Practice resources and manuals

Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction: Law, Policy and Practice

Comprehensive resource for practicing lawyers, judges and policymakers on the legal restrictions and penalties that result from a criminal conviction over and above the court-imposed sentence, by Margaret Colgate Love, Jenny Roberts and Wayne A. Logan

National Clean Slate Clearinghouse

Information on practice resources governing record clearance for adult criminal records and records of juvenile adjudications from the Council of State Governments Justice Center

Federal Sentencing & Collateral Consequences

CCRC practice resource on federal judicial authority to factor collateral consequences into sentencing decisions (April, 2016)

Criminal Justice Resources (Legal Action Center)

A collection of resources focusing on criminal records, collateral consequences, and relief

Criminal Records Clearinghouse (National HIRE Network)

Information about governmental agencies and community-based organizations that assist people with criminal records, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers

Practice Advisory for Criminal Defenders, New Deferred Action Parental Accountability (DAPA) Program

Strategies for criminal defense lawyers to preserve client eligibility for deferred action under Obama immigration initiative (Immigrant Legal Resource Center and National Lawyers Guild)

NELP Ban-the-Box Toolkit

Advocacy resources and related information about limiting consideration of criminal background in the hiring process

Collateral Consequences Resource List

2010 memorandum from the Sentencing Resource Counsel Project digesting cases about consideration of collateral consequences in federal sentencing decisions.

A Juvenile Defender’s Guide To Conquering Collateral Consequences

A practice checklist from the National Juvenile Defender Center

Related blog posts:

“Positive Credentials That Limit Risk: A Report on Certificates of Relief” (6/27/2024) - 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 [...]
Oklahoma and California win Reintegration Champion awards for 2022 laws (1/17/2023) - On January 10 we posted our annual report on new laws enacted in 2022 to restore rights and opportunities to people with a record of arrest or conviction. Like our earlier reports, it documents the steady progress of what we characterized two years ago as “a full-fledged law reform movement” aimed at restoring rights and dignity to individuals who have [...]
The Frontiers of Dignity: Clean Slate and Other Criminal Record Reforms in 2022 (1/10/2023) - 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 [...]
Marijuana legalization and record clearing in 2022 (12/20/2022) - CCRC is pleased to announce a new report on recent cannabis-specific record sealing and expungement reforms in the past 18 months. The report, extending CCRC’s fruitful collaboration with the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at The Ohio State University, is available here. An accompanying infographic (reproduced at the end of this postr) summarizes the report’s findings, and includes a color-coded [...]
“The Many Roads From Reentry to Reintegration” (3/3/2022) - We are pleased to publish the March 2022 revision of our national survey of laws restoring rights and opportunities after arrest or conviction, “The Many Roads from Reentry to Reintegration.“ Like the earlier report, this report contains a series of essays on various relief mechanisms operating in the states, including legislative restoration of voting and firearms rights, various types of [...]
Judicial Diversion and Deferred Adjudication: A National Survey (3/1/2022) - Last week we announced the forthcoming publication of a national report surveying various legal mechanisms for restoring rights and opportunities following arrest or conviction, a revision and updating of our 2020 report “The Many Roads to Reintegration.” The first post in the series (“Expungement, Sealing & Set-Aside of Convictions“), published on February 25, gives some additional background about the report. [...]
Executive Pardon: A National Survey (2/28/2022) - Last week we announced the forthcoming publication of a national report surveying various legal mechanisms for restoring rights and opportunities following arrest or conviction, a revision and updating of our 2020 report “The Many Roads to Reintegration.” The first post in the series (“Expungement, Sealing & Set-Aside of Convictions“), published on February 25, gives some additional background about the report. [...]
Fair Chance Employment and Occupational Licensure: A National Survey (2/25/2022) - Yesterday we announced the forthcoming publication of a national report surveying various legal mechanisms for restoring rights and opportunities following arrest or conviction, a revision and updating of our 2020 report “The Many Roads to Reintegration.” The first post in the series (“Expungement, Sealing & Set-Aside of Convictions“) gives some additional background about the report. This second post in this [...]
Waiting for Relief: A National Survey of Waiting Periods for Record Clearing (2/23/2022) - Our new report is the first-ever comprehensive national survey of the period of time a person, who is otherwise eligible to expunge or seal a misdemeanor or felony conviction record, must wait before obtaining this relief. Waiting periods are usually established by statute and can range from 0 to 20 years. Typically, during a waiting period the person must be [...]
“The High Cost of a Fresh Start” (2/14/2022) - 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 [...]
CFPB documents the financial burdens imposed on justice-involved individuals (2/2/2022) - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has just issued an extraordinary new report on the financial challenges faced by justice-involved individuals in navigating each stage of the criminal justice system. The report, which describes itself as “the first of its kind done by the CFPB,” paints a devastating picture of how the criminal law enforcement system conspires at every step to [...]
Reintegration Champion Awards for 2021 (1/27/2022) - 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 [...]
“From Reentry to Reintegration: Criminal Record Reforms in 2021” (1/24/2022) - At the beginning of each year since 2017, CCRC has issued a report on legislation enacted in the past year that is 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 reports have documented the steady progress of what last year’s [...]
A radical new approach to measuring recidivism risk (1/12/2022) - NOTE: This post has been updated as of 4/2 to incorporate additional research. Researchers at the RAND Corporation have proposed a radical new approach to measuring recidivism risk that raises questions about decades of received truth about the prevalence of reoffending after people leave prison. At least since the 1990s, the Bureau of Justice Statistics has measured risk of recidivism [...]
CCRC’s First Newsletter (9/28/2021) - Dear Subscribers, We write with an update on our continued work to promote public discussion of restoration of rights and opportunities for people with a record. Highlights from this year’s work are summarized below, including roundups of new legislation, case studies on barriers to expungement, policy recommendations, and a new “fair chance lending” project to reduce criminal history barriers to [...]
Reintegration reform returns to pre-pandemic levels in first half of 2021 (7/23/2021) - This year is proving to be a landmark one for legislation restoring rights and opportunities to people with a criminal record, extending the remarkable era of “reintegration reform” that began around 2013. Just in the past six months, 30 states and the District of Columbia have enacted an extraordinary 101 new laws to mitigate collateral consequences. Six more bills await [...]
Study reveals potential for racial bias in presidential pardon process (6/24/2021) - Last week the RAND Corporation published its long-awaited Statistical Analysis of Presidential Pardons, commissioned in 2012 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics to determine whether the Justice Department process for deciding who to recommend for a presidential pardon is tainted with “systematic” racial bias. The RAND study appears to have been a direct response to an investigative report published jointly [...]
“Tribal Pardons: A Comparative Study” (5/21/2021) - This is the title of a fascinating new working paper by Andrew Novak, Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, about a little-studied issue: collateral consequences of tribal convictions and how they are mitigated or avoided. This is an important topic not currently addressed in our national resources on restoration of rights and record relief. Here [...]
How states reduce jury diversity by excluding people with a record (3/12/2021) - Last month, the Prison Policy Initiative released a report called Rigging the Jury, showing how all 50 states reduce jury diversity by excluding some people because of their criminal record, in some cases permanently. The report, which includes a map, table, and detailed appendix explaining each state’s policies, shows that: 44 states bar people with felony convictions from jury service [...]
Online Criminal Records Impose ‘Digital Punishment’ on Millions (2/11/2021) - We are pleased to republish this excellent article by Andrea Cipriano, which describes a new study of online non-conviction records, with permission from The Crime Report. The study concludes that law enforcement records may remain freely available online indefinitely, notwithstanding state laws calling for automatic expungement of such records. (For more information on expungement of non-conviction records, see CCRC’s 50-state [...]