Category: Reports

Judicial certificates of relief: A national survey

*Update (9/8/20): the full national report, “The Many Roads to Reintegration,” is now available.

Last month we announced the forthcoming publication of a national report surveying mechanisms for restoring rights and opportunities following arrest or conviction, titled “The Many Roads to Reintegration.” So far, we have previewed the report in draft chapters covering “loss and restoration of voting and firearms rights” and “fair employment & occupational licensing,” as well as several sections of the chapter on record relief, a term comprising the various remedies that revise or supplement a person’s criminal record to reduce or eliminate barriers to opportunity in civil society. The sections published so far are “pardon policy and practice,” “deferred adjudication,” and “non-conviction records.”

This installment of the record relief chapter concerns judicial certificates, orders that courts or parole boards in a dozen states are authorized to issue to convicted individuals with the dual purpose of avoiding mandatory collateral consequences and helping to overcome discretionary ones. Later this week we will publish the final major section of this chapter, on conviction relief via expungement, sealing, and set-aside.

We expect to publish the entire “Many Roads” report by the end of the month. In addition to a series of “report cards” on specific relief mechanisms, it will include an ranking of states for the effectiveness of their overall combined relief schemes.

A PDF of the section on judicial certificates is available here. The full text follows, with end notes.

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Non-conviction records: A national survey

*Update (9/8/20): the full national report, “The Many Roads to Reintegration,” is now available.

In July, we announced the forthcoming publication of a national report surveying mechanisms for restoring rights and opportunities following arrest or conviction, titled “The Many Roads to Reintegration.” So far, we have previewed the report by publishing draft chapters covering “loss and restoration of voting and firearms rights” and “fair employment & occupational licensing.” We also published “pardon policy and practice” and “deferred adjudication” sections of the chapter on record relief, a term comprising the various remedies that revise or supplement a person’s criminal record to reduce or eliminate barriers to opportunity in civil society.

Today we are publishing a third section of the record relief chapter on non-conviction records: arrest and court records that can create lifelong barriers in employment, housing, and other areas of daily life. More than half the states still require a restrictive and burdensome court procedure to expunge or seal non-convictions. Our Model Law on Non-Conviction Records recommends automatic expungement of these records, an approach that has been enacted in 17 states. Later this week we will publish additional sections of this chapter, on conviction relief, judicial certificates, and juvenile records. We expect to publish the entire “Many Roads” report by the end of the month.

A PDF of the section on non-convictions is available here. The full text follows, with end notes.

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Deferred adjudication: A national survey

*Update (9/8/20): the full national report, “The Many Roads to Reintegration,” is now available.

In July, we announced the forthcoming publication of a national report surveying mechanisms for restoring rights and opportunities following arrest or conviction, titled “The Many Roads to Reintegration.” So far, we have previewed the report by publishing draft chapters covering “loss and restoration of voting and firearms rights” and “fair employment & occupational licensing.” Yesterday we published “pardon policy and practice,” a section of the chapter on record relief, a term comprising the various remedies that revise or supplement a person’s criminal record to reduce or eliminate barriers to opportunity in civil society.

Today we are publishing a second section of the record relief chapter on deferred adjudication, a disposition whose goal is to divert individuals away from a conviction record at the front end of a criminal case. Next week we will publish additional sections of this chapter, on expungement, record-sealing, set-aside, judicial certificates, and juvenile records. We expect to publish the entire “Many Roads” report by the end of the month.

A PDF of the section on deferred adjudication is available here. The full text follows, with end notes.

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Pardon policy & practice: A national survey

*Update (9/8/20): the full national report, “The Many Roads to Reintegration,” is now available.

In July, we announced the forthcoming publication of a national report surveying mechanisms for restoring rights and opportunities following arrest or conviction, titled “The Many Roads to Reintegration.”  So far, we have previewed the report by publishing draft sections covering “loss and restoration of voting and firearms rights” and “fair employment & occupational licensing.”  Today we publish a draft section on pardon, the ultimate expression of forgiveness and reconciliation from the sovereign that secured the conviction.  While pardon is no longer routinely available in all or even most U.S. jurisdictions, in the 18 states where post-sentence pardoning is frequent and regular it provides an important record remedy – frequently the only remedy – for those convicted of more serious offenses, for those seeking restoration of firearms rights, and for non-citizens seeking to avoid conviction-related immigration consequences.

This section on “pardon policy & practice” is part of a chapter on “record relief.”  This chapter deals with any remedy that revises or supplements a person’s criminal record to reduce or eliminate barriers to opportunity in civil society.  Later this week, we will publish additional sections of the record relief chapter on deferred adjudication and judicial certificates, followed next week by sections on expungement, record-sealing, and set-aside.  We expect to publish the entire “Many Roads” report by the end of the month.

A PDF of this section is available here.  The full text follows, with end notes.

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Fair chance employment and occupational licensing: A national survey

*Update (9/8/20): the full national report, “The Many Roads to Reintegration,” is now available.

Last week we announced the forthcoming publication of a national report surveying mechanisms for restoring rights and opportunities following arrest or conviction, titled “The Many Roads to Reintegration.”  Also last week, we published the first chapter of that report on loss and restoration of voting and firearms rights.  Today we publish a near-final draft of the third chapter of the “Many Roads” report, dealing with laws that systematically regulate how criminal record is considered in the workplace, by employers and by occupational licensing authorities.  Next week we expect to publish the second chapter of the report on “record relief” (including record-sealing, pardon, and judicial certificates).  The research, drawn from CCRC’s Restoration of Rights Project, reveals a trend in the states toward restricting the power of occupational licensing agencies to reject applicants with criminal records based upon factors not directly related to their qualifications.

There has also been marked progress in extending fair chance employment laws, primarily through limiting inquiry into criminal record in the early stages of the hiring process and setting standards for later consideration of the record.  These trends, which have accelerated in the past three years, recall and in many cases build on an earlier period of criminal record reforms in the 1970s.  At the conclusion of the chapter are report cards with color-coded maps ranking state laws by specific criteria, to facilitate comparisons between and among states.

There are some surprises.  For one thing, there is not a particularly strong correlation between how states rate in each of the two areas.  That is, states that have a robust system of fair chance employment laws may not and frequently do not have a similarly strong system for regulating how occupational licensing agencies treat people with a criminal record.  In fact, only two states (Illinois and Minnesota) scored at the top of both categories.  Three other states that scored well on employment also scored reasonably well on occupational licensing (California, New York, and Wisconsin), but the last two jurisdictions in the top employment category (Hawaii and the District of Columbia) scored poorly on occupational licensing.  Conversely, four states that ranked in the top tier for occupational licensing had no law at all regulating consideration of criminal record in employment (Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and North Carolina) and two others had only minimal regulation of public employment (Indiana and Utah).  Three states had no law at all governing either employment or occupational licensing (Alaska, South Carolina, and South Dakota).

Another result that may surprise those who have not been following recent developments in this area of the law, is that high marks for reining in the exclusionary policies of licensing boards go to some states not ordinarily considered politically and socially progressive.  The unexpectedly strong performance of some states in regulating occupational licensing boards may be attributable to antipathy toward government interference in free markets as well as an interest in efficiency and fairness.

A PDF of this chapter is available here.  The full text follows, with end notes. Coming next, the report’s chapter on “Record Relief.”

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