Category: Expungement/sealing

“The High Cost of a Fresh Start”

The High Cost of a Fresh Start: New Report Examines Court Debt as a Barrier to Clearing a Conviction Record

BOSTON – A new report from the National Consumer Law Center and the Collateral Consequences Resource Center explores the extent to which court debt—such as criminal fines, fees, costs, and restitution—is a barrier to record clearing that prevents poor and low-income people from getting a second chance. For the nearly one-third of adults in the U.S. with a record of arrest or conviction, their record is not simply part of their past but a continuing condition that impacts nearly every aspect of their life. Their record makes it hard to get a job and support a family, secure a place to live, contribute to the community, and participate fully in civic affairs.

“Criminal record clearing must not be reserved only for those who can easily pay for it,” said Margaret Love, executive director of CCRC. “States should ensure people are not being priced out of a chance at a fresh start.”

The High Cost of a Fresh Start: A State-by-State Analysis of Court Debt as a Bar to Record Clearing analyzes whether outstanding court debt bars record clearing under the laws of each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal system. The report finds that in almost every jurisdiction, outstanding court debt is a barrier to record clearing, either rendering a person entirely ineligible or making it more difficult for them to qualify.

In recent years, most states have passed laws aimed at restoring economic opportunity, personal freedoms, and human dignity to millions of people by providing a path to clear their record. But for too many, this relief remains out of reach because of monetary barriers, including not only the cost of applying for record clearing but also requirements in many jurisdictions that applicants pay off debt incurred as part of the underlying criminal case before they can have their record cleared. This debt can include fees imposed for every month someone spends on probation or on GPS monitoring, and for their representation by a public defender—a fee that is levied only on people whom the court has deemed too poor to pay for their own defense. Interest and payment penalties can add to this court debt over time.

“The total amount of court debt can run to thousands of dollars for even minor infractions, which presents a high bar to clear,” said Ariel Nelson, staff attorney at NCLC. “Perversely, because a record makes it much harder to get a job, having an open record makes it harder to pay off court debt and therefore harder to qualify for record clearing.”

This burden falls especially heavily on Black and Brown communities, which are more likely to have high concentrations of both criminal records and poverty because of long-standing structural racism in criminal law enforcement and in the economy.

Based on their research, the authors offer the following recommendations:

  • Court debt should never be a barrier to record clearing.Qualification for record clearing should not be conditioned on payment of court debt, and outstanding court debt should not be a basis for denying relief, regardless of whether record clearing is petition-based or automatic.
  • Costs to apply for record clearing, including filing fees, should never be a barrier to record clearing. States should adopt automatic record-clearing processes that do not require individuals to incur costs to have their records cleared.
  • Jurisdictions should collect and report data on monetary barriers to record clearing.Jurisdictions where record clearing may be denied on the basis of outstanding court debt should collect and report data reflecting the impact of these barriers on record clearing.

Download the full report for report findings, recommendations, maps, graphics, and state-by-state analysis: https://bit.ly/lp-high-cost-of-a-fresh-start-22

The report’s appendix cointains a state-by-state analysis of the role played by outstanding court debt in qualifying for record clearing.  It may be separately downloaded at this link:  https://www.nclc.org/images/pdf/criminal-justice/High-Cost-of-Fresh-Start-Appendix.pdf 

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The nonprofit National Consumer Law Center® (NCLC®) works for economic justice for low-income and other disadvantaged people in the U.S. through policy analysis and advocacy, publications, litigation, and training.

The Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC) works to restore rights and opportunities to people with a history of arrest or conviction through research and policy advocacy.

 

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Delaware governor signs automatic record-clearing law

Delaware lawmakers passed two bills this year that overhaul access to second chances, making it easier for more than 290,000 people to move beyond the collateral consequences of a criminal record.  The two pieces of legislation – Senate Bill 111 and Senate Bill 112 – expand access to Delaware’s mandatory expungement process effective January 1, 2022, and make mandatory expungement automatic (or “Clean Slate”) by August 2024.

State Senators passed the bills unanimously in April and the House of Representatives followed suit — approving the bills by an overwhelming majority during the late stages of the legislative session in June. Both bills were signed into law by Governor John Carney on Monday, November 8, 2021 — making Clean Slate a reality in Delaware. (The specific records that will be subject to mandatory expungement starting in 2022 are described later in this post.)

Delaware is most recent addition to the growing number of states in the nation to make record clearing automatic for at least some convictions, so that eligible individuals will no longer be required to complete a burdensome and expensive petition-based process to get their record expunged. (Several other states have automated expungement exclusively for marijuana convictions.)

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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

Arizona enacts its very first sealing law – and it’s impressive!

In July 2021, in an unheralded action in the final days of its legislative session, Arizona enacted a law that authorized its courts for the first time to seal conviction records. See SB1294, enacting Ariz. Rev. Stat. § 13-911. The same law authorized sealing of uncharged arrests and dismissed and acquitted charges, also for the first time. Prior to this enactment, Arizona was one of a handful of states whose legislature had made no provision for limiting public access to conviction records, and was literally the only state in the country whose courts and records repository had no authority to seal non-conviction records. Now the state will have one of the broadest sealing laws in the country when it becomes effective on January 1, 2023.

(In the November 2020 election, Arizona voters approved a proposition to legalize marijuana, which included a provision for expungement of certain marijuana-related records.  But until now no general sealing authority had been enacted by the Arizona legislature.)

As described below, the law makes all but the most serious offenses eligible for sealing after completion of sentence (including payment of court debt) and a graduated waiting period.  It also appears that 1) multiple eligible convictions may be sealed, in a single proceeding or sequentially; 2) the prior conviction of a felony (even if ineligible) does not disqualify an eligible offense from relief but simply extends the applicable waiting period; 3) a conviction during the waiting period restarts the waiting period; and 4) there is no limit on the number of occasions on which sealing may be sought.

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