After nearly six months offline because of repeated malware attacks, the Collateral Consequences Resource Center website is back live — entirely rebuilt and ready again to provide web-based legal resources to the public free of charge.
We are especially happy to be able to reintroduce our flagship resource, the Restoration of Rights Project (RRP), which was hard hit by the malware attacks, mysteriously losing both data and functionality. Those who use and rely on the RRP know its value in collecting and analyzing laws in each state that aim to mitigate the adverse effects of a criminal record, through civil rights restoration, executive pardon, judicial record clearing, and fair chance employment and licensing. The RRP also includes 50-state comparison charts for each of these four areas of research.
Our work on the RRP has been supported in recent years by generous grants from Arnold Ventures, and we have made a point of keeping its resources updated in real time as new laws are enacted. We have also published specialized research reports based on RRP research, most recently on loss and restoration of firearm rights, as well as annual reports on newly enacted laws.
Reconstructing the RRP’s hundreds of web pages has been the work of many weeks for me and Beth Johnson, who for the past two years has been my right hand in keeping the RRP up to date and accurate. Fortunately, we have been able to restore almost all of the material that was lost or compromised, and we have taken the opportunity to add new laws and expand areas of current interest such as non-conviction dispositions and record relief for human trafficking survivors.
Beth and I have had time to consider the importance of the RRP project, and to appreciate the work that goes into its upkeep. The fact is that maintaining the RRP has been a labor of love since I began it more than 20 years ago. It also requires a love of labor, because this is careful, detailed work, done behind the scenes, that can frequently be tedious and seem repetitious. We worry a lot about striking a useful balance between including too much and not enough technical detail, given our varied audience.
We know that there is no other resource that seeks to bring this body of law together in one place. And, over the years, we have seen and heard enough feedback – from lawyers and journalists and members of the public – to be confident that the information is being used in meaningful ways to benefit the justice-impacted and their advocates, and that it does benefit them. We have also been told that the RRP’s comparative resources are particularly useful to legislators and other policymakers looking to improve their laws. These many anecdotal moments have been enough to sustain Beth and me in the rebuilding effort.
In the end, we are convinced that this real-time research needs to continue. So we are returning to the RRP reinvigorated, with gratitude to the many people who have reached out while the site was offline, as well as to those who have in the past relied on and shared the work. Our hope simply is that the resource is and will remain useful to the people seeking to understand and address the problem of collateral consequences.
In this spirit, we hope that those of you who have used CCRC’s resources over the years, as well as those who are being introduced to them for the first time, will take a few minutes to fill in the short survey below to assess the usefulness of the site’s resources, and to let us know what you’d like to see us include in the future.
Restoration of Rights Project (RRP) Feedback Survey
Help us improve this resource.
The Restoration of Rights Project is committed to providing accurate, clear, and useful information to the public free of charge. Your feedback helps us improve the site and better meet the needs of people who rely on it.
This survey takes about 2 minutes. You can take the survey here.
