At Easy Expunctions, we know the effects that expunctions have on individuals and society as a whole. As more and more states adopt policies that make the expunction process easier, it’s important to have scientific data to support record-clearing and its positive effects. A new study from Harvard University’s Access to Justice Lab plans to do just that.
The study will work with Kansas Legal Services and Neighborhood Legal Services, Duquesne University, and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law to enroll roughly 1,350 participants across the two states. In Pennsylvania, they’ll be closely following the impact of the state’s new Clean Slate legislation, which launched in June. This legislation grants automatic record sealing to people whose criminal records include eligible offenses. The research team aims to work with participants who had their record removed from public view under this new policy. Participants in these studies who have their records cleared will be followed for years to determine the effects.
The study will have two groups—one that receives self-help materials, and one that will be represented through the expunction process by an attorney. This way, the researchers can measure success rates under each method, and then see how each group fares over the following years in terms of employment, housing, and reoffense.
They hope to ultimately learn the effect of record-clearing on recidivism, which is the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend. Up until now, there hasn’t been enough clear evidence to show these effects. There have been smaller studies that show expunctions are associated with low recidivism and high job rates, but by establishing further concrete evidence that expunctions help people, they’ll set the stage for more governments to allow more expunctions. They also hope to demonstrate the direct effects of expunctions across different states, which tend to have vastly different record-clearing procedures.
This is a huge step in the right direction—expunctions give citizens a second chance to live their lives to the fullest and embrace new opportunities. We hope the information will reveal the many pros that come with a clean criminal record.
