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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 has been accomplished by the states.  While we recognize Alabama and Virginia as having enacted the most impressive slates of new laws in 2025, we commend several other states for noteworthy accomplishments. Additional details on specific reform measures mentioned in the report can be found in the relevant state profiles from CCRC’s Restoration of Rights Project. Having had an opportunity to preview what’s coming in 2026, we are excited to see that even in an election year there will be a continuing expansion of record clearing opportunities.  Two states have already enacted a broad regime of automatic sealing (Maine and Illinois), and bills making their way through the process reduce access barriers like lengthy waiting periods, outstanding court debt and application-related costs. We can already see efforts to improve records management to accommodate automation of record clearance.  Several states have enacted broad occupational licensing reforms, an area where bipartisan interest has benefitted from helpful model laws, and from federal efforts to support entrepreneurship by people with a criminal history.  Programs to avoid conviction through judicial diversion and deferred adjudication are also being expanded.  We have come a long way in the past decade, and there is evidently still a hearty appetite for reform.  Read more

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 has been the work of many weeks for me and Beth Johnson, who for the past two years has been my right hand in keeping the RRP up to date and accurate. Fortunately, we have been able to restore almost all of the material that was lost or compromised, and we have taken the opportunity to add new laws and expand areas of current interest such as non-conviction dispositions and record relief for human trafficking survivors. Beth and I have had time to consider the importance of the RRP project, and to appreciate the work that goes into its upkeep. The fact is that maintaining the RRP has been a labor of love since I began it more than 20 years ago. It also requires a love of labor, because this is careful, detailed work, done behind the scenes, that can frequently be tedious and seem repetitious. We worry a lot about striking a useful balance between including too much and not enough technical detail, given our varied audience. We know that there is no other resource that seeks to bring this body of law together in one place. And, over the years, we have seen and heard enough feedback – from lawyers and journalists and members of the public – to be confident that the information is being used in meaningful ways to benefit the justice-impacted and their advocates, and that it does benefit them. We have also been told that the RRP’s comparative resources are particularly useful to legislators and other policymakers looking to improve their laws. These many anecdotal moments have been enough to sustain Beth and me in the rebuilding effort. In the end, we are convinced that this real-time research needs to continue.  So we are returning to the RRP reinvigorated, with gratitude to the many people who have reached out while the site was offline, as well as to those who have in the past relied on and shared the work. Our hope simply is that the resource is and will remain useful to the people seeking to understand and address the problem of collateral consequences. In this spirit, we hope that those of you who have used CCRC’s resources over the years, as well as those who are being introduced to them for the first time, will take a few minutes to fill in the short survey below to assess the usefulness of the site’s resources, and to let us know what you’d like to see us include in the future. Restoration of Rights Project (RRP) Feedback Survey Help us improve this resource. The Restoration of Rights Project is committed to providing accurate, clear, and useful information to the public free of charge. Your feedback helps us improve the site and better meet the needs of people who rely on it. This survey takes about 2 minutes. You can take the survey here.   Read more

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 for sealing relief, after a comparatively brief waiting period of just three years from the end of a sentence. That law marked a turning point, expanding eligibility from only nine felony convictions to nearly all, with just a few exceptions. The new Illinois Clean Slate Act builds directly on the foundation laid by the 2017 law. Like the petition-based process, automated sealing will apply to nearly all conviction records (unless already excluded under the petition-based process) after a three-year period from the end of sentence, except for a limited set of additional ineligible offenses involving the most serious felonies. Even these additional convictions ineligible for automatic relief, however, will remain eligible for petition-based relief. Details of the existing laws and new Clean Slate legislation can be found in the Illinois profile from the Restoration of Rights Project. How Illinois Got Here How has Illinois managed to achieve such transformative criminal record reforms, twice in less than a decade? It wasn’t by accident. Progress like this came from two powerful forces working in tandem: the organized leadership and mobilization of directly impacted people and allies from across the state, and the unwavering commitment of legislative champions who turned their vision into law. Directly Impacted Leadership and Mobilization Illinois’ record reform movement has long been driven by directly impacted leadership. Back in 2017, the Restoring Rights and Opportunities Coalition of Illinois (RROCI) led the successful push for HB 2373. Week after week, organizers, advocates, and people directly impacted showed up in Springfield to meet with lawmakers week after week, changing hearts and minds in the state capitol and paving the way for what became the most progressive sealing law in the country.  The same grassroots energy powered the Clean Slate Illinois campaign, a statewide coalition of impacted leaders, advocates, and allies dedicated to ending permanent punishments. Led by state-based organizations, including the Illinois Coalition to End Permanent Punishments, LIVE FREE Illinois, and the Workers Center for Racial Justice, with national support from the Clean Slate Initiative, the coalition spent years mobilizing communities to insist legislators make automated record relief a reality. Legislative Leadership and Policy Champions The success of the Clean Slate Act is also a reflection of strong vision and leadership inside the General Assembly. The bill’s chief House sponsor, State Representative Jehan Gordon-Booth, worked for years before the Clean Slate bill was even introduced. Her persistence through countless negotiations, stakeholder meetings in partnership with the Alliance for Safety and Justice, and education efforts helped secure a remarkable level of consensus: it not only made the measure unopposed by law enforcement and the courts, it was actively supported by major employer groups, including the Illinois Retail Merchants Association and Illinois Manufacturers’ Association. In the Senate, State Senator Elgie Sims, Jr, played a pivotal role in ensuring the bill’s passage, advancing the measure during the legislative veto session.  Illinois has shown once again what’s possible when directly impacted communities mobilize and legislative champions carry the measure. This partnership turns shared vision into law, proving once again that when lawmakers and communities collaborate, transformative change is possible.  What’s Next for Illinois The work doesn’t end with the passage of the law. Over the next few years, as preparatory work is underway, Illinois agencies, advocates, lawmakers, and community partners will ensure that the automated sealing process launches smoothly in January 2029.  To guide this implementation, the Illinois Clean Slate Task Force was created under the Act to review best practices, learn from other states, and design clear communication processes between the Illinois State Police, the agency responsible for identifying and notifying courts of eligible records, and the circuit clerks, responsible for automatically sealing court records after notification by the Illinois State Police. 20 ILCS 2630/5.3(new).  The Task Force includes representatives from all corners of the process: state agencies, practitioners familiar with the petition-based system, organizations that advocate for people with records, and community members with lived experience. Their collaboration will be essential to ensuring that Clean Slate delivers on its promise, efficiently, equitably, and transparently.   Read more

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 be in for recognition in CCRC’s annual round-up of new record reforms. Occupational licensing. SB826 follows reforms in other states like Colorado in prohibiting regulatory boards from using vague terms like “good moral character” or “moral turpitude” to refuse a license, certificate, or registration. The law also requires a regulatory board, when issuing a denial, to specify in writing which conviction or convictions on the person’s record contributed to the denial, and to explain how that criminal history “directly relates” to the license sought and how the board weighed rehabilitative factors in its decision. The new law also establishes a “predetermination” process for licensing eligibility, so that a person can obtain, prior to investing in training or education, a binding written determination as to whether their criminal history would disqualify them from obtaining a license, certificate, registration or other authority. Human trafficking. A 2021 law authorized vacatur and expungement for victims of sex trafficking, but limited eligibility to those victims who had been convicted of prostitution-related offenses. HB2393 / SB1460 expands eligibility to include victims who were convicted of felony drug possession or a variety of misdemeanor offenses, including larceny offenses, trespass, destruction of property, using a false ID, identity theft, driving without a license, driving on a suspended license, or disorderly conduct. The law also makes three other significant changes. First, it adds a definition of “labor trafficking” and makes labor trafficking victims eligible for vacatur and expungement under the law. Second, it specifies the requirements for what to include when filing a petition for relief. Third, the law adds a provision stating there is no requirement that a human trafficking victim must have cooperated with a law enforcement investigation or prosecution to meet the requirements for record relief. Barrier crimes. Two new laws are intended to offer new employment opportunities for people convicted under Virginia’s barrier crimes regime. A conviction for an offense listed in the barrier crimes law expressly prohibits people from working in most jobs that involve caring for children, the elderly, or the disabled. The first new law, HB1924, gives school boards the option to hire a person convicted of a barrier crime if their offense conduct did not involve specified sex crimes involving a child, the person’s civil rights have been restored, 20 years have passed since the person completed their sentence, and the school board has determined the person has the requisite character to serve in the position. This law also applies to the awarding of contracts by school boards. The second law, HB1877, eliminates several requirements for individuals serving as peer recovery specialists. The law reenacts previous requirements that a person serving as a peer recovery specialist must be free of probation or parole for at least five years, but provides that a person can work as a peer recovery specialist even if they have not paid all fines, court costs, or restitution from all previous convictions. Record sealing. Virginia passed transformative record sealing legislation back in 2021, which we previously discussed here. The 2021 law, with minor amendments in 2023, established a system of automatic record sealing for a handful of misdemeanor convictions, as well as automatic sealing for certain non-conviction records. The law also established broad eligibility for petition-based sealing of most misdemeanor convictions and low-level felony convictions. The law set a delayed enactment of July 1, 2025, giving stakeholders such as the Virginia State Police four years to overhaul their computer systems to prepare for the new law. Since 2021, however, stakeholders have identified numerous technical issues with the 2021 law, as well as some important substantive issues, requiring the General Assembly to enact revisions before it takes effect. SB1466 / HB2723, which passed the Democratic-controlled General Assembly with large bipartisan support and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, makes a series of technical changes to the 2021 law. Ensures that all marijuana possession records will be sealed. Virginia decriminalized adult marijuana possession in 2020 and legalized it in 2021. Expungement of marijuana offenses was originally included in the marijuana legalization bill with a delayed enactment date, but as challenges emerged with the process, those provisions were removed from the legalization bill and put into the record sealing legislation. Because most marijuana possession charges were not reported to the state repository, which is where Virginia’s automatic record sealing process will begin, the 2021 legislation would not have sealed most marijuana possession court records. Creates a petition process for sealing offenses that should be sealed automatically, but erroneously were not. Limits automatic sealing at the conclusion of a criminal case to acquittals and dismissals with prejudice, rather than charges resolved by nolle prosequi. This change removes prosecutorial and judicial discretion and ensures these records will be sealed unless the subject of the record objects. Other non-conviction records can be expunged by petition using the existing expungement law. Provides that no offenses before January 1, 1986 will be eligible for sealing. This was a major concern of the circuit court clerks, who did not want to go digging through boxes of records—many of which are stored at off-site locations—whenever a petition to seal a very old record was filed. Provides for other technical amendments requested by the Virginia State Police and other stakeholders. The delayed effective date of the 2021 law also gave the legislature an opportunity to reconsider the breadth of petition-based sealing authorized by the 2021 law, so that many serious felonies that were eligible for sealing by petition under the earlier law will no longer be eligible under the 2025 law, such as (but not limited to) enumerated violent offenses, sex crimes, hate crimes, and election fraud. About 90% of all misdemeanors and nearly two-thirds of all Class 5 and Class 6 felonies, plus all larceny felonies, are eligible for sealing under the new law. (A complete list of ineligible offenses is available on Justice Forward Virginia Foundation’s expungement and record sealing resource page.) At the same time, the 2025 law provides for the sealing of ancillary offenses (e.g., probation violations, failures to appear, and bond appeals) when the underlying conviction is sealed, and removes all filing fees and service of process costs for expungement and record sealing by petition. The 2025 law also removes a provision that established a right to counsel for indigent record sealing petitioners. The administration of that part of the law was considered unworkable. The substantial changes to sealing eligibility also prompted the General Assembly to delay enactment of all the changes made to both record sealing and expungement during the 2021, 2023 and 2025 legislative sessions by one year, to July 1, 2026. Nonetheless, on that date, Virginia will finally join the ranks of states that provide for sealing of criminal convictions, including automatic sealing for less serious misdemeanors and many non-conviction records. Restoration of rights. Virginia is one of four states that still require executive clemency to restore the civil rights of a person convicted of a felony, including the right to vote. While other recent governors have routinely restored civil rights en masse, Gov. Glenn Youngkin has taken a more restrictive approach, prompting several lawsuits and forcing Virginia’s Jim Crow-era voting restrictions back into the spotlight. During the 2025 legislative session, the General Assembly took the first step toward amending the Virginia Constitution to provide that those convicted of felonies lose the right to vote only during a period of actual incarceration. (SJ248 / HJ2). Those who are not sentenced to prison will not lose the right to vote at all. (It is not clear whether this constitutional amendment is intended to affect the other basic civil rights that must now be restored by the Virginia governor, notably eligibility for jury service and public office.) This resolution must pass the General Assembly again in 2026, after voters choose all 100 members of the House of Delegates—and a new governor—in November 2025. If the resolution passes a second time in 2026, it must then go to a referendum, most likely in November 2026. The General Assembly previously passed such a resolution in 2021, but it was shelved after Republicans retook the House of Delegates in that fall’s elections. Democrats regained a one-seat majority in 2023, and are hoping to expand it this fall.             Read more