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At the beginning of each year since 2016, CCRC has issued a report on legislative enactments in the year just ended, describing and evaluating new laws 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. This year’s report, “Advancing Second Chances: Clean Slate and Other Record Reforms in 2023,” is now available. Our annual legislative reports have documented the steady progress of what we characterized three years ago as “a full-fledged law reform movement” aimed at restoring rights and dignity to individuals who have successfully navigated the criminal law system. Between 2018 and 2022, more than 500 new record reforms were enacted by all but two states.   Last year we reported that the legislative momentum had slowed somewhat, and this year it has slowed still further.  Only a handful of states enacted significant new record reforms in 2023, most in the form of new record-clearing schemes. We attribute this slowdown in part to how much has been accomplished in legislatures across the country in the past seven years. For example, more than half the states now allow people with a felony conviction to vote unless they are actually incarcerated, a number that has doubled since 2016.  In addition, most states have also taken steps to limit public access to some criminal records, and to ensure that employers and licensing agencies do not discriminate against people with a criminal history. Many have extended diversionary dispositions well beyond the class of first offenders who were uniquely eligible for non-conviction relief a decade ago.  In 2023, 20 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government enacted 36 separate pieces of legislation and took executive action to restore rights and opportunities to people with an arrest or conviction history. As in past years, more than half of the new laws in 2023 involved individual record clearing. Because of the significant progress on this front in recent years, many of the laws enacted in 2022 represent measured changes to existing record relief schemes rather than radical new reforms. Nonetheless, three states enacted major new automatic “clean slate” record schemes while others expanded eligibility for petition-based sealing. A handful of states continued to remove marijuana convictions from public view, and still other states trimmed barriers to relief by automating the application process, reducing waiting periods, or eliminating obstacles represented by outstanding court debt (fines and fees). In addition, many of the new laws limited consideration of criminal records in economic settings, regulating employment and occupational licensing, or removing barriers to restoring a driver’s license.  The U.S. Small Business Administration took important steps toward eliminating restrictions in federally guaranteed loans. Our sixth annual legislative report card (Reintegration Awards for 2023, reprinted below) recognizes the most productive legislatures in 2023, and notes that there are now only two states that have enacted no record reforms since our reporting began in 2016. As in the past, the state legislatures that have enacted the most significant reforms span the political spectrum, from Minnesota and New York to Louisiana and South Carolina. Detailed analysis of most of these new laws is available in the state profiles from CCRC’s Restoration of Rights Project, with a national overview in our 50-state comparison charts on various types of record relief. Reintegration Awards for 2023 While half a dozen states enacted noteworthy laws in 2023, one state stands out for the quantity and quality of its legislation: Minnesota is our 2023 Reintegration Champion for its passage of three major pieces of record reform legislation, and several other less significant yet still noteworthy laws. Minnesota – Enacted four separate laws, one of which was an omnibus criminal justice bill that accomplished several entirely independent major record reforms. The omnibus bill enacted a significant expansion of the state’s statutory expungement scheme and made most of it automatic. It also accomplished a complete overhaul of the state’s pardon process to facilitate more grants. As part of a bill that legalized marijuana, it authorized automatic expungement of misdemeanor convictions and created a new board to review nonviolent felony convictions for potential expungement. If more were necessary, it limited felony disenfranchisement to a period of actual incarceration, capped sentences for gross misdemeanors to avoid immigration consequences, extended ban-the-box to multimember agencies, and further eased the drug felony ban on SNAP and TANF benefits. Another six states and the District of Columbia earned an Honorable Mention for their enactment of at least one significant new record reform: District of Columbia: DC replaced one of the most complex and restrictive record-clearing schemes in the country with an expansive one that makes all but the most serious felonies eligible for relief, and includes some automatic relief. Its major shortcoming is that it is presently not scheduled to take effect for several more years. Maryland: Cut in half what were among the longest waiting periods in the country for record-clearing, from 10 years after completion of sentence to five years for misdemeanors and from 15 years to 7 years for felonies. Maryland also provided that any unpaid court fees or costs will not bar expungement, and made expungement of non-conviction records automatic. New York: The Clean Slate Act substantially expanded sealing eligibility from a rather stingy maximum of two convictions (only one of which could be a felony) to all misdemeanors and all but the most serious felonies, without numerical limits, making New York’s automatic record-clearing law the broadest in the Nation by far. It also reduced some waiting periods. New Mexico – Limited felony disenfranchisement to actual incarceration and encouraged registration during reentry; limited suspension of driver’s license due to unpaid court debt and allowed discharge of court debt through community service; and, extended automatic expungement of marijuana convictions to juvenile adjudications. Ohio – Extended eligibility for sealing to additional categories of felonies, shortened waiting periods, authorized prosecutor-initiated sealing, and created a new authority for expungement after an additional waiting period. The law also authorized courts to seal the record of pardoned cases on the same basis as non-conviction records. South Carolina – Significantly limited the discretion of the state’s licensing boards to deny licensure to people with criminal records. The law added new procedural protections for applicants with a record and prohibited boards from using arbitrary character determinations, non-conviction records, and convictions that do not “directly relate” to the license at hand, as a basis to disqualify applicants. Low marks go once again to two of the states that enacted no record reform laws at all in 2023. While there are many other states in this category this year, the legislatures of Alaska and Wisconsin have earned their place at the bottom of the heap for having been equally unproductive since 2018, a period in which almost every other state passed at least some law limiting access to and use of criminal records.  Wisconsin’s one saving grace is the extraordinary record of pardoning by its governor:  Barely into his second term,Tony Evers has pardoned more than 1100 individuals, 833 in the last two years alone. Looking ahead Looking ahead to 2024, we are cautiously optimistic that even in a presidential election year there will be a continuing expansion of eligibility for record clearing, and reduction of access barriers like lengthy waiting periods, outstanding court debt and application-related costs. We also predict efforts to improve records management to accommodate automation of record clearance. We look for further facilitation of occupational licensing, an area where bipartisan reforms have benefitted from helpful model laws, and for efforts to support entrepreneurship by people with a criminal history. We have come a long way just in the past five years, but there is still a long way to go. Read more

In a year that saw fewer criminal record reforms enacted than in the recent past, six states plus the District of Columbia took significant steps to expand their sealing and expungement laws. Minnesota, New York, and the District of Columbia enacted the most ambitious record-clearing schemes, expanding eligibility for relief while also making some relief automatic for the first time. Louisiana continued to resist a full “clean slate” approach, but established an automated application system that should make it easier for individuals to seek expungement once the legislature reduces the sky-high statutory application fee. Like Louisiana, Maryland significantly improved its record relief system even without changing eligibility criteria, including by cutting waiting periods in half. Ohio and Pennsylvania expanded eligibility for petition-based sealing and reduced waiting periods, with Pennsylvania also extending automatic relief to some drug felonies. These seven reforms are described in greater detail below, in approximate order of importance.  Further analysis of each state’s new law can be found in the relevant state profile from the Restoration of Rights Project.  All in all, considering the relatively few record reforms in other categories enacted in 2023, they make for a surprisingly productive year for record clearing. Minnesota: Through provisions in an omnibus criminal justice reform bill (SF 2909), Minnesota largely subsumed its petition-based system with automatic expungement that will take effect next year. Prior to enactment of the 2023 reform, even non-conviction records were subject in Minnesota to a burdensome process that required the court to apply an individualized balancing test. One study found that just 5% of Minnesotans eligible for record relief actually received it. Once the automatic expungement provisions take effect, hundreds of thousands of Minnesotans should finally benefit. The record reforms in SF 2909 also broadened expungement eligibility to include some less serious drug crimes, reduced waiting periods, and made expungement of pardoned convictions automatic. In addition, as part of a bill that legalized marijuana (HF 100), Minnesota will automatically expunge over 60,000 misdemeanor convictions for selling or possessing cannabis. It also created a new board to review nonviolent cannabis felony records for potential expungement. If more were necessary to show why Minnesota is our 2023 Reintegration Champion, its legislature also overhauled the pardon process to encourage more grants, limited felony disenfranchisement to a period of actual incarceration, capped sentences for gross misdemeanors to avoid immigration consequences, extended ban-the-box to multimember agencies, and further eased the drug felony ban on SNAP and TANF benefits. New York: In November, New York enacted its own broad Clean Slate Act (A1029C), substantially expanding eligibility for sealing from a rather stingy maximum of two convictions (only one of which could be a felony) to all misdemeanors and all but the most serious felonies, without numerical limits, making New York’s automatic record-clearing law the broadest in the Nation by far. New York also reduced some waiting periods (though not as substantially as Maryland and Pennsylvania). Starting in November 2024, New York will begin the process of automatically sealing misdemeanors three years after completion of sentence, and eligible felonies after eight years, so long as an individual has no pending criminal charges and is not on probation or parole. It is estimated that as many as a million felonies and up to 4 million misdemeanors will become eligible for sealing under the new law. “The best crime-fighting tool is a good-paying job. That’s why I support giving New Yorkers a clean slate after they’ve paid their debt to society and gone years without an additional offense,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said at the bill’s signing. The District of Columbia: The District of Columbia is the third jurisdiction to substantially revise its record-clearing laws, replacing one of the most complex and restrictive schemes in the country with a generous one that includes some automatic relief. DC’s preexisting record sealing law limits relief to certain misdemeanors and non-conviction records, requires lengthy waiting periods and provides for their extension based on so-called “disqualifying” arrests or convictions, and imposes onerous procedures for sealing even non-conviction records. DC’s Second Chance Amendment Act of 2022 (D.C. Law 24-284), which became final after the required period of congressional review on March 10, 2023, extends petition-based sealing relief to all non-conviction records and misdemeanors, and to all but certain felonies involving violence and sexual crimes.  Non-conviction records may be sealed at disposition; a waiting period of five years after completion of sentence is required for misdemeanor convictions and eight years for all but the most serious violent felony convictions. The new law facilitates procedures and eases standards and burdens of proof, and it also makes sealing automatic for non-convictions and most misdemeanors, and for marijuana convictions. The new law’s shortcoming is that it is presently not scheduled to take effect for several more years. Currently, the FY24 Budget Support Act of 2023 establishes the effective date for the Second Chance Act as 1/1/26 for most of the law and 10/1/29 for its automatic sealing provisions (extended from 2027 in the law as enacted).    Louisiana:  Louisiana’s legislature has for several years tried to enact automatic record clearing, only to be frustrated by opposition from the state police and the courts.  SB 111 establishes an automated expungement process applicable to all cases currently authorized for relief under Articles 976 (non-convictions), 977 (misdemeanors) and 978 (felonies). This law was effectively a compromise after opposition from law enforcement and the courts twice defeated efforts in 2021 and 2022 to enact an automatic “clean slate” process. The law directs the Louisiana Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information (BCII) to inventory all crimes for which expungement is authorized, and to develop a simplified online process whereby individuals can submit basic information about their case to obtain expungement relief.  If a record is eligible, the Bureau must expunge it within 30 days and then notify the Louisiana Supreme Court case system, which in turn will notify law enforcement and district courts about the expungement. Once the system is fully implemented after January 1, 2025, state lawmakers also aim to eliminate the $550 filing fee that in the past has discouraged applicants, though implementation is still contingent on the state legislature funding the automated expungement process. One potential model would be New Jersey, which introduced a similar electronic expungement system in 2019. (See Akil Roper, “New Jersey Launches Electronic Filing System for Expungements.”) Pennsylvania:  In December, Gov. Josh Shapiro signed HB 689 which for the first time authorizes sealing of some felonies, specifically low-level property crimes and less serious drug offenses, after 10 conviction-free years. It also builds on the state’s landmark Clean Slate Act to provide automatic relief for a single less serious drug felony. In addition, the bill shortens the waiting period for sealing of misdemeanors from 10 to 7 years and for summary offenses from 10 to 5 years. It also provides for automatic expungement of pardoned convictions. The bill represents just the latest extension of Pennsylvania’s Clean Slate Act. Since it first took effect in June 2019, the state has sealed over 40 million cases, predominantly uncharged arrests and other non-convictions. According to Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services, that figure represents “more than half of the charges in the court’s database.” As a result, the Clean Slate Act has directly impacted more than 1.2 million Pennsylvanians, providing greater access to employment, education, and housing opportunities. Ohio: In 2023, S. 288 made major revisions to Ohio’s record-clearing law, extending eligibility for sealing to additional categories of felonies (though still excluding certain offenses from relief), shortening waiting periods, authorizing prosecutor-initiated sealing, and creating a new authority for expungement of records after an additional waiting period ranging from six months for petty misdemeanors to 10 years for felonies, and for non-convictions at disposition. The law also authorized courts to seal the record of any case in which the governor had granted a pardon, on the same basis as non-conviction records. Maryland: Under the REDEEM Act (SB 37), Maryland cut in half what we reported in 2022 were among the longest waiting periods in the country, from 10 years after completion of sentence to five years for misdemeanors and from 15 years to 7 years for felonies. Maryland also made expungement of non-conviction records automatic, and provided that any unpaid court fees or costs will not bar expungement and will be waived if associated with the charge being expunged.  Maryland’s reduction in its waiting periods appears to have been encouraged by our 2022 report, Waiting for Relief: A National Survey of Waiting Periods for Record Clearing, a report that we prepared at the instance of Maryland advocates for reform, which prominently identified Maryland’s waiting periods as the longest in the Nation. “You commit a nonviolent felony at 20 and not have that expunged until you’re 40 years old,” said the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher. “That’s a lot of living. And that is impacted by a criminal record.” He added that “By cutting the waiting period, it provides greater access to the resources that ex-offenders need to get back into the mainstream economy.” ********** These and other new laws enacted in 2023 will be discussed in our annual report on new record reform legislation, which we expect to publish in a few days.     Read more

As the first post of 2024, we are highlighting a great article by Matt Stout of the Boston Globe about how Massachusetts Governor Healey and other governors across the country are reviving their pardon power after years of neglect: “Clemency was a political third rail for decades. Healey and other governors are starting to embrace it.” Stout begins his piece by telling the story of Joanne Booth, a middle-aged woman who could not escape an epsiode of youthful bad judgment, despite having twice had the resulting conviction sealed: Joanne Booth was 18 in 1979 when, while out at a club in Cambridge, she saw her brother getting arrested, pulled her shoe off, and threw it at the officer. She was arrested when she literally hopped into the Police Department to check on her sibling, she said. On her attorney’s advice, she pleaded guilty to assault and battery with a dangerous weapon — which, she notes, was ”a little white sneaker.” She completed her probation and community service, and, she thought, paid her debt for her “punky” teenage behavior. Until January 2021, that is, when she was abruptly fired from the Boys & Girls Club, where she’d worked as a pre-K teacher, because the 42-year-old conviction, which she twice had sealed, reemerged on a background check the club was mandated to run after receiving a grant. Booth was one of 13 people pardoned by Governor Maureen Healey in her first year in office, forecasting the revival of a long-dormant gubernatorial power to cut short the lifetime of punishment that comes with having even a minor criminal record. Stout cites our Restoration of Rights Project to show the “growing number of states where chief executives are embracing pardons and commutations — in some cases, at historic levels — amid a wider movement on rethinking criminal punishment.” While inconsistent across the country, the use of clemency has soared in some red and blue states alike. Mike Parson, Missouri’s Republican governor and a former sheriff, has pardoned more than 600 people in just three years. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, has granted more than 1,100 for drug, theft, and other offenses — a record in his state. Before leaving office in January, Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf, a Democrat, granted 2,500, more than doubling the number issued by any of his predecessors. Hundreds were for marijuana-related offenses. In other states, such as Delaware or South Carolina, officials have typically granted hundreds of pardons each year. They embody pockets of the country where governors, or independent boards, have regularly issued pardons without major scandals, said Margaret Love, executive director of Collateral Consequences Resource Center, a nonprofit that provides research on criminal justice issues. Still, clemency remains relatively spotty. The Restoration of Rights Project, which Love’s nonprofit runs, counts 16 states where pardons are granted frequently or regularly. In nearly as many, they’re infrequent, and in 13 others — Massachusetts still included — they’re considered rare. Stout’s article places the revival of the pardon power into a larger context of a bipartisan effort to restore rights and dignity lost as a result of arrest or conviction: The shift now in Massachusetts and elsewhere reflects what Love called a wider “renaissance” on criminal justice: State legislatures are expanding voting rights for people with felony convictions or reshaping professional licensing requirements, including by limiting when someone’s criminal record can be considered in an application. With clemency, “governors are appreciating they have a responsibility to use their constitutional power to, you can say, do justice,” Love said, “to perform the kind of function that the law doesn’t allow.” Stout traces the dearth of pardoning in Massachusetts to the infanous Willie Horton episode that is widely regarded as having sunk Michael Dukakis’ presidential bid in the 1980’s, but Governor Healey herself suggests a simpler reason: “The elected officials didn’t have the investment [in granting clemency], and the system itself was not functioning properly,” she said. “People couldn’t count on this to be a meaningful process.”  Healey has issued new guidelines that tighten timelines and broaden standards, hoping to restore public confidence in that process.  At the end of his article Stout returns to the story with which he began his article: Booth — whom Healey pardoned for her 1979 assault conviction, as well as a drunken driving conviction from the early 1980s — said the fact that Healey has acted on her and others’ petitions is itself “amazing.” Booth said the pardon allowed her to return several weeks ago to her job teaching, where she was enthusiastically embraced by coworkers. “So many hugs,” she said. “It really is like getting your life back.” We hope that this trend in reviving what Alexander Hamilton called the “benign authority” will continue in 2024.  We also hope that officials in charge of the federal pardon process will persuade President Biden to join that trend, beginning with the backlog of almost 4000 pardon applications that has been building in the Justice Department for more than a decade. It is all well and good for the President to issue class-wide proclamations pardoning unnamed individuals convicted of marijuana possession, but there are hundreds of individuals who filed pardon petitions years ago who have been waiting in line for the president’s decision in their case. Note: The Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney has recently announced that letters will soon go out to those that have not been granted clemency “in order to deliver closure to those waiting for answers they deserve.” The announcement adds that those receiving these letters “are welcome to submit new petitions,” and it links to the lengthy pardon application form. We hope that pardons will be granted to at least some of these applicants, many of whom are likely as deserving of relief as Joanne Booth.        Read more

        FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 6, 2023 Media Contact: Nick Sibilla nick@ccresourcecenter.org David Hebert dhebert@arnoldventures.org Many States Still Deny SNAP and TANF Benefits to People with a Drug Felony, According to a New Report Washington, D.C. — Almost half the states still exclude thousands of Americans with a drug felony in their past from receiving essential public benefits, according to a new nationwide study released today by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC) with support from Arnold Ventures. A provision in President Bill Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform law imposed a lifetime ban on eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) for anyone convicted of a drug felony. However, the federal law permitted states to opt out of one or both bans or to modify them with their own conditions. CCRC’s report, “Accessing SNAP and TANF Benefits after a Drug Conviction: A Survey of State Laws,” offers a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the differing ways states have responded to this federal ban, including relevant sections of statutory text to facilitate analysis and comparison. Today, 25 states, plus the District of Columbia, have opted out of both bans on SNAP and TANF. But a surprising number of states remain committed in some fashion to this outdated artifact of the War on Drugs. CCRC’s report focuses on those states that have modified the federal ban by enacting their own conditions on access to benefits – 18 states for TANF and 20 states for SNAP.  In many cases these so-called “modified opt-outs” require applicants for benefits to participate in drug treatment programs and frequent drug-testing independent of any conditions imposed by the sentencing court and regardless of individual need. “Research has found that conditions on benefits that require compliance with state-imposed behavioral requirements are counterproductive, and hardly less punitive than an outright ban,” said Margaret Love, CCRC’s Executive Director and the report’s co-author. Some states limit the kinds of drug convictions that qualify for benefits, so that lifetime bars remain in place for drug trafficking convictions no matter how dated. Other states require waiting periods before benefits begin that frequently run from release from prison, a time when a person’s need for support is greatest. “There is strong evidence that bans and restrictive conditions on public benefits do not improve community safety and, to the contrary, may increase crime and harm school achievement and wellbeing outcomes for children of impacted people with records,” said Juliene James, vice president of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures. “This report is a great resource for advocates and lawmakers who are interested in reforming this ineffective practice.” The report also found that in just in the last four years eight states have taken steps to move from full or modified bans to a full opt out for both types of benefits. Pennsylvania is the only state during this period that moved the other way, from full opt out back to modified bans for both SNAP and TANF that are among the toughest in the country. In Congress, Sens. Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock have introduced a bill to repeal the SNAP ban, but there has been no similar effort in Congress to jettison the ban on TANF. ### ABOUT CCRC The Collateral Consequences Resource Center is a non-profit organization that researches laws and policies relating to restoration of rights and criminal record relief throughout the country, whose work makes it possible to see national patterns and emerging trends in efforts to mitigate the adverse impact of a criminal record. For more information visit https://ccresourcecenter.org/.    ABOUT ARNOLD VENTURES Arnold Ventures is a philanthropy dedicated to tackling some of the most pressing problems in the United States. Driven by a mission to maximize opportunity and minimize injustice, it invests in sustainable change, building it from the ground up based on research, deep thinking, and a strong foundation of evidence. Arnold Ventures is headquartered in Houston, with offices in Washington, D.C., and New York City. For more information about Arnold Ventures, visit www.arnoldventures.org.    Read more