New York
Restoration of Rights Project – New York Profile
Guide to restoration of rights, pardon, sealing & expungement following a New York criminal conviction
Consequences of Criminal Proceedings in New York State
Comprehensive 2014 compilation, report, and practice manual by The Bronx Defenders
Criminal Justice Resources (Legal Action Center)
A collection of resources focusing on criminal records, collateral consequences, and relief. A number of the resources are New York-specific.
Re-entry and Reintegration: The Road to Public Safety
New York State Bar Association, Special Committee on Collateral Consequences of Criminal Proceedings (2006).
Alec Ewald, Law & Soc. Inquiry, Winter 2016, at 5
Related blog posts:
- Dozens of new expungement laws already enacted in 2021 (7/7/2021) - This year is turning out to be another remarkable year for new record relief enactments. In just the first six months of 2021, 25 states enacted no fewer than 51 laws authorizing sealing or expungement of criminal records, with another 5 states enrolling 11 bills that await a governor’s signature. Three of these states authorized sealing of convictions for the [...]
- New Jersey puts “fair chance housing” on the national agenda (6/22/2021) - People with a record frequently experience challenges in obtaining or maintaining housing. For those who have been incarcerated, on supervision, charged, and/or arrested, the background check for rental applications can be a persistent obstacle. Lack of stable housing is a major roadblock to successful reintegration into the community or the pursuit of social and economic opportunities. It is therefore encouraging [...]
- “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 [...]
- Illinois set to become fifth state to cover criminal record discrimination in its fair employment law (2/13/2021) - NOTE: Governor Pritzker signed S1480 into law on March 23. In our recent report on criminal record reforms enacted in 2020, we noted that there were only four states that had fully incorporated criminal record into their fair employment law as a prohibited basis of discrimination. These states (New York, Wisconsin, Hawaii, and California) provide that employers can only disqualify [...]
- Momentum grows to restore voting rights to people with a felony (2/3/2021) - Our new report on 2020 legislative reforms shows continued progress in state efforts to expand voting rights for people with a felony conviction. Despite a courtroom setback at the Eleventh Circuit, where a federal appeals court ruled that Florida’s landmark 2018 felony re-enfranchisement initiative does not restore the vote to people who owe court debt, two additional states and D.C. [...]
- Legislative update: third quarter 2019 sees more new licensing and expungement laws (10/11/2019) - In July we reported on the extraordinary number of new laws enacted in the first half of 2019 aimed at restoring rights and status after arrest and conviction. A total of 97 separate pieces of legislation, some covering multiple topics, were enacted by 38 states and many broke new ground in their jurisdictions. Moreover, clear trends begun in 2018 accelerated in [...]
- NY judge rules police need court order to access sealed arrests (5/7/2019) - Last Tuesday, a New York court found that the New York Police Department’s routine use and disclosure of sealed arrest information violates the state’s sealing statute. The case, R.C. v. City of New York, concerns plaintiffs whose information the NYPD used or disclosed after their arrests terminated favorably in dismissals or acquittals, after prosecutors declined to prosecute, or after cases [...]
- Civil death lives! (6/7/2018) - The first and foremost collateral consequence in Colonial America was civil death; based on the grim fact that felonies were punished by execution, upon conviction, the law began to wrap up the convict’s affairs. As the law developed, capital punishment ceased to be the default punishment, and civil death was seen as too harsh for a felon who might serve [...]
- 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 [...]
- New York surprises with broad new sealing law (4/19/2017) - Late Sunday night, the New York Senate finally passed the beleaguered 2017-18 budget bill, which was signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo the following day. And while the passage of the bill was good news to New Yorkers eager to avoid a government shutdown, it should be even better news to a significant number of New Yorkers with criminal convictions. Tucked away inside [...]