provisions of the Model Penal Code: Sentencing – will be discussed at a Roundtable conference in Washington, D.C. on January 12, 2018, sponsored by the American Law Institute and the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Each new reform is more fully explained in the state-by-state profiles in the Restoration of Rights Project.  The Executive Summary follows, and the full report is available here.    

Read more

A closer look at Indiana’s expungement law

More than four years ago, Indiana’s then-Governor Mike Pence signed into law what was at the time perhaps the Nation’s most comprehensive and elaborate scheme for restoring rights and status after conviction.  In the fall of 2014, as one of CCRC’s very first posts, Margaret Love published her interview with the legislator primarily responsible for its enactment, in which he shared details of his successful legislative strategy.  Later posts on this site reported on judicial interpretation of the law.  Since that time, a number of other states have enacted broad record-closing laws, including Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, New York, and most recently Illinois.

We have been impressed by the evident enthusiasm for Indiana’s “expungement” law within the state, from the courts, the bar, the advocacy community, and even from prosecutors.  So we thought it might be both interesting and useful to take a closer look at how the Indiana law has been interpreted and administered, how many people have taken advantage of it, and how effective it has been in facilitating opportunities for individuals with a criminal record, particularly in the workforce.  We also wanted to see what light this might shed on what has brought to the forefront of reform so many politically-conservative states.  Spoiler alert: the Chamber of Commerce was one of the strongest proponents of the law.

We expect to be able to post our account of the Indiana expungement law shortly after Labor Day.  In the meantime, we thought it might be useful to reprint our 2014 interview with former Rep. Jud McMillan, which has been among our most viewed posts.

Read more

Montana just authorized expungement of adult convictions

For the first time in its history, Montana has enacted a law authorizing its courts to limitfish public access to adult conviction records. On April 13, Governor Steve Bullock signed into law House Bill 168, giving district courts the power to “expunge” the records of misdemeanor convictions after completion of sentence, effective October 1 of this year. This makes Montana the 30th state since 2012 to enact some form of record-closing law, or to expand an existing one. The possibility of full destruction of the record for all misdemeanor convictions makes Montana’s one of the more ambitious collateral consequences reform measures of the past several years.

Read more

Second chance employment bill approved in West Virginia

CARDINAL_ownby1High drama on the final day of the West Virginia legislative session produced a last minute compromise between House and Senate over SB76, the WV Second Chance for Employment Act.  If the governor signs the bill into law, individuals convicted of non-violent felonies will be able to return to court after 10 years to have their convictions reduced to misdemeanors. [NOTE: The bill was signed into law on April 25.]

For several years the WV legislature has been considering how to improve employment opportunities for people with non-violent convictions, but the House and Senate had different ideas about how to do it.  The Senate approach would have expanded the state’s expungement law, which now applies only to youthful misdemeanors, while the House preferred reducing nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors.   As the seconds ticked toward midnight on April 8, the Senate agreed to accept the “forgiving” approach favored by the House, creating a new category of “reduced misdemeanor” that need not be reported on employment applications but will be reflected in background investigations.

Read more

1 … 5 6 7 8 9 10