An advisory group drawn from across the criminal justice system has completed work on a model law that recommends automatic expungement of most arrests and charges that do not result in conviction. Margaret Love and David Schlussel of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center served as reporters for the model law. It is available in PDF and HTML formats. “Many people may not realize how even cases that terminate in a person’s favor lead to lost opportunities and discrimination,” says Sharon Dietrich, Litigation Director of Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, and one of the advisors of the model law project. “Over the…
Read moreTag: collateral consequences
Legislative update: third quarter 2019 sees more new licensing and expungement laws
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 the first half of 2019, as state lawmakers continued to focus most of their attention on facilitating access to record-clearing. In addition, a significant number of new laws limited the authority of occupational licensing boards to disqualify a person based…
Read more“Old Writ Could Give Ex-Offenders a New Start”
Joe Palazzolo has posted at the Wall Street Journal Blog an article describing an amicus brief filed yesterday in United States v. Jane Doe (Jane Doe II), one of two federal expungement cases before Judge John Gleeson that we’ve been following. Argument in Jane Doe II is now scheduled for October 26. (The government has appealed Judge Gleeson’s May 21 expungement order in Jane Doe I to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.) The brief begins like this: This Court invited the views of Amica on the Court’s authority to issue “a certificate of rehabilitation in lieu of expungement” and the…
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Accessing SNAP and TANF Benefits after a Drug Conviction: A Survey of State Laws (Dec. 2023)
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