Author Archives: CCRC Staff

Virginia enacts significant record reforms in 2025

Note: We are very pleased to publish a summary of the several significant record reforms enacted by Virginia in 2025, prepared by Rob Poggenklass. Rob is executive director of Justice Forward Virginia, a public defender-led criminal justice policy advocacy organization. He was deputy director of CCRC in 2022. 

The Commonwealth of Virginia has continued to make significant progress toward reducing the collateral consequences of criminal conviction, although a closely divided government has meant that reforms have been more incremental in recent years. Here are the several new laws that Virginia enacted during the 2025 legislative session:

  • Occupational licensing reforms;
  • Expansion of vacatur eligibility for victims of human trafficking;
  • Two bills easing employment restrictions for people convicted of “barrier crimes”; and
  • Technical updates and policy changes to the major 2021 record sealing law, which will take effect July 1, 2026;

In addition, the General Assembly took the first step toward amending the Virginia Constitution to ensure that a felony conviction results in loss of the right to vote (and potentially other civil rights) only during actual incarceration.

These six major new authorities are described below. I expect that the Virginia General Assembly’s exemplary performance in enacting these important new provisions will be in for recognition in CCRC’s annual round-up of new record reforms.

Occupational licensing. SB826 follows reforms in other states like Colorado in prohibiting regulatory boards from using vague terms like “good moral character” or “moral turpitude” to refuse a license, certificate, or registration. The law also requires a regulatory board, when issuing a denial, to specify in writing which conviction or convictions on the person’s record contributed to the denial, and to explain how that criminal history “directly relates” to the license sought and how the board weighed rehabilitative factors in its decision.

The new law also establishes a “predetermination” process for licensing eligibility, so that a person can obtain, prior to investing in training or education, a binding written determination as to whether their criminal history would disqualify them from obtaining a license, certificate, registration or other authority.

Human trafficking. A 2021 law authorized vacatur and expungement for victims of sex trafficking, but limited eligibility to those victims who had been convicted of prostitution-related offenses. HB2393 / SB1460 expands eligibility to include victims who were convicted of felony drug possession or a variety of misdemeanor offenses, including larceny offenses, trespass, destruction of property, using a false ID, identity theft, driving without a license, driving on a suspended license, or disorderly conduct.

The law also makes three other significant changes. First, it adds a definition of “labor trafficking” and makes labor trafficking victims eligible for vacatur and expungement under the law. Second, it specifies the requirements for what to include when filing a petition for relief. Third, the law adds a provision stating there is no requirement that a human trafficking victim must have cooperated with a law enforcement investigation or prosecution to meet the requirements for record relief.

Barrier crimes. Two new laws are intended to offer new employment opportunities for people convicted under Virginia’s barrier crimes regime. A conviction for an offense listed in the barrier crimes law expressly prohibits people from working in most jobs that involve caring for children, the elderly, or the disabled. The first new law, HB1924, gives school boards the option to hire a person convicted of a barrier crime if their offense conduct did not involve specified sex crimes involving a child, the person’s civil rights have been restored, 20 years have passed since the person completed their sentence, and the school board has determined the person has the requisite character to serve in the position. This law also applies to the awarding of contracts by school boards.

The second law, HB1877, eliminates several requirements for individuals serving as peer recovery specialists. The law reenacts previous requirements that a person serving as a peer recovery specialist must be free of probation or parole for at least five years, but provides that a person can work as a peer recovery specialist even if they have not paid all fines, court costs, or restitution from all previous convictions.

Record sealing. Virginia passed transformative record sealing legislation back in 2021, which we previously discussed here. The 2021 law, with minor amendments in 2023, established a system of automatic record sealing for a handful of misdemeanor convictions, as well as automatic sealing for certain non-conviction records. The law also established broad eligibility for petition-based sealing of most misdemeanor convictions and low-level felony convictions. The law set a delayed enactment of July 1, 2025, giving stakeholders such as the Virginia State Police four years to overhaul their computer systems to prepare for the new law.

Since 2021, however, stakeholders have identified numerous technical issues with the 2021 law, as well as some important substantive issues, requiring the General Assembly to enact revisions before it takes effect. SB1466 / HB2723, which passed the Democratic-controlled General Assembly with large bipartisan support and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, makes a series of technical changes to the 2021 law.

  • Ensures that all marijuana possession records will be sealed. Virginia decriminalized adult marijuana possession in 2020 and legalized it in 2021. Expungement of marijuana offenses was originally included in the marijuana legalization bill with a delayed enactment date, but as challenges emerged with the process, those provisions were removed from the legalization bill and put into the record sealing legislation. Because most marijuana possession charges were not reported to the state repository, which is where Virginia’s automatic record sealing process will begin, the 2021 legislation would not have sealed most marijuana possession court records.
  • Creates a petition process for sealing offenses that should be sealed automatically, but erroneously were not.
  • Limits automatic sealing at the conclusion of a criminal case to acquittals and dismissals with prejudice, rather than charges resolved by nolle prosequi. This change removes prosecutorial and judicial discretion and ensures these records will be sealed unless the subject of the record objects. Other non-conviction records can be expunged by petition using the existing expungement law.
  • Provides that no offenses before January 1, 1986 will be eligible for sealing. This was a major concern of the circuit court clerks, who did not want to go digging through boxes of records—many of which are stored at off-site locations—whenever a petition to seal a very old record was filed.
  • Provides for other technical amendments requested by the Virginia State Police and other stakeholders.

The delayed effective date of the 2021 law also gave the legislature an opportunity to reconsider the breadth of petition-based sealing authorized by the 2021 law, so that many serious felonies that were eligible for sealing by petition under the earlier law will no longer be eligible under the 2025 law, such as (but not limited to) enumerated violent offenses, sex crimes, hate crimes, and election fraud. About 90% of all misdemeanors and nearly two-thirds of all Class 5 and Class 6 felonies, plus all larceny felonies, are eligible for sealing under the new law. (A complete list of ineligible offenses is available on Justice Forward Virginia Foundation’s expungement and record sealing resource page.)

At the same time, the 2025 law provides for the sealing of ancillary offenses (e.g., probation violations, failures to appear, and bond appeals) when the underlying conviction is sealed, and removes all filing fees and service of process costs for expungement and record sealing by petition. The 2025 law also removes a provision that established a right to counsel for indigent record sealing petitioners. The administration of that part of the law was considered unworkable.

The substantial changes to sealing eligibility also prompted the General Assembly to delay enactment of all the changes made to both record sealing and expungement during the 2021, 2023 and 2025 legislative sessions by one year, to July 1, 2026. Nonetheless, on that date, Virginia will finally join the ranks of states that provide for sealing of criminal convictions, including automatic sealing for less serious misdemeanors and many non-conviction records.

Restoration of rights. Virginia is one of four states that still require executive clemency to restore the civil rights of a person convicted of a felony, including the right to vote. While other recent governors have routinely restored civil rights en masse, Gov. Glenn Youngkin has taken a more restrictive approach, prompting several lawsuits and forcing Virginia’s Jim Crow-era voting restrictions back into the spotlight.

During the 2025 legislative session, the General Assembly took the first step toward amending the Virginia Constitution to provide that those convicted of felonies lose the right to vote only during a period of actual incarceration. (SJ248 / HJ2). Those who are not sentenced to prison will not lose the right to vote at all. (It is not clear whether this constitutional amendment is intended to affect the other basic civil rights that must now be restored by the Virginia governor, notably eligibility for jury service and public office.)

This resolution must pass the General Assembly again in 2026, after voters choose all 100 members of the House of Delegates—and a new governor—in November 2025. If the resolution passes a second time in 2026, it must then go to a referendum, most likely in November 2026. The General Assembly previously passed such a resolution in 2021, but it was shelved after Republicans retook the House of Delegates in that fall’s elections. Democrats regained a one-seat majority in 2023, and are hoping to expand it this fall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New information about revived federal firearm restoration process

On March 20 of this year, the Justice Department announced its intention to revive the long-dormant administrative process for restoring federal firearm rights lost because of a criminal conviction. It did not explain how it intended to do this.

We have now learned more about how the revived federal firearm restoration process will work.

The DOJ budget for FY 2026 published on June 13 confirms that, while a number of departmental components will be reduced or phased out entirely, the Office of the Pardon Attorney has an entirely new responsibility and additional funding for “leading the Department’s initiative on creating and establishing a process for restoring firearm rights to citizens.”

The budget document explains (at p. 96) that the office now headed by Pardon Attorney Ed Martin “is developing a process to allow individuals with prior felony convictions and other disqualifiers to petition the Department for restoration of federal firearm rights pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 925(c).” The § 925(c) process was administered by ATF until Congress defunded it in 1992, leaving those with federal convictions and many others without a readily available way of regaining their rights. (We explored these issues in a report on restoration of firearm rights published earlier this month.)

DOJ estimates that “[t]he population of potentially eligible applicants is estimated to be over 25 million and, given the length of time since a working process has been in place, it is anticipated that there will be significant interest from the public in pursuing this remedy.” An additional $448,000 allotted to the Pardon Attorney’s budget “will allow the office to accomplish its clemency mission and firearm rights restoration efforts for the Department.” 

As explained in the DOJ budget document, the Pardon Attorney has been working to develop “an IT case management system to implement an application intake, review, and management process for citizens applying for the restoration of firearms rights.” The document adds that Justice “is committed to establishing a process to review and evaluate these claims at minimal cost.”

Working in conjunction with the Criminal Justice Information Services Team at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Office of the Pardon Attorney is developing an easy-to-use web portal for the acceptance of applications. The new process will leverage technological advancements and system integrations to maximize efficiencies and minimize the manual review of applications for restoration.  

We understand that the Pardon Attorney will publish implementing regulations for public comment shortly after June 18, the date the comment period for the March 20 regulation concludes.  It will be interesting to see the specifics of a case management system that can at once handle the claims of 25 million people while faithfully complying (“at minimal cost”) with the § 925(c) standard for relief (“the Attorney General may grant such relief if it is established to his satisfaction that the circumstances regarding the disability, and the applicant’s record and reputation, are such that the applicant will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest”). It will also be interesting to see how broad the category of “other disqualifiers” mentioned in the budget document may be, including whether it extends to categories of citizens dispossessed under federal law for reasons other than a criminal conviction, such as drug addiction, dishonorable military discharge, and “mental defect.” See 18 U.S. C. § 922(g). 

In any event, dispensing with federal restrictions will not be sufficient to fully restore the firearm rights of many presently dispossessed by virtue of a criminal conviction, since most states impose firearm restrictions based on criminal conviction that are entirely independent of federal law, as CCRC’s report documents. It may be that, with the revival of a § 925(c) process that is essentially automatic, state law will become the primary regulator of firearm rights for those dispossessed by virtue of a criminal conviction.

 

New report: Most states restrict firearm rights too broadly and make restoration difficult

Most states restrict firearm rights too broadly and make restoration difficult, in potential violation of the Second Amendment, according to new report

 

 

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 5, 2025

Media Contact: Margaret Love

Margaretlove@pardonlaw.com

Loss of firearm rights after a felony conviction extends well beyond what is necessary to advance public safety objectives, according to a study released today by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center. The loss of rights is permanent in most states, and under federal law.

The study shows that each state operates under its own complex legal framework with overlapping federal requirements that create the possibility of further criminal jeopardy for inadvertent violations.  Only 13 states limit dispossession to violent crimes, and more than two-thirds of the states offer no route to firearm relief to residents convicted in another state or in federal court. Only 16 states provide a way to regain lost rights that is easily accessible to all state residents.

CCRC’s report, Restoration of Firearm Rights After Conviction: A National Survey and Suggestions for Reform, offers a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the differing ways states restrict and restore the right to possess a firearm, including relevant sections of statutory text to facilitate analysis and comparison.  This detailed information on state laws has not been made previously available, and is timely in light of impending changes to federal firearm restoration.

In almost every state, the process for regaining firearm rights is complex and difficult to navigate. Restoration of federal rights currently depends on restoration under state law, which means that restoration is effectively unavailable to many people, notably including those convicted in federal court whose only remedy is a presidential pardon. It also means that federal firearms restrictions are unevenly applied across the country.

Broad categorical dispossession laws like those in most states are more vulnerable to constitutional challenge under the Second Amendment when there is no individualized assessment of public safety risk, according to Margaret Love, one of the co-authors of the report. “There is no empirical research that would support restricting firearm rights for those convicted of non-violent offenses.”

Love said that “A close look at how firearm rights are restored in states across the country is important because of prospective changes to federal restoration procedures announced in March by the Department of Justice.” She pointed out that “The revival of an alternate way of avoiding federal restrictions means that federal rights will no longer depend on how states restore rights. At the same time, it will leave applicable state restrictions in place, and challenge states to consider whether any analogous state restrictions should remain after federal rights have been restored.”   

The change in federal firearm restoration procedures under consideration by the Department of Justice should encourage states to look carefully at restoration provisions in their own laws to determine whether more restrictive state provisions should outlive federal ones. States will also have to consider whether to offer opportunities for restoration of rights to all state residents rather than restricting them to people convicted in their own state courts.

Beth Johnson, the other co-author of the report, said that facilitating relief from felony dispossession has not been a focus of organizations seeking to remove criminal record restrictions on basic needs such as housing, employment, and access to social supports. It has also not been a familiar part of the advocacy program of organizations dedicated to challenging other types of restrictions on firearm possession.

“Gun violence has been too volatile an issue on the national scene to make support for restoring firearm rights to ‘convicted felons’ anything but a political third rail,” Johnson said. “Lost in the debate is what should be common ground: treating people fairly and supporting their reintegration includes restoring, with appropriate safeguards, their full access to housing, jobs, credit, and yes, also firearm rights.”

The report recommends that the federal government should make relief from federal felony dispossession under the proposed new restoration program broadly available to those who present no public safety risk.  It also recommends that states should narrow the scope of their felony dispossession laws, and provide a procedure for regaining firearm rights that incorporates a public safety determination and is easily accessible to all residents.

Both of the report’s authors have each spent decades representing people seeking to regain their firearm rights, Love in the Federal system through the presidential pardon process, and Johnson in the State of Illinois through the various relief mechanisms that state provides. “We are convinced that the time is right for a serious and open-minded effort to reform the law applicable to a collateral consequence of conviction that is in many ways unreasonable and unfair,” they said. “We are optimistic that the proposed changes to federal restoration will encourage states to reform their unduly restrictive laws.”

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ABOUT CCRC

The Collateral Consequences Resource Center is a non-profit organization that researches laws and policies relating to restoration of rights and criminal record relief throughout the country, whose work makes it possible to see national patterns and emerging trends in efforts to mitigate the adverse impact of a criminal record. For more information visit https://ccresourcecenter.org/.  

 

New report: Most states restrict firearm rights too broadly and make restoration difficult

Most states restrict firearm rights too broadly and make restoration difficult, in potential violation of the Second Amendment, according to new report

 

 

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 5, 2025

Media Contact: Margaret Love

Margaretlove@pardonlaw.com

Loss of firearm rights after a felony conviction extends well beyond what is necessary to advance public safety objectives, according to a study released today by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center. The loss of rights is permanent in most states, and under federal law.

The study shows that each state operates under its own complex legal framework with overlapping federal requirements that create the possibility of further criminal jeopardy for inadvertent violations.  Only 13 states limit dispossession to violent crimes, and more than two-thirds of the states offer no route to firearm relief to residents convicted in another state or in federal court. Only 16 states provide a way to regain lost rights that is easily accessible to all state residents.

CCRC’s report, Restoration of Firearm Rights After Conviction: A National Survey and Suggestions for Reform, offers a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the differing ways states restrict and restore the right to possess a firearm, including relevant sections of statutory text to facilitate analysis and comparison.  This detailed information on state laws has not been made previously available and is particularly timely in light of impending changes to federal firearm restoration.

In almost every state, the process for regaining firearm rights is complex and difficult to navigate. Restoration of federal rights currently depends on restoration under state law, which means that restoration is effectively unavailable to many people, notably including those convicted in federal court whose only remedy is a presidential pardon.

Broad categorical dispossession laws like those in most states are more vulnerable to constitutional challenge under the Second Amendment when there is no individualized assessment of public safety risk, according to Margaret Love, one of the co-authors of the report. “There is no empirical research that would support restricting firearm rights in the case of non-violent offenses.”

Love said that “A close look at how firearm rights are restored in states across the country is important because of prospective changes to federal restoration procedures announced in March by the Department of Justice.” She pointed out that “The revival of an alternate way of avoiding federal restrictions means that federal rights will no longer depend on how states restore rights. At the same time, it will leave applicable state restrictions in place, and challenge states to consider whether any analogous state restrictions should remain after federal rights have been restored.”   

The change in federal firearm restoration procedures under consideration by the Department of Justice should encourage states to look carefully at restoration provisions in their own laws to determine whether more restrictive state provisions should outlive federal ones. States will also have to consider whether to offer opportunities for restoration of rights to all state residents rather than restricting them to people convicted in their own state courts.

Beth Johnson, the other co-author of the report, said that facilitating relief from felony dispossession has not been a focus of organizations seeking to remove criminal record restrictions on basic needs such as housing, employment, and access to social supports. It has also not been a familiar part of the advocacy program of organizations dedicated to challenging other types of restrictions on firearm possession.

“Gun violence has been too volatile an issue on the national scene to make support for restoring firearm rights to ‘convicted felons’ anything but a political third rail,” Johnson said. “Lost in the debate is what should be common ground: treating people fairly and supporting their reintegration includes restoring, with appropriate safeguards, their full access to housing, jobs, credit, and yes, also firearm rights.”

The report recommends that the federal government should make relief from federal felony dispossession under the proposed new restoration program broadly available to those who present no public safety risk.  It also recommends that states should narrow the scope of their felony dispossession laws, and provide a procedure for regaining firearm rights that incorporates a public safety determination and is easily accessible to all residents.

Both of the report’s authors have each spent decades representing people seeking to regain their firearm rights, Love in the Federal system through the presidential pardon process, and Johnson in the State of Illinois through the various relief mechanisms that state provides. “We are convinced that the time is right for a serious and open-minded effort to reform the law applicable to a collateral consequence of conviction that is in many ways unreasonable and unfair,” they said. “We are optimistic that the proposed changes to federal restoration will encourage states to reform their unduly restrictive laws.”

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ABOUT CCRC

The Collateral Consequences Resource Center is a non-profit organization that researches laws and policies relating to restoration of rights and criminal record relief throughout the country, whose work makes it possible to see national patterns and emerging trends in efforts to mitigate the adverse impact of a criminal record. For more information visit https://ccresourcecenter.org/.  

 

Study: Texas diversion provides dramatic benefits for people facing their first felony

NOTE: In light of renewed interest in state legislatures in judicially-administered diversion and deferred adjudication programs, we are re-publishing our 2021 report on a remarkable study of deferred adjudication in Texas by researchers Michael Mueller-Smith and Kevin Schnepel. We noted at the time that “The deferred adjudication program in Texas represents the largest diversion program in the U.S. with over 200,000 participants during 2017 (the most recent year with state-wide caseload data available). Based on the findings of Mueller-Smith and Schnepel, this program may serve as a good model for other jurisdictions considering an expansion of diversion options, especially for people possibly facing their first felony conviction.

by Margaret Love and David Schlussel (Feb 23, 2021).

Increased use of diversion is a key feature of America’s new age of criminal justice reform. Whether administered informally by prosecutors or under the auspices of courts, diversionary dispositions aim to resolve cases without a conviction—and in so doing, conserve scarce legal resources, provide supportive services, reduce recidivism, and provide defendants with a chance to avoid the lingering stigma of a conviction record.

Despite the growing popularity of diversion in this country and around the world, there has been little empirical study of its impacts on future behavior. Until now.

By conjecture, the opportunity to steer clear of a criminal conviction might affect future behavior in opposing ways. An optimist might expect that diversion would motivate a person to avoid returning to court in the future, while preserving the ability to hold lawful employment, especially in places where criminal background checks are used to screen applicants. A skeptic might argue that diversion represents a lesser punishment that could increase offending by reducing either a specific or general deterrence effect.

Without research showing the likelihood of one or the other outcome, policymakers, prosecutors, and judges have had to operate on untested assumptions, hoping for the best. This vacuum has now been filled by a new study of Texas’ court-managed diversion program by two economists, which should be welcome news for the optimists.

Michael Mueller-Smith and Kevin Schnepel (2020) use detailed administrative data from Harris County (which covers the Houston area) to estimate the first causal impacts of a diversion program available to a large fraction of felony defendants in the state. Texas’ “deferred adjudication community supervision” allows defendants to plead guilty but have entry of a conviction deferred during a period of community supervision, with the case dismissed without a conviction upon successful completion. The arrangement must be approved by the judge. This diversion program is comparable to numerous programs administered by prosecutors and judges across the U.S., Europe, and several other countries—although many programs do not necessarily require a guilty plea. At the same time, Texas law has broad eligibility for its program compared to many otherwise-comparable American programs, making deferred adjudication potentially available to all defendants except those charged with DUI-related offenses, repeat drug trafficking near a school, a range of repeat sex crimes, and murder.

Read more

Justice moves toward relieving record-based gun restrictions

On March 20th the U.S. Department of Justice published a rule it described as “a first step” toward reviving a long-dormant program for relieving federal firearms restrictions based on criminal record.  This rule could lead to a dramatic increase in opportunities to regain firearms rights by people convicted of felonies and misdemeanor domestic violence under state and federal law, and a reduction in collateral consequences that have long been criticized as having little or no public safety purpose.

The interim final rule entitled “Withdrawing the Attorney General’s Delegation of Authority” begins implementation of President Trump’s Executive Order 14206 of February 6, 2025 (“Protecting Second Amendment Rights”), which directed the Attorney General to study ways that the federal government could better reduce burdens on individuals’ Second Amendment. (The executive order did not mention firearms dispossession laws as among those burdens.)

According to the rule commentary, the Justice Department proposes to study how to help people with criminal records avoid the restrictions in federal firearms laws. It begins this process by withdrawing the Attorney General’s delegation to ATF to administer the restoration program under 18 U.S.C. 925(c), as well as “the moribund regulations governing individual applications to ATF.”  The rule commentary describes how ATF has been barred by Congress since 1992 from using any agency funds to administer the 925(c) restoration program. Without this statutory form of relief, people with federal convictions have had no way to regain their firearms rights except to obtain a presidential pardon, an elusive and unreliable form of relief in the best of times.

At the same time, the rule commentary promises to revive the 925(c) program, since the Attorney General has concluded that it “reflects an appropriate avenue to restore firearm rights to certain individuals who no longer warrant such disability based on a combination of the nature of their past criminal activity and their subsequent and current law-abiding behavior while screening out others for whom full restoration of firearm rights would not be appropriate.”

Withdrawing the delegation to ATF, as well as its dated implementing procedures, gives the Justice Department

a clean slate on which to build a new approach to implementing 18 U.S.C. 925(c) without the baggage of no-longer-necessary procedures— e.g., a requirement to file an application “in triplicate,” 27 CFR 478.144(b). With such a clean slate, the Department anticipates future actions, including rulemaking consistent with applicable law, to give full effect to 18 U.S.C. 925(c) while simultaneously ensuring that violent or dangerous individuals remain disabled from lawfully acquiring firearms.

The Justice Department’s intention to revive the 925(c) program was foreshadowed several weeks ago in connection with its interest in restoring firearm rights to Mel Gibson, an interest that may have played a part in the dismissal of the official in charge of the pardon program in Justice.

Reviving the 925(c) program could give people with federal convictions a statutory mechanism for regaining their firearms rights for the first time in 30 years, thus lightening the burdens placed on the president’s pardon power. Of course, unlike a pardon, statutory relief from federal firearms restrictions would not necessarily avoid state law restrictions independently placed on those with a criminal record. However, at least a dozen states have incorporated the 925(c) process into their restoration laws, so that a revived 925(c) program could help people with both state and federal convictions regain their firearms rights under both sets of laws.

The March 20 rule took immediate effect, but DOJ will accept comments on the measure until June 18. (The level of intense public interest is evidenced by the fact that, after less than a week, 4544 comments had already been posted at the Federal Register website, most of them favorable to the Justice Department’s plans to expand firearms relief.)

We look forward to seeing what next steps the Justice Department may take over the next months to implement a new 925(c) process, and otherwise implement the goals of the president’s executive order. A redelegation to ATF is suggested as a possibility, except that Congress would have to be persuaded to withdraw its restrictions on use of ATF funds. Delegating to some other part of the Justice Department is also a possibility, although in either case steps would have to be taken to manage the likely overwhelming volume of business, including from the thousands of federal offenders who have been waiting years to obtain a presidential pardon so they could once again go hunting. One possibility is simply to restore rights automatically to anyone convicted of nonviolent crimes after a suitable waiting period, and to consider those convicted of violent offenses on a case by case basis under specific objective standards.

Meanwhile, CCRC expects to publish next month a comprehensive analytical inventory and report on state firearms restrictions based on criminal history. We hope that this report will provide important legal and policy guideposts, both for the states and for the federal government, as they consider what additional steps might appropriately be taken to reduce record-based firearm consequences that are neither fair nor efficient.

Round-up of fair chance licensing reforms in 2024

Expanding employment opportunities in licensed occupations has been a priority for criminal record reformers in the past half dozen years. Happily, fair chance licensing reforms also appear less politically controversial than some others, with Midwestern states like Iowa and Indiana among the most progressive in the Nation in their treatment of justice-impacted license applicants in the licensing process.

In the first half of 2024, two more Midwestern states (South Dakota and Nebraska) enacted comprehensive changes to their licensing laws, Colorado produced a major reform in its licensing scheme, and Pennsylvania closed a gaping loophole in its licensing rules. These major reforms continue a nationwide trend that since 2017 has seen 44 states and the District of Columbia enact 86 separate laws* to limit state power to deny workplace opportunities to qualified individuals based on their criminal history.

The new 2024 laws are described briefly below, and additional details can be found in the relevant state profile from the Restoration of Rights Project. A few less comprehensive licensing reforms are also mentioned, as are bills not yet enacted that are being given serious consideration in half a dozen other states. Read more

“Positive Credentials That Limit Risk: A Report on Certificates of Relief”

We are pleased to present a new report dealing with “certificates of relief,” a form of relief from the collateral consequences of conviction that is less far-reaching than record clearing but potentially available to more people at an earlier point in time. These certificates, offered by a court or correctional agency, do not limit public access to a person’s record but are effective in reducing many record-related disadvantages in the workplace, including by providing employers and others with protection against the risk of being sued for negligence.

Positive Credentials That Limit Risk: A Report on Certificates of Relief makes the case that, at least as long as expungement and sealing remain unavailable to many people with a felony conviction record, or are available only after lengthy waiting periods, certificates of relief can provide an important addition to a state’s reentry scheme, and serve as a bridge to more thorough forms of record relief like expungement or pardon.

At the same time, in a promising development, certificates are beginning to be widely used by prison and parole agencies to encourage employment opportunities and otherwise facilitate reentry for those exiting prison or completing supervision.

Given the perceived limits of record clearing as a comprehensive reentry strategy, social science researchers have become interested in studying the effect of laws that aim to increase the positive information about individuals with a criminal record to counter the negative effect of the record itself. This report is intended to support these research efforts by describing the state of the law relating to certificates of relief in the 21 states that now offer them, and by suggesting directions of further research. A follow-up study will look at pardons.

We hope that this report will stimulate public interest in a type of relief that has been neglected in recent years as background screening has become widespread, and suggest ways to make it more widely appreciated and available. Our goal is to encourage a view of certificates and expungement as complementary parts of a single structured system of serially available criminal record relief.

As state certificate programs are referenced in the body of this report, readers may want to refer to the comparison charts and state-by-state summaries of the law included in the Appendices.  Certificates can be put into the broader context of a state’s other record relief mechanisms in the state profiles from CCRC’s Restoration of Rights Project.

 

First fair chance licensing reforms of 2024

Expanding employment opportunities in licensed occupations has been a priority for criminal record reformers in the past half dozen years. Happily, fair chance licensing reforms also appear less politically controversial than some others, with Midwestern states like Iowa and Indiana among the most progressive in the Nation in their treatment of justice-impacted license applicants and licensees.

In the first three months of 2024, two more Midwestern states (South Dakota and Nebraska) enacted comprehensive changes to their licensing laws, while a third state (Pennsylvania) was poised to close a major loophole in its licensing scheme. These reforms continue a nationwide trend that since 2017 has seen 43 states and the District of Columbia enact 79 separate laws* to limit state power to deny opportunity to qualified individuals based on their criminal history. Significant legislation is under serious consideration in half a dozen additional states, so we expect this year to produce another bumper crop of fair chance licensing laws.

The new laws are described briefly below, and additional details can be found in the relevant state profile from the Restoration of Rights Project. Read more

Making the research case for hiring people with a conviction record

To persuade employers and policymakers to make fact-based decisions on hiring people who have been involved with the criminal justice system, they need the research facts presented in an accessible way. A new, short, sharable publication from Dr. Shawn Bushway at RAND explodes many of the myths about people with a conviction record that keep them from getting hired. Using plain language for hiring managers, it lays out the deep body of research that can help them make better decisions.

The research brief “Resetting the Record: The Facts on Hiring People With Criminal Histories” is designed to help overcome fear-based skepticism about hiring people with records. It includes citations to the underlying research for advocates who want to learn more.

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