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For almost a decade, at the beginning of each new year, CCRC has published a report describing and evaluating record reforms enacted in the previous year. Our reports have documented the steady progress of what we characterized six years ago as “a full-fledged law reform movement” aimed at restoring rights and status to individuals who have successfully navigated the criminal law system. Our 2025 report on newly enacted record reforms is a bit late this year due to technical difficulties with our website, but it shows that the steady progress of law reform has continued. In fact, 2025 was the most productive legislative year since 2020, measured in sheer numbers of new laws. Even Congress got into the record reform act in 2025, approving a bill to enact the very first federal expungement law, for survivors of human trafficking convicted of crime related to their trafficked status.  President Trump signed this bill into law in early 2026, and it is described in the Federal profile from the Restoration of Rights Project. (We expect to publish a comprehensive analysis of human trafficking record relief laws in coming weeks.) Our report for this year has a different format, aimed at highlighting what…

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After nearly six months offline because of repeated malware attacks, the Collateral Consequences Resource Center website is back live — entirely rebuilt and ready again to provide web-based legal resources to the public free of charge. We are especially happy to be able to reintroduce our flagship resource, the Restoration of Rights Project (RRP), which was hard hit by the malware attacks, mysteriously losing both data and functionality. Those who use and rely on the RRP know its value in collecting and analyzing laws in each state that aim to mitigate the adverse effects of a criminal record, through civil rights restoration, executive pardon, judicial record clearing, and fair chance employment and licensing. The RRP also includes 50-state comparison charts for each of these four areas of research. Our work on the RRP has been supported in recent years by generous grants from Arnold Ventures, and we have made a point of keeping its resources updated in real time as new laws are enacted. We have also published specialized research reports based on RRP research, most recently on loss and restoration of firearm rights, as well as annual reports on newly enacted laws. Reconstructing the RRP’s hundreds of web pages…

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NOTE: The Clean Slate Act was signed into law by the Governor on January 16, 2026 (P.A. 104-0459). *** On October 30, 2025, the Illinois General Assembly approved HB 1836, making Illinois the 13th “Clean Slate” state. Illinois will also have the broadest automated record-sealing program of them all.   The Governor’s signature will launch the implementation toward an automated record-sealing process to bridge the “second chance gap” for an estimated 2.2 million people with an Illinois criminal record.  Guided by the work of the Illinois Clean Slate Task Force, sealing of existing conviction and non-conviction records is scheduled to begin in January 2029. Illinois’ law will apply to most of the misdemeanor and felony convictions for which petition-based sealing is already authorized, with the same short waiting period of 3 years from the end of sentence. In addition, beginning January 1, 2029, Illinois will join the large group of states for which sealing of non-conviction records is mandatory and accomplished immediately upon a favorable case disposition. Building on a Legacy of Progress Illinois already leads the nation with one of the most expansive petition-based sealing laws. Since 2017, when lawmakers passed HB 2373, most felony conviction records have been eligible…

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Note: We are very pleased to publish a summary of the several significant record reforms enacted by Virginia in 2025, prepared by Rob Poggenklass. Rob is executive director of Justice Forward Virginia, a public defender-led criminal justice policy advocacy organization. He was deputy director of CCRC in 2022.  The Commonwealth of Virginia has continued to make significant progress toward reducing the collateral consequences of criminal conviction, although a closely divided government has meant that reforms have been more incremental in recent years. Here are the several new laws that Virginia enacted during the 2025 legislative session: Occupational licensing reforms; Expansion of vacatur eligibility for victims of human trafficking; Two bills easing employment restrictions for people convicted of “barrier crimes”; and Technical updates and policy changes to the major 2021 record sealing law, which will take effect July 1, 2026; In addition, the General Assembly took the first step toward amending the Virginia Constitution to ensure that a felony conviction results in loss of the right to vote (and potentially other civil rights) only during actual incarceration. These six major new authorities are described below. I expect that the Virginia General Assembly’s exemplary performance in enacting these important new provisions will…

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