Tag: clean slate

Study measures gap between availability and delivery of “second chance” relief

Professor Colleen V. Chien of Santa Clara University has published a major empirical study in the Michigan Law Review that examines the gap between eligibility for and actual delivery of relief from contact with the criminal justice system, a construct she calls the “second chance gap.” (The term is defined with examples here.) Last week, Chien led a team of law students, researchers and data analysts from Santa Clara University in launching the Paper Prisons Initiative, a project that draws on her study’s methodology to estimate this gap for each state’s record relief laws. During the current wave of criminal record reforms that began around 2013, every state legislature has taken steps to chip away at the negative effects of a record through authorizing or expanding expungement, sealing, and other forms of record relief. At the same time, it has become evident that bureaucratic and structural obstacles prevent many of these laws from achieving their full promise—particularly when they require a potential beneficiary to navigate a complex and burdensome judicial or administrative process. Last June, Professors Sonja B. Starr and J.J. Prescott published the first broad-based empirical study of a state law limiting public access to criminal records, revealing that just 6.5% of those eligible for relief in Michigan successfully completed the application process within five years. This conclusion has given additional impetus to the movement to make record-sealing automatic: six states now authorize “clean slate” relief for a range of conviction records, 16 states do so for non-conviction records, and clean slate campaigns are underway in several additional states. In “America’s Paper Prisons: The Second Chance Gap,”  Professor Chien provides a more general perspective on the gap between eligibility and delivery of second chance relief documented for Michigan by Starr and Prescott. In her article, Chien looks at three forms of relief from contact with the criminal justice system—record-clearing, restoration of voting rights, and shortening prison sentences. Based on her analysis, the paper concludes that in many cases only a small fraction of those eligible for relief (usually less than 10%) have received it. Most notably, she uses novel data collection and analysis to estimate that at least 20 to 30 million American adults have non-conviction records that appear to be clearable under existing law but that have not been cleared. In follow-up state-specific papers available on the Paper Prisons Initiative website, she and her team have estimated the second chance expungement gap in convictions relief for a number of states. I. The first part of “America’s Paper Prisons” explores the reasons for the “second chance gap”: In the same way that the accused remain innocent until proven guilty in the U.S. criminal justice system, many second chance programs require defendants to “prove” that they deserve second chances before awarding them. As such, getting one’s second chance through petition-based processes may include enduring a bureaucratic process, amassing information through a variety of sources, and being evaluated by an adjudicative or administrative body. The high cost of doing so in many cases may be insurmountable. Chien divides the barriers that contribute to the second chance gap into three categories: administrative barriers, like informational and transactional costs; structural barriers, like a requirement to pay court debt and participate in a formal court hearing; and substantive barriers, like perceptions that the costs of the process outweigh its benefits.[1] II. The second part of Chien’s paper estimates the second chance gap for an assortment of relief mechanisms, drawing on both original data collection and secondary sources. Chien uses two metrics: the “uptake gap,” which measures the share of individuals over time who are eligible and have not applied or not received relief; and the “current gap,” which looks at the share of individuals at the certain moment in time who are eligible but have not received relief. Her analysis shows, on a nearly uniform basis, that only a small percentage of eligible individuals obtain relief in petition-based programs. The relief mechanisms she studies confer different benefits, are animated by differing policy objectives, and vary in eligibility criteria and administrative process. Still, a general pattern is clear across the following second chance gaps that Chien presents: Early release of prisoners During President Obama’s Clemency Initiative, only an estimated 3% of candidates who were eligible under the program’s criteria actually received clemency.[2] Under the federal statute allowing release of federal prisoners for “extraordinary and compelling reasons” (a.k.a. “compassionate release”), just 2 federal prisoners were granted release during a 13-month period in 2015-16.[3] Two California ballot measures, one allowing resentencing and reduction in classification for people convicted of certain theft and drug possession felony convictions (Prop. 47), and another allowing the same for certain marijuana convictions (Prop. 64), had 9% and 3% estimated uptake rates, respectively. Restoration of voting rights In 12 states that require people who have lost their voting rights due to a felony conviction to apply for restoration of their rights—either through a pardon application, judicial restoration procedure, or other administrative process—an estimated 12% of those who had completed their incarceration and supervision time had regained their voting rights over the course of various sampled time periods.[4] Expungement or sealing of criminal records Chien and researchers at Santa Clara and Columbia Universities provide an estimate of the national “current gap” in non-conviction relief. They created a novel dataset of 60,000 criminal histories of gig-economy jobseekers randomly chosen at the state level, with background checks between 2017-18, and analyzed them with reference to the non-conviction record-clearance laws of all 50 states. They conclude that an estimated 28 million American adults have non-conviction records that are either fully or partially clearable (state-by-state results are also provided in the appendices). Estimated uptake rates for the expungement of eligible conviction records are generally low across several states, based on original analysis by Chien and the Paper Prisons Initiative. The following are uptake estimates for expungement of eligible conviction records: Washington (<3%); New York (<1%); North Carolina (~13%); Michigan (6.5%), Connecticut (~<3%); and for the expungement of either conviction or non-conviction records: Oregon (~6%), Colorado (5%), Delaware (6%), Iowa (~22%); Missouri (1%), Minnesota (~6%).[5] III. The third part of the paper examines practices to narrow the second chance gap, with a menu of insights for those designing and implementing record reforms. Chien illustrates how small differences in how a law is drafted or implemented can lead to divergent outcomes, even when the burden of delivering relief is placed on the government. For example, Alaska and Vermont both have rules purporting to restrict the dissemination of non-conviction records after specified time periods. Alaska prohibits online publication of a case sixty days after all charges result in acquittal or non-dismissal. Vermont courts seal records 12 months after a dismissal or finding of no probable cause. But while Vermont non-conviction records almost never appear on background checks, Alaskan records do, likely owing to the Vermont state repository’s decision not to report information on non-convictions even before the 12-month waiting period has run. This section includes a useful discussion of how to draft eligibility criteria to allow for implementation at scale, including avoiding “hard-to-ascertain criteria” that present administrability problems. For instance, determining whether fines and fees have been paid is a constant challenge, very specific offenses grade and classification requirements are not always recorded, and specific disposition criteria are vulnerable to changes in definition and “unclean” (inaccurate or incomplete) data (Table 5). IV. Chien’s final section discusses several open policy and research questions concerning access to relief (the inequities of debt-related barriers to automated relief[6]; the challenges of unclean data and ambiguous dispositions) and the effect of relief (the persistence of sealed records on the internet and in electronic databases[7]; the lack of notice to beneficiaries of automatic relief). Chien also tackles a concern at the intersection of automatic record relief and racial discrimination in hiring. Studies have found that “Ban the Box” policies, which prohibit criminal history inquiries until later in the hiring process, can lead employers—in the absence of this information—to discriminate against young men of color on the assumption that they have criminal records. Professors Jennifer Doleac and Sarah Lageson, who conducted some of these studies, argued last year that a similar harmful effect might result from broad-based automatic sealing laws. Here, Chien distinguishes automatic sealing from Ban the Box by arguing that because automatic sealing does not apply to all records, but only to a subset of records that meet specific eligibility criteria, employers “won’t know what they are missing,” and as a result will be less likely to replace individualized determinations with generalized discrimination. However, Chien acknowledges the need for more data and research, and that implementation matters. Another open question not addressed here is the extent to which access barriers can be diminished short of a full “clean slate” solution. While there is growing support for automatic relief, especially when it comes to restoring voting rights and clearing many criminal records, it seems that individualized review is likely to remain the norm in the near term for questions like early release from prison or sealing a serious felony conviction. In many cases, full discretionary review may be replaced with a presumption in favor of relief, which can be overcome following official objection. Moreover, even when a discretionary decision is required, barriers can be minimized by such measures as assigning administrative tasks to the government and providing counsel to those who need it (two key provisions in Virginia’s “transformative” new record-sealing legislation). Overall, Prof. Chien’s study makes wide-ranging contributions to the field of criminal record relief, bringing to the fore the urgency and challenges of narrowing the second chance gap. CCRC was pleased to assist with Chien’s analysis of state laws for expunging non-conviction records.  We are also a partner on the new Paper Prisons Initiative, which “conducts empirical research to draw attention to the tens of millions of Americans burdened by contact with the criminal justice system despite being eligible for relief from this contact,” and which has already produced reports estimating the “second chance gap” for record relief in 10 states. [1] By comparison, Starr and Prescott attribute the low uptake of Michigan expungements to six likely factors: (1) lack of information; (2) administrative hassle and time constraints; (3) fees and costs; (4) distrust and fear of the criminal justice system; (5) lack of counsel; and (6) insufficient motivation. [2] Chien cites a study of the Initiative by the U.S. Sentencing Commission that attributed at least some part of this gap to President Obama’s decision to apply the criteria announced at the outset of the Initiative more flexibly, and to other administrative issues. In the end, only 5% of those who received commutations satisfied all of the announced criteria. See Glenn Schmitt et al, U.S. Sent’g Comm’n, An Analysis of the Implementation of the 2014 Clemency Initiative (2017), https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2017/20170901_clemency.pdf. [3] Chien notes that the requirement that the Bureau of Prisons support a prisoner’s petition for compassionate release was repealed by the First Step Act in 2018, resulting in a substantial increase in petitions granted by federal courts. In 2020 health risks due to COVID-19 led to many more grants. [4] Chien notes that this estimated percentage may be low because it does not account for the small subset of offenses ineligible for reenfranchisement or for felony-reenfranchisement waiting times. It also does not appear to account for people who have completed incarceration and supervision but remain ineligible to restore their voting rights due to outstanding court debt, in at least some of the states in question (i.e., Alabama, Arizona, Tennessee). [5] The uptake estimates are derived from the Paper Prisons Initiative’s multi-year comparison of estimated eligible records with estimated expungement rates (except the Michigan estimate, which is based on the Prescott and Starr empirical study). These figures, provided by Chien, were updated from the time of her paper’s publication to take into account a November 2020 SEARCH report, and are available on the Paper Prisons website, https://paperprisons.org, within the individual state expungement or sealing gap reports. See Becki Goggins et al.; Survey of State Criminal History Information Systems, 2020: A Criminal Justice Information Policy Report, SEARCH (2020), available at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/255651.pdf. [6] Notably, Pennsylvania enacted legislation last year eliminating unpaid fines and fees (excluding restitution and a filing fee) as barriers to existing automated and petition-based sealing. [7] Virginia’s newly enrolled record-sealing legislation includes a provision requiring that private companies that buy and sell criminal records to routinely delete sealed records (this is also the current practice of Pennsylvania state courts). The bill creates a private right of action for individuals against companies that refuse to do so. Read more

New Jersey Launches Electronic Filing System for Expungements

Editor’s note:  In 2019, New Jersey enacted a “clean slate” expungement authority that will eventually be automatic and is now available by petition. The same law directed the development of an e-filing system that is expected to eliminate many access barriers in the existing petition-based process. A detailed description of New Jersey’s expungement authorities, including its new “clean slate” law, can be found in the NJ profile from the Restoration of Rights Project.   The New Jersey Courts recently announced the statewide launch of its eCourts Expungement System developed in accordance with recent amendments in the law to help increase efficiency of the expungement process. The new system allows attorneys and pro se petitioners to create and file petitions for traditional, “clean slate,” and cannabis-related expungements.  It introduces a number of efficiencies, including accessibility of state records databases, document creation for expungement petitions, and automatic service of applications on numerous parties. Electronic filing is an important step as the state moves towards an automated expungement system, embracing the development of a “clean slate” model.  Under the new law, the state will develop and implement an automated process to expunge conviction records after a period of ten years from the most recent conviction, payment of fine, satisfactory completion of probation or parole, or release from incarceration whichever is later.  A task force will be established to examine, evaluate and make recommendations on its implementation. But for now, the Expungement System should make the expungement process much easier for many who have access to computers and the internet. Previously, petitioners, even those who were filing through the JEDS system, were required to file several copies of their written or typed expungement applications and then serve copies on many other parties via certified mail, with return receipt requested, at a substantial cost. The court, however, will still accept paper expungement applications, important for those who may not have access to a computer or the internet. Attorneys can access the system through eCourts, and pro se users can create an account through the New Jersey Court’s Self-Help Center (“Submit Expungement Petition Online” under “COVID-19 Self-Help Resources”). Users can enter a municipal or superior court case number, and the expungement system will search and pull the petitioner’s court records from criminal, municipal and family court databases. Petitioners will have the ability to enter additional information not captured by the expungement system database; review and upload additional or supportive documents; and select or deselect which cases should be included on the proposed final order. Once the petition is submitted and verified by the petitioner, the system will automatically create an order for hearing and serve the necessary parties with the documentation. It will also serve those parties if a final order of expungement is entered, and will provide a copy of the order to the petitioner. The Expungement System does not provide eligibility advice or inform users as to whether any particular cases or any application is eligible for expungement. Users should consult with attorneys or advocates as to their eligibility prior to using the system or use other eligibility resources such as LSNJ’s CYRO eligibility interview. After filing, the prosecutor’s office will continue to be responsible for review of the petitioner’s application to confirm eligibility for expungement and will object if it determines that an application is ineligible. Expungement System user guides are available on the Court’s website. LSNJ’s eligibility tools and resources are available at LSNJLAW’s Clearing Your Record Online. Akil Roper is Chief Counsel for Reentry at Legal Services of New Jersey.  Legal Services of New Jersey coordinates and supports the statewide system of legal services providing civil legal assistance to low-income individuals. Read more

How Utah Got Automatic Expungement

Editor’s note: We are pleased to publish this fascinating account of how one state transformed its record relief system in little more than a year from a standing start, written by a person who had a central role in the transformation.      In March of 2019, Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed HB 431, Utah’s Clean Slate law.  At the time, this made Utah the third state in the nation to pass a law automating the criminal record expungement process.  That law went into effect on May 1, 2020, but due to COVID-19, implementation efforts were delayed.  Several months later, implementation is back on track, and it is now anticipated that Utah’s state agencies will begin clearing court and repository records of non-convictions and qualifying misdemeanor convictions by the end of March. Preliminary estimates suggest that hundreds of thousands of people across the state will have their records expunged automatically. What follows is a story about how Utah, one of the reddest states in the nation, came to adopt such a generous and efficient record relief system. As someone who was involved in that process from the beginning, I hope it will be helpful to others seeking to push their own states in that direction. The Case for Clean Slate Perhaps the most tragic thing about the number of people struggling with the collateral consequences of a criminal record is that, in many states, so many are eligible to clear their records but so few ever make it through the process.  The petition-based systems that exist in most states are costly, confusing, and cumbersome.  Utah is no exception. While Utah’s eligibility criteria for expungement are quite generous (allowing for multiple felony and misdemeanor records to be expunged), the expungement process is expensive and time-consuming.  In most cases, individuals must hire an attorney to understand the complex eligibility criteria and procedural requirements. Then they must apply for and obtain from the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification (BCI), a “certificate of eligibility,” which expires after 90 days and involves additional cost. Then they must travel to several municipal courthouses across the state to file their paperwork in person, and potentially go back to court later for a full hearing before a judge if either the prosecutor or the victim objects. From start to finish, the process can take more than a year to complete.  As a result, only around 2,000 expungement petitions are filed statewide each year, which represents a small percentage of those who are eligible. The Path to Clean Slate Utah’s Clean Slate story starts with jobs.  In 2018, Utah’s unemployment rate was under 3%, one of the lowest rates in the nation.  I remember sitting in the back of courtroom, listening to a judge ask a defendant whether he worked.  The individual said no, and the judge said, “Well why not?  In this economy, if you can breathe, you can find a job.”  But that wasn’t quite true.  While jobs were plentiful, one thing was still keeping people out of the work force: criminal records. In December 2017, I was working as the Criminal Justice Advisory Council Director for Salt Lake County.  I received a phone call from the Department of Workforce Services, with a request to put on a criminal record expungement workshop for job seekers.  The Department explained that while Utah’s economy was one of the best in the nation, criminal records continued to be a huge barrier to employment. In my former life, I was a public defender, and had some experience with criminal record expungement work, since Utah has offered expungement on a fairly broad basis for several decades. I told the Department that I did not think that a workshop telling people how to navigate Utah’s complicated petition-based expungement process was going to be very effective, nor did I think that the target audience was likely to have the resources necessary to navigate it. But I was excited about the interest and wanted to do something.  Instead, I asked whether the Department would be interested in trying to do something different: putting on an “Expungement Day” event.  Unlike other expungement clinics, the goal of “Expungement Day,” would be to bring the lawyers, courts, criminal repository, and community partners into one room, and work together to try to streamline the criminal record expungement process into a single day, allowing anyone who showed up to leave with a clean record. This turned out to be an ambitious goal.  Representatives from the administrative agencies, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, and people with records, gathered around one table.  While they worked in different parts of the same system, many of these people had not met before.  We talked about what barriers we would need to overcome to clear a person’s record in one day.  We’d need money.  Lots of attorneys.  Pre-screening.  Prosecutors.  Judges.  BCI on site.  Fingerprint pads.  Printers. We decided to do it.  With the help of the Utah Bar Foundation and a lot of private law firms, we raised almost $20,000, so we could provide eligible individuals with expungements that were totally free of charge.  We recruited volunteer attorneys and rented a big warehouse. Our goal was to get 50 clients to sign up.  I worked with the Mayor’s Communications Director to publish this story in our local paper.  “Call [this number] to sign up,” it said.  It was my office number.  A few hours later, my phone started ringing.  It didn’t stop for close to a month, and I couldn’t keep my voicemail empty.  In total, we received close to 500 phone calls from people across the state wanting help clearing their criminal records. I knew there weren’t enough legal aid resources in our state, but the need was eye-opening to me.  We registered dozens of people for the event and somewhat reluctantly, told people we would also try to accommodate walk-ins—anyone who wanted to come wait in line in case of a no-show or in case the volunteer attorneys finished early with a registered participant and had extra capacity. Expungement Day was on April 5, 2018.  It will probably continue to be one of the most impactful days of my professional career.  Hundreds of people lined up to receive services.  It takes about 6 hours to drive the length of our state, and some people had driven all night to attend.   Some people were able to leave with clear records that day, but a lot of people weren’t.  We had to turn hundreds of people away. There was so much momentum coming out of the event, that we wanted to do more.  By working together to examine the petition-based process from start to finish, we realized just how broken our system was.  I did a google search to try to figure out what else people were doing across the country.  That is how I learned about Sharon Dietrich, and Pennsylvania’s Clean Slate effort to automate the process.  Their bill hadn’t passed yet, but it looked likely.  I thought we should do it in Utah.  I asked Representative Eric Hutchings, who served on our County’s Criminal Justice Advisory Council, whether he would run the bill.  He said we would.  We took the issue to the rest of the Council, and there was overwhelming support. After a lot of meetings with the key agencies and several months of work, we built a coalition of advocacy groups on the right, center, and left.  With the help of the Crime and Justice Institute, and the newly formed National Clean Slate Initiative, we engaged our statewide Chamber of Commerce, which became a key supporter and champion for the bill as a way to increase our talent pool.  We worked with prosecutors and law enforcement officers all across the state, many of whom testified in support of the bill.  People with records showed up to share their stories. And Clean Slate passed.  Unanimously. Utah’s Clean Slate Law In a nutshell, Utah’s Clean Slate law automates the criminal record expungement process, meaning that an individual with a qualifying record will no longer have to petition the court for relief.  Instead, two government agencies—the Utah Administrative Office of the Courts and the Utah Department of Public Safety, will work together to identify eligible records, and expunge them automatically.  What this means in practical terms is that the record will no longer be available to the public, or to most state employers, and the person may respond to inquiries about their criminal history as if the conviction had never occurred. Utah’s Clean Slate law applies to non-conviction records, most class B and class C misdemeanor offenses, and class A drug possession offenses.  Individuals with these offenses will be eligible to have their records automatically expunged after a waiting period of 5-7 years, depending on the severity level of the offense.  In other words, individuals who qualify for Clean Slate relief will not have to pay or do anything.  The government will identify their criminal records and expunge them.  People with ineligible convictions, including any felonies, will still have to go through the petition process. Implementation Efforts and Challenges Our law isn’t perfect and is the product of lots of compromise.  One of the most heart-breaking compromises we had to make is that individuals with outstanding legal financial obligations in connection with the eligible case are not eligible for relief.  The numbers are not in yet, but I think this will disqualify thousands of people.  Pennsylvania just eliminated this requirement, and I’m hoping we will eliminate ours in the future. People ask me all the time how implementation is going.  It hasn’t always been easy.  For starters, we weren’t expecting a global pandemic to hit us in the middle of our implementation period.  As in other places, COVID-19 slammed the court system, slashed budgets, and overwhelmed a technology team that was faced with the challenge of turning a largely in-person process into a virtual one.  In the midst of this crisis, it’s sometimes been hard to keep Clean Slate a priority. We’ve also encountered challenges with court records.  In Utah, as in many other places, court records are case-based, not person based, so you have to match the cases to a person before you can determine whether someone is eligible for relief.  And we’re struggling with data integrity issues (old records, missing birth dates or dispositions, social security numbers or names that don’t quite match, or are off) that sometimes make it challenging to determine whether a case is eligible for automatic clearance. So, we have work still left to do.  But it’s possible. Code for America is helping the courts identify eligible records, and we are launching a website and public education campaign to raise awareness about the law and help people determine whether they have qualified. Having been through this journey from the beginning, I am a Clean Slate believer.  Utah is one of the reddest states in the nation, and support for this law was unanimous.  Our country is so divided, but this was an issue that everyone could get behind, because belief in second chances exists across ideologies and political party lines. Clean Slate is the product of a broken petition-based process that denies opportunity to millions nationwide.  It’s broken everywhere and record clearance processes won’t truly be meaningful and accessible to people until they are fixed.  So, if you’re thinking about making changes to your expungement law, you should think about Clean Slate. Resources: Click here for a detailed report on Utah’s Expungement Day and how it led to our Clean Slate legislative campaign. Click here to see a short video about Utah’s Clean Slate law. Click here for more information about the National Clean Slate Initiative. About the Author Noella Sudbury is a lawyer, former public defender, and policy advisor.  She is the owner and founder of Sudbury Consulting, LLC.  She works in Utah and nationally on policy issues, and offers technical assistance, research, and campaign support on criminal justice reform and access to justice issues. Read more

Automatic expungement falls short in Canada

The John Howard Society of Canada has a new post about a failed piece of Canadian legislation that would have provided automatic expungement of criminal records in that country.  The post describes the effort to remedy the shortcomings of the current “one-at-a-time” record-clearing system, which it says is expensive (more than $600 to apply), bureaucratic, and “systematically works against poor and marginalized people.”  As an example, it documents Canada’s serious “takeup” problem with its recent efforts to clear cannabis possession convictions: “despite the government’s claims of an enhanced process to grant pardons for cannabis possession now that it is legal, only a handful of the 250,000 or so Canadians with such records have received pardons so far.” The post also discusses our report documenting U.S. expungement reforms in 2019, noting that while the problem of criminal records in this country is “much greater” than it is in Canada, we seem to be making better progress in dealing with it. We reprint the introduction to the post below, and link to the piece. Expunging criminal records February 26, 2020 Last year Senator Kim Pate introduced a bill that would provide automatic expungement of criminal records in Canada.  Under this bill, criminal records would automatically be sealed after a certain amount of time had elapsed following a criminal sentence unless there had meanwhile been a new criminal charge or conviction. Expungement of criminal records is important because a criminal record has many harmful effects for a person’s entire lifetime, even decades after the end of their sentence.  It is important to keep in mind that 3-4 million Canadian adults, or about 1 in 8, has a criminal record of some kind.  Wherever you live in Canada, you likely have neighbours with a record.  But, as another post on this blog showed, most people never commit a second crime, and this likelihood declines with every year that passes. Read more Read more

CCRC reports on criminal record reforms in 2019

We are pleased to publish our annual report on criminal record reforms enacted during the past calendar year.  This is the fourth in a series of reports since 2016 on new laws aimed at avoiding or mitigating the collateral consequences of arrest and conviction.  This year we have included for the first time a Report Card grading the progress of the most (and least) productive state legislatures in 2019.  The press release accompanying the report is reprinted below: Report finds record-breaking number of criminal record reforms enacted in 2019 February 17, 2020 Washington, D.C. — The Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC) has released a new report documenting the astonishing number of laws passed in 2019 aimed at promoting reintegration for individuals with a criminal record.  Last year, 43 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government enacted an extraordinary 153 laws to provide criminal record relief or to alleviate the collateral consequences of arrest and conviction, consequences that may otherwise last a lifetime and frequently have little or no public safety rationale.  The year 2019 was the most productive legislative year since a wave of “fair chance” reforms began in 2013, a period CCRC has documented in a series of legislative reports (2013-2016, 2017, and 2018).  CCRC’s 2019 report, titled “Pathways to Reintegration: Criminal Record Reforms in 2019,” is available here. “This report is our first to include a Report Card on how state legislatures performed during the year in advancing the goals of reintegration,” said CCRC Executive Director Margaret Love. “We wanted to recognize New Jersey as Reintegration Champion for having the most consequential legislative record in 2019, including three important new laws authorizing ‘clean slate’ record relief, restoring voting rights, and curbing driver’s license suspensions.” “In New Jersey, we are blessed to have a broad coalition of elected officials, nonprofits, and activists who are committed to meaningful criminal justice reform,” said James McGreevey, Executive Director of New Jersey Reentry Corporation and former New Jersey governor. “This recognition from the Collateral Consequences Resource Center is a testament to the leadership of Governor Murphy, Senate President Sweeney, and Speaker Coughlin, and to what is possible when officials from both branches of government unite behind a cause.” Colorado is the runner-up Reintegration Champion for enacting ten laws reforming criminal record relief, diversion, employment, immigration consequences, and voting rights.  Honorable mention for enacting several important record reforms goes to Illinois, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, and West Virginia. Alaska, Georgia, and Michigan are singled out for their unproductive legislative records in the past few years. Lawmakers in 2019 took significant steps to restore voting and other civil rights, authorize expungement and other forms of record relief, expand diversion programs, limit the use of criminal records in occupational licensing, employment, and housing, alleviate immigration consequences, and curb driver’s license suspensions: • On voting, 11 states took steps to restore the right to vote to previously disenfranchised individuals and to expand awareness of voting eligibility.   • On record relief, 31 states and D.C. enacted 67 bills creating, expanding, or streamlining expungement, sealing or vacatur.  Twenty-seven states and D.C. made certain classes of convictions newly eligible relief, five states enacting their first general authority for expunging or sealing convictions. Three states authorized automated relief for a range of conviction and non-conviction records, and six others focused automated relief on specific offenses or dispositions.  Seven jurisdictions authorized relief for victims of human trafficking.  Seven states—all of which have legalized or decriminalized marijuana—authorized record relief for certain marijuana offenses, including two automated measures. Thirteen states streamlined and/or made more effective procedures for obtaining relief. • On diversion, 17 states enacted 25 laws creating, expanding, reorganizing, or otherwise supporting diversionary and deferred dispositions • On occupational licensing and employment, 26 states and the federal government enacted 42 laws limiting consideration of criminal record in either employment or occupational licensing, or both (30 laws cover licensing and 14 address employment).   • On immigration, four states enabled non-citizens charged with offenses to avoid deportation based on sentence or guilty plea and two states regulated the questioning of criminal defendants or detained individuals about their immigration status. • Other relief measures addressed jury service, public office, firearms, driver’s license suspension, housing, pardon procedure, sex offender registration, and access to adoption. These various criminal record reforms and the trends they embody are described in greater detail in CCRC’s report.   The reform trajectory established in 2019 makes us optimistic that 2020 will be an even more productive year in the progress toward reintegration of people with a criminal record. *Note: this press release and the report were updated on March 24, 2020 to include a negligent hiring law enacted by Iowa in 2019. For more information, please contact Margaret Love at 202-547-0453, margaretlove@pardonlaw.com. The Collateral Consequences Resource Center is a non-profit organization established in 2014 to promote public engagement on the myriad issues raised by the collateral consequences of arrest or conviction.  Collateral consequences are the legal restrictions and societal stigma that burden people with a criminal record long after their criminal case is closed.  The Center provides news and commentary about this dynamic area of the law, and a variety of research and practice materials aimed at legal and policy advocates, courts, scholars, lawmakers, and those most directly affected by criminal justice involvement. The Center has drafted reports on new legislative developments and participated in court cases challenging specific collateral consequences. www.ccresourcecenter.org Read more