Category: Voting

Minnesota enacts four major record reforms in 2023

Thanks to a series of criminal-justice reforms enacted earlier this year, Minnesota has burnished its reputation as a national leader in reintegration and criminal record reform.  In a year in which there have been far fewer criminal record reforms than in the recent past, Minnesota’s performance stands out for the variety and breadth of relief granted, in many cases automatically. Here are the four major new laws:

  • Expungement was made automatic for both non-convictions and a range of conviction records, effective January 1, 2025
  • The pardon process was entirely overhauled to make this relief more available, and expungement for pardoned convictions was made automatic
  • Felony disenfranchisement was limited to periods of actual incarceration
  • A law legalizing adult possession of cannabis made expungement automatic for a broad range of cannabis convictions.

These four major new authorities are described below. We expect that the Minnesota legislature’s exemplary performance in enacting these important new provisions will be in for further recognition in our annual round-up of new record reforms.

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“From Reentry to Reintegration: Criminal Record Reforms in 2021”

At the beginning of each year since 2017, CCRC has issued a report on legislation enacted in the past year that is aimed at reducing the barriers faced by people with a criminal record in the workplace, at the ballot box, and in many other areas of daily life. These reports have documented the steady progress of what last year’s report characterized as “a full-fledged law reform movement” aimed at restoring rights and status to individuals who have successfully navigated the criminal law system. The legislative momentum, which slowed a bit during the first year of the pandemic, picked up again in 2021.

The title of this post introduces our annual report on new laws enacted during the past year, and emphasizes the continuum from reentry (for those who go to jail or prison) to the full restoration of rights and status represented by reintegration. Recent research indicates that most people with a conviction never have a second one, and that the likelihood of another conviction declines rapidly as more time passes. The goal of full reintegration is thus both an economic and moral imperative.

In the past year the bipartisan commitment to a reintegration agenda has seemed more than ever grounded in economic imperatives, as pandemic dislocations have brought home the need to support, train, and recruit workers who are essential to rebuilding the businesses that are the lifeblood of the economy. If there is any one thing that will end unwarranted discrimination against people with a criminal history, it is a recognition that it does not pay.

Our 2021 report highlights key developments in reintegration reforms from the past year. It documents that 40 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government enacted 151 legislative bills and took a number of additional executive actions to restore rights and opportunities to people with an arrest or conviction history. As in past years, a majority of these new laws involved individual record clearing: All told, an astonishing 36 states enacted 92 separate laws that revise, supplement or limit public access to individual criminal records to reduce or eliminate barriers to opportunity. Most of these laws established or expanded laws authorizing expungement, sealing, or set-aside of convictions or arrest records. Several states enacted judicial record clearing laws for the very first time, and a number of states authorized “clean slate” automatic clearing. Executive pardoning was revived in several states where it had been dormant for years.

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National maps on expungement, pardoning, and voting rights restoration

The Collateral Consequences Resource Center is pleased to unveil six new maps that visualize the Center’s research on national laws and policies for restoring rights and opportunities to people with a record. These maps are now available below and on the 50-state comparison pages (expungement, sealing & other record relief; civil rights; and pardoning). Each state can be clicked for a detailed summary of state law and policy.

The Center will keep these maps updated, along with the rest of the Restoration of Rights Project, with future changes to the law.

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CCRC’s First Newsletter

Dear Subscribers,

We write with an update on our continued work to promote public discussion of restoration of rights and opportunities for people with a record. Highlights from this year’s work are summarized below, including roundups of new legislation, case studies on barriers to expungement, policy recommendations, and a new “fair chance lending” project to reduce criminal history barriers to government-supported loans to small businesses. We thank you for your interest and invite your comments as our work progresses. Read more

North Carolina court restores the vote to 56,000

Update: This decision was stayed by the North Carolina Court of Appeals on September 3, 2021. As a result, the decision will not go into effect either until the appeal is resolved or further order of the court.

A three-judge state court in North Carolina has ruled that state’s felony disenfranchisement law unconstitutional as applied to individuals under supervision in the community, immediately restoring the vote to some 56,000 individuals. The decision means that in 24 states and the District of Columbia individuals convicted of felonies and serving a sentence in the community may vote.  North Carolina is the first southern state to restore the vote to convicted individuals upon release from prison.

As the New York Times noted in describing the court’s action, the ruling was “not entirely unexpected,” since “the same court had temporarily blocked enforcement of part of the law before the November general election, stating that most people who had completed their prison sentences could not be barred from voting if [the] only reason for their continued supervision was that they owed fines or court fees.”  See Community Success Initiative v. Moore, No. 19-cv-15941 (N.C. Super. Ct. Sept. 4, 2020).

While last year’s preliminary decision rested on the ground that requiring payment of court debt represented an poll tax, the challenge to North Carolina’s reenfranchisement scheme relied more broadly on its origins in intentional post-Civil War discrimination against Black people.  As the Times article noted, the decision “followed a trial that bared the history of the state’s disenfranchisement of Black people in sometimes shocking detail.”

The law struck down on Monday, which was enacted in 1877, extended disenfranchisement to people convicted of felonies in response to the 15th Amendment, which enshrined Black voting rights in the Constitution. But in the decade before that, local judges had reacted to the Civil War’s freeing of Black people by convicting them en masse and delivering public whippings, bringing them under a law denying the vote to anyone convicted of a crime for which whipping was a penalty.

A handful of Black legislators in the General Assembly tried to rescind the 1877 law in the early 1970s, but secured only procedural changes, such as a limit on the discretion of judges to prolong probation or court supervision.

The court has not yet released its opinion, and state officials may decide to appeal.