The Many Roads to Reintegration: A 50-State Report on Laws Restoring Rights and Opportunities after Arrest or Conviction

Abstract

This report by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center sets out to describe the present landscape of laws in the United States aimed at restoring rights and opportunities after an arrest or conviction. It considers remedies for three of the four main types of collateral consequences: loss of civil rights, dissemination of damaging record information, and loss of opportunities and benefits, notably in the workplace. An introduction by Gabriel J. Chin describes the operational features of a desirable relief system: accessible, effective, coordinated, fair, and administrable. The report's first chapter finds that the trend toward restoring the vote to those living in the community — a long-time goal of national reform organizations and advocates — has accelerated in recent years. It also finds that systems for restoring firearms rights are considerably more varied, with many states providing relief through the courts but others requiring a full pardon. The second chapter deals with laws intended to revise or supplement criminal records, an issue that has attracted the most attention in legislatures but that has benefited the least from national guidance. The third chapter concerns the area in which perhaps the most dramatic progress has been made recently: the regulation of how criminal record is considered by public employers and occupational licensing agencies. Regulation of private employment has also been influenced by national models, although to a lesser extent and more needs to be done in this area. Each section of the report assigns a grade to each state, D.C., and federal law, with a ranking of jurisdictions in the appendix.

Keywords: reintegration, restoration of rights, collateral consequences, voting, firearms, record relief, pardon, expungement, sealing, set-aside, judicial certificates of relief, diversion, deferred adjudication, non-conviction records, fair chance employment, fair chance occupational licensing, report card