Illinois
Restoration of Rights Project – Illinois Profile
Guide to restoration of rights, pardon, sealing & expungement following an Illinois criminal conviction
Burdened for Life: The Myth of Juvenile Record Confidentiality and Expungement in Illinois
Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission (2016)
Expungement as a Tool of Restorative Justice
Christie Fischer (2015)
Related blog posts:
- Access Barriers to Felony Expungement: The Case of Illinois (2/18/2021) - Currently, 33 states authorize the expungement or sealing of at least some felony convictions.i However, recent research has shown that only a small percentage of eligible individuals actually complete the court petition process required to obtain this relief in most jurisdictions.ii In the fall of 2020, as an outgrowth of its work surveying record relief laws in the 50 states, [...]
- Collateral Consequences in Occupational Licensing Act (6/29/2018) - We’ve noted in recent posts the numerous states that, just in the past three or four months, have enacted broad occupational licensing reforms affecting people with a criminal record. Many of these new laws have been influenced by a model developed by the Institute for Justice (IJ), a libertarian public interest law firm that has been litigating and lobbying to [...]
- New expungement legislation: Maryland and Oklahoma (5/8/2018) - The trend toward expanding expungement and sealing laws is continuing. In the last week of April, the governors of Maryland and Oklahoma signed bills enlarging eligibility criteria and reducing waiting periods, joining Florida and Utah with new record-sealing enactments in 2018. The provisions of these two newest laws are described below. Similar legislation is well along in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee [...]
- More states facilitating licensing for people with a criminal record (4/18/2018) - Last week we posted a description of a detailed new Indiana law regulating consideration of conviction in occupational and professional licensure throughout the state. It now appears that this may represent a trend, as eight additional states have either recently enacted or are poised to enact similarly progressive occupational licensing schemes. New general laws regulating licensure are in place in Arizona, Illinois, and Massachusetts. [...]
- A closer look at Indiana’s expungement law (8/30/2017) - More than four years ago, Indiana’s then-Governor Mike Pence signed into law what was at the time perhaps the Nation’s most comprehensive and elaborate scheme for restoring rights and status after conviction. In the fall of 2014, as one of CCRC’s very first posts, Margaret Love published her interview with the legislator primarily responsible for its enactment, in which he [...]
- Illinois enacts boadest sealing law in Nation (8/25/2017) - On Fiday Illinois governor Bruce Rauner signed into law what appears to be the broadest sealing law in the United States, covering almost all felonies and requiring a relatively short eligibility waiting period of three years. We expect to provide a more in-depth discussion of the law next week from practitioners working on the ground in the state, and will [...]
- 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 [...]
- Illinois health care licenses elude those with records (10/13/2016) - The Illinois legislature has been generally progressive in enacting measures to help people with a criminal record avoid being stigmatized for life. In 2003, as a state senator, President Obama sponsored one of the earliest of these measures, authorizing courts to grant certificates relieving collateral consequences. In 2011, however, Illinois took several steps backwards when it enacted legislation automatically barring some criminal record holders from [...]
- New York Times editors question efficacy of expungement laws (3/19/2015) - In an editorial titled “Job Hunting With a Criminal Record,” the editors of the New York Times tackle the problem of employment discrimination against the estimated 70 million Americans who “carry the burden of a criminal record.” They question the efficacy of expungement and other popular “forgetting” strategies for dealing with employer aversion to risk, preferring the “longer term” approach of “a [...]
- Forgiving v. forgetting: A new redemption tool (3/19/2015) - The following thought-provoking piece about the growing popularity of judicial “certificates of good conduct” was first published in The Marshall Project (www.themarshallproject.org) a nonprofit news organization focused on the US criminal justice system. The “forgiving” approach to avoiding or mitigating collateral consequences is an important alternative to the “forgetting” approach advocated by proponents of expungement or sealing, which tend in any event [...]