Advocates: ‘Clean Slate’ bill opens doors for those with criminal records
Carrie Perez didn’t realize she was homeless until someone asked her where she got her mail sent.
She’d run away from her Bridgeport home when she was a teenager. By the time she was 23, she was living on the streets, struggling with heroin use and in and out of jail for drug-related crimes. She said she has racked up 33 criminal convictions, all of which were related to her drug use.
“I would get some clean time, I wouldn’t get into trouble, I would relapse, and then I would go back to jail,” Perez said, who now is in long-term recovery from substance abuse. “That was the cycle for 25 years.”
Perez works full time as a peer support specialist at the Wheeler Clinic in New Britain, helping others with substance abuse issues, and goes to school at night. She’s on pace to earn a master’s degree in social work from Fordham University in the fall of 2022.
But she expects the state to deny her a social worker license because of her criminal record. She plans on appealing that decision, but it’s stressful having that hanging over her head, a reminder of the person she was before she went into recovery.
“I am going to get that denial letter,” Perez predicts. “Unless I get a pardon before then, it’s going to happen.”
A bill before the legislature could grant Perez some relief, ensuring her criminal record no longer holds her back. Lawmakers are holding a public hearing Wednesday to discuss a bill that would automatically clear certain criminal convictions from a person’s record after a certain amount of time passes without another conviction.
Proponents of the so-called “Clean Slate” proposal say the legislation is needed to combat discrimination against people with criminal records, which makes it harder for them to secure employment, obtain housing and move on with their lives.
The measure would also require members of the Board of Pardons and Parole to receive annual training on the collateral consequences people face because of their criminal records.
“The system we currently have in place allows for the punishment but not true redemption in moving forward,” said Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven and co-chair of the Judiciary Committee.
The bill would wipe away all misdemeanors from a person’s record seven years after their most recent conviction. Class C felonies would be erased 12 years after a person’s most recent conviction. And Class D or E felonies would be wiped away after 10 years from a person’s most recent convictions. Unclassified felonies would also be wiped away after 10 or 12 years, depending on the length of the imprisonment.
Certain crimes would be ineligible for automatic erasure. Any family violence crimes or sexual offenses would not be automatically erased.
Advocates contend an automated pardon process would go a long way toward clearing the backlog of people waiting to have their records cleared.
A recent study from the Paper Prisons Initiative of Santa Clara University found that of the roughly 407,000 Connecticut residents with criminal records, 89% were eligible to apply for a pardon. Any Clean Slate relief would immensely benefit Black residents, as Black men are four times more likely than whites to be incarcerated; Black women and men are three times more likely than their white counterparts to have a felony conviction.
The analysis makes note of the slow pace of the pardon-granting process. Researchers found that the Board of Pardons and Parole pardoned 626 cases each year, on average, between 2016 and 2019.
Without a Clean Slate bill, it would take 577 years to clear the backlog of people eligible to receive a pardon, the study found.