Restoration of Rights Project – Indiana Profile

Guide to restoration of rights, pardon, sealing & expungement following an Indiana criminal conviction

I Did My Time: The Transformation of Indiana’s Expungement Law

Joseph C. Dugan, 90 Ind. L.J. 1321 (2015)

Indiana Collateral Consequences Following [Juvenile] Adjudication

2011 guide from the Wayne County Public Defender’s Office

* Be sure to check for changes in the relevant laws since this resource is fairly dated

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First fair chance licensing reforms of 2024 (3/27/2024) - 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...
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 successfully navigated the criminal law system. This year’s criminal record reforms bring the total number of separate laws enacted in the past five years to more than 500. Posted below is our fourth annual legislative Report Card recognizing the most productive...
Report card on licensing laws finds progress, but still a way to go (6/25/2020) - The Institute for Justice, a leader in advocacy for reforming occupational licensing laws, has just issued a major new report grading the states on the opportunities they give to people with a criminal record. The press release and links are below. We are not at all surprised that Indiana got the best grade—or that so many states “tied for dead last.” Coincidentally, the legislatures in Iowa, Missouri, and Pennsylvania have in recent days sent broad new occupational licensing reform measures to their governors’ desks, so at least three states seem poised to climb out of IJ’s basement. Stay tuned for...
Prisoners fighting California fires denied licenses after release (8/20/2018) - Nick Sibilla, a legislative analyst at the Institute for Justice, has published this fine op ed piece in today’s USA Today, describing how the 2,000 state prisoners currently engaged in fighting the largest fire in California history, are barred from obtaining the necessary EMT license that would enable them to continue this work after their release. It contains, inter alia, a description of the two bills currently pending in the California legislature that would end what Nick describes as a “bitterly ironic” situation, where prisoners gain valuable training in certain vocations that they cannot use after their release. The piece...
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 reduce barriers to work for more than two decades. In turn, states like Indiana, Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin have built upon IJ’s model to enact even more progressive schemes intended to ensure that people with the requisite professional qualifications will not be unfairly excluded...
Wisconsin joins crowd of states regulating occupational licensure (4/30/2018) - On April 16, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed into law Act 278, making his state the sixth in the past two months to establish new rules on consideration of criminal record in the context of occupational and professional licensure. Effective August 1, 2018, licensing boards in Wisconsin will be prohibited in most cases from denying or revoking a license based on arrests or pending charges, and required to justify in writing any adverse action based on conviction. Boards will also be required to give applicants a preliminary determination as to whether a particular conviction will be disqualifying. Indiana, Arizona, Massachusetts, Nebraska and...
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. Similar bills have been enrolled and are on the governor’s desk for signature in Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, and Tennessee. Arizona’s new 2018 licensing law follows on another law passed in that state in 2017 that authorized provisional licenses for individuals with a...
Expungement in Indiana – A radical experiment and how it is working so far (12/21/2017) - Note: This is the first of what we anticipate will be a series of reports on some of the more progressive restoration schemes enacted in the past several years. Marion County Deputy Prosecutor Andrew Fogle says the four years since Indiana enacted a broad “second chance” law have been like “the Wild West.” Fogle, who oversees petitions for expungement for his office in Indiana’s most populous county, agreed to be interviewed about what may be the Nation’s most comprehensive and creative scheme to overcome the adverse effects of a criminal record. We also spoke about the law to a number of...
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 shared details of his successful legislative strategy. Later posts on this site reported on judicial interpretation of the law. Since that time, a number of other states have enacted broad record-closing laws, including Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, New York, and most...
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...