Restoration of Rights Project – Georgia Profile
Guide to restoration of rights, pardon, sealing & expungement following a Georgia criminal conviction
Related blog posts:
- New occupational licensing laws in 2021 (6/10/2021) - In the first five months of 2021, seven states and the District of Columbia enacted nine separate laws improving opportunities for people with a criminal record to obtain occupational licenses. This continues a four-year trend begun in 2017 that has seen 33 states and the District of Columbia enact 54 separate laws regulating consideration of criminal record in the licensing process. Our report on new legislation in 2020 noted that “[o]f all the criminal record reforms enacted during this modern reintegration reform era, no other approaches the regulation of occupational licensing agencies in terms of breadth, consistency, and likely efficacy.” Laws...
- “Certifying Second Chances” (3/24/2021) - This is the title of a provocative new article by Cara Suvall, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, and Director of the Youth Opportunity Clinic. The article, forthcoming in the Cardozo Law Review, catalogues and analyzes the costs and burdens that deter people from accessing certificates intended to enhance employment opportunities. Professor Suvall focuses particular attention on certificate programs in Tennessee, Georgia, and New York, which vary widely in eligibility criteria, administration, and legal effect. She highlights the learning, compliance, and psychological barriers that limit effectiveness of existing certificate programs, and describes proposals to lower those barriers....
- New research report: Four Years of Second Chance Reforms, 2013-2016 (2/8/2017) - Introduction Since 2013, almost every state has taken at least some steps to chip away at the negative effects of a criminal record on an individual’s ability to earn a living, access housing, education and public benefits, and otherwise fully participate in civil society. It has not been an easy task, in part because of the volume and complexity of state and federal laws imposing collateral consequences. To encourage employers and other decision-makers to give convicted individuals a fair chance, some states have enacted or modified judicial restoration mechanisms like expungement, sealing, and certificates of relief. Others have extended nondiscrimination...
- Georgia high court extends Padilla to parole eligibility (5/14/2015) - The Supreme Court of Georgia has extended the doctrine of Padilla v. Kentucky to a failure to advise about parole eligibility. In Alexander v. State, decided on May 11, a defendant sentenced to a 15-year prison term for child molestation sought to set aside his guilty plea on grounds that his defense counsel had not warned him that, as a recidivist, he would not be eligible for parole. The Georgia high court agreed that this failure constituted deficient performance under the doctrine of Strickland v. Washington, overruling its 1999 precedent holding that the Sixth Amendment did not require a defense...
- Georgia becomes first state in South to ban the box (2/25/2015) - Goergia Governor Nathan Deal has signed an executive order making Georgia the first state in the South to ban the box in public employment. As reported on the “Inside Politics” blog of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Job seekers applying for work with the state of Georgia will no longer need to disclose prior criminal convictions on their initial applications.” The order provides that this new policy “will allow returning citizens an opportunity to explain their unique circumstances in person to a potential employer.”
- Is pardon making a comeback? Probably not, but law reform may be (1/21/2015) - A recent issue of Governing Magazine reports that pardoning is “making a comeback” after decades of neglect. It would be nice if it were true. But the evidence of comeback is thin. Almost all of the jurisdictions where pardoning is thriving today are the same ones where it was thriving a decade ago. In a dozen states, including Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Nebraska, South Carolina and South Dakota, pardon has never been neglected, much less abandoned by responsible officials. In these jurisdictions and a handful of others, pardon has deep roots in the justice system and is supported by accountable institutions of government. It...
- Discipline for schoolgirls differs by race and skin tone (12/11/2014) - The New York Times this morning describes data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights showing that African-American girls tend to face more serious school discipline than white girls. “For all the attention placed on problems that black boys face in terms of school discipline and criminal justice, there is increasing focus on the way those issues affect black girls as well.” Black girls who get in trouble at school are also more frequently referred to the criminal justice system, where they can incur a criminal record that sticks with them into adulthood.
- The New Southern Strategy Coalition works on criminal records reform in the South (12/2/2014) - “I don’t know why everyone is talking about the New Jim Crow; in the South the old one never went away.” – 2013 New Southern Strategy Coalition conference participant Introduction The New Southern Strategy Coalition is a collaborative network of Southern advocacy groups and their national allies, originally convened in 2011 and dedicated to reducing the negative consequences of a criminal record in the South. Because the South has always been seen as a region resistant to criminal justice reform, many national groups do not have a presence there, and state-based advocacy efforts are generally underfunded and understaffed. The voices of those most affected are...