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Clean Slate bills propose to remedy these obstacles by requiring states to automatically expunge people’s records for eligible offenses. Although expunged records yield major benefits, the vast majority of people who are eligible to get an expungement-over 90 percent of them, according to a University of Michigan study published in 2019-don’t even apply, for a host of reasons ranging from cost and time to legal complexity and a lack of information. It would have initiated the process of automatically expunging criminal records in nearly 2 million eligible cases.Īdvocates have pushed for this type of reform, dubbed “Clean Slate,” around the country. In that context, criminal justice reform advocates in Washington State were all the more disappointed in April when Democratic Governor Jay Inslee vetoed House Bill 2793. unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression.” As the nation now grapples with the novel coronavirus and tens of millions of newly unemployed workers, individuals with criminal records-upward of 70 to 100 million Americans-are bracing for an even more severe crisis, with heightened difficulties obtaining jobs, loans, and housing. But it stood at a staggering 27 percent among the formerly incarcerated, according to a study by the Prison Policy Initiative -“higher than the overall U.S. When the Great Recession hit in 2008, the unemployment rate among the general public stood at 6 percent. Advocates stress that automating the expungement process, a reform with recent nationwide steam, can help protect people with past charges or convictions from the economic devastation of COVID-19.