By Christi M. Smith

Since 2018, nearly half of states have either passed clean slate automated record-sealing laws, adopted legislation to expunge cannabis convictions, or initiated campaigns to seal certain criminal records. These efforts acknowledge the perpetual, often lifelong barriers that people with publicly available criminal records face. The collateral consequences of a record, even for people who have been arrested but not convicted, make it exceedingly difficult to obtain and maintain basic life stability. For the one in three adults with a criminal record, this often means a lifetime of poverty and negative generational outcomes for dependents.

When people are unable to establish stability or advance in life because of records-based discrimination, the public also suffers negative effects. Being unemployed, underemployed, or employed “off the books” means less money cycling back into the community and reduced tax revenue. This translates to an $87 billion per year loss to the national economy. The social cost of cyclical incarceration and increased likelihood of homelessness among this population is an estimated $1.2 trillion annually. And without legitimate opportunities to provide for oneself and one’s family—combined with a lack of affordable products—people may be disincentivized to remain law-abiding. This can result in increased crime and escalating product costs as stores attempt to reduce retail theft. Our streets are less safe when people who have paid their debt to society and remained law-abiding continue to be excluded from the basic resources they need to survive.

Explainer, Washington, DC: R Street, 2024. 2p.

By Margaret Love

This report deals with a form of relief from the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction that is less far-reaching than expungement or other forms of record clearing, but is potentially available to more people at an earlier point in time. These so-called “certificates of relief” do not limit public access to a person’s record, but they may be effective in reducing many conviction-related disadvantages in the workplace, including by providing employers and others with protection against the risk of being sued for negligence. At least as long as expungement and sealing remain unavailable to many people with a felony conviction record, or are available only after lengthy waiting periods, certificates of relief can provide an important addition to a state’s reentry scheme, and serve as a bridge to more thorough forms of record relief like expungement. We believe that, rather than competing as alternative forms of relief, certificates and expungement can operate as complementary parts of a structured system of serially available criminal record relief. Yet it appears that certificates have been largely ignored in many states by courts that are empowered to dispense them, as well as by the advocacy community whose clients might benefit from them. State court systems have failed to collect, track, or aggregate basic data like the number of certificate applications, grants, and denials, a failure that makes it almost impossible to evaluate a certificate’s effectiveness in a given state. At the same time, in a promising development, certificates are being used by prison and parole agencies to facilitate reentry for those exiting prison or completing supervision. Given the perceived limits of record clearing as a comprehensive reentry strategy, social science researchers have become interested in studying the effect of laws that aim to increase the positive information about individuals with a criminal record to counter the negative effect of the record itself. This report is intended to support these research efforts by describing the state of the law relating to certificates of relief in the 21 states that now offer them. A follow-up study will look at the state of executive pardoning

Washington, DC: Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC), 2024. 42p.