We are pleased to publish “The Reintegration Report Card,” a new resource that ranks and grades all 50 states on how their laws address voting rights, record relief (including expungement and pardon), fair employment, and occupational licensing for people with a criminal record.

This Report Card supplements our recent 50-state report, “The Many Roads to Reintegration.” That report surveys U.S. laws aimed at restoring rights and opportunities after arrest or conviction. It grades the states on nine different types of restoration laws, including voting rights, six different record relief remedies, and laws regulating consideration of criminal record in employment and occupational licensing. Based on these grades, the report includes an overall ranking of the states and D.C.

This Report Card provides the grades and rankings in a more easily accessible form. It also includes a brief narrative summary of how each state’s law stacks up in the different graded categories. Our hope is that these summaries will suggest ways in which a state might improve its laws and hence its overall ranking. An appendix collects all the grades and rankings (the rankings are also at the end of this post).

We emphasize once again that our grades are based solely on the text of each state’s law, leaving more nuanced judgments about their actual operation to practitioners, researchers, and the law’s intended beneficiaries. We expect to look more closely at the operation of some of the record relief laws in the near future, and welcome comments and suggestions from those who have experience with them. In the meantime, we hope our grades will challenge, encourage, and inspire additional reforms in the months and years ahead.

The Reintegration Report Card is available at this link. For more details and legal citations for each state, see the Restoration of Rights Project. For essays surveying each topic, consult “The Many Roads to Reintegration.”

National Ranking of States on Laws Restoring Rights and Opportunities

1 2 3 4 5 5 7 8 8 10 10 12 12 12 15 15 17

Illinois California Utah Minnesota Connecticut Nevada Colorado Delaware New York N. Dakota Pennsylvania N. Hampshire New Jersey Oklahoma Massachusetts New Mexico Indiana

18 18 18 18 18 23 23 23 26 27 27 27 30 30 32 33 34

Louisiana Nebraska Rhode Island Vermont Washington Arkansas Kentucky Ohio North Carolina Idaho Michigan Tennessee Missouri Wisconsin Georgia Mississippi Hawaii

35 36 36 36 39 40 41 42 42 44 44 46 46 48 49 50 51

Maryland Arizona Oregon S. Carolina Maine D.C. Kansas Montana West Virginia South Dakota Virginia Iowa Wyoming Texas Alabama Alaska Florida