Clemency reform is a win-win-win for Florida

On Wednesday, Florida’s Executive Clemency Board enacted substantive changes to the state’s clemency process for the first time in more than a decade. These bipartisan reforms will impact hundreds of thousands of lives and represent a win-winwin for the government, taxpayers and individuals and communities throughout Florida.

The United States Supreme Court has called clemency the “fail-safe” of our judicial system. This is because clemency empowers the governor and the executive branch to unilaterally correct injustices in our criminal legal system. That process played out this week as the Clemency Board — Republicans Gov. Ron DeSantis, Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and Attorney General Ashley Moody and Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried — took a first step toward fixing a broken system that has blocked restoration and the possibility of redemption for too many people and communities across our state. Beginning on March 10, returning citizens who are eligible to vote under Amendment 4 and who apply will be granted restoration of their full civil rights, without a hearing or waiting period.

This is a big deal, and a direct result of the actions taken by returning citizens (people with past convictions) who advocated and applied pressure on the government to act.

After years of a broken process, one that served more as an impediment than a facilitator of restoration, we are hopeful that the newly enacted clemency reforms can start to turn things around. These reforms empower returning citizens by restoring the civil rights they lost when convicted. These new rules mean if a returning citizen has completed their sentence and become eligible to vote, they will now have a clear pathway to regain their full civil rights.

This concept of being fully restored and welcomed back into the community is invaluable. These reforms will better enable Florida’s returning citizens to reintegrate into the community and pursue the American Dream.

As returning citizens ourselves, our belief is that when people with past convictions are treated like everybody else in society, we all benefit. When returning citizens are able to get jobs without restrictions, have access to housing and shoulder our fair share of the tax burden, it is a win-win-win for all involved. That is why we at the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition have fought for these changes, and see them as a big step in the right direction.

Look at public safety as just one win-win-win that comes from expanding and streamlining rights restoration.

According to a report by Florida Parole Commission, it is clear that these new reforms will help create safer communities all across the state. The commission’s report studied tens of thousands of Floridians and concluded that people who had their civil rights restored through the clemency process were three times less likely to reoffend than people who did not have their civil rights restored. Think about that.

Three times less likely to reoffend.

That is not just important for Florida’s returning citizen community, it is important for everyone. The recently enacted clemency changes will also eliminate costly bureaucracies and waiting periods that currently have tens of thousands of Florida citizens waiting in line for years, even decades, before they can potentially move forward with their lives. Eliminating these costly, duplicative administrative hurdles and waiting periods will improve government efficiency and save Florida’s taxpayers millions of dollars, while also giving people the second chance they’ve earned with fewer delays. It too is a win-win-win situation.

While many will see the Clemency Board as behind these changes, we believe the primary reason these reforms came about was because the people most impacted by them got involved and demanded change. During last year’s legislative session, we were joined by more than 700 returning citizens in front of the state Capitol. Thousands more joined from home, work and on their phones. Most of us in attendance were people with past felony convictions who were also newly registered voters. The pandemic was just a few weeks away.

We talked about the power of democracy and what it meant to have our voices back. We also talked about the importance of clemency reform, restoration and the simple belief that when a debt is paid, it is paid. We discussed the positive impact that changes to Florida’s clemency system would have on individuals and communities throughout our state, as well as the specific proposal for reforms the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC) had recently submitted to Gov. DeSantis and the Clemency Board.

At the time, we said “FRRC is encouraging Gov. DeSantis and the full board to be more courageous in clemency reform in a way that would substantially reduce crime, expand our democracy and stimulate Florida’s economy by eliminating the current backlog through the creation of an efficient and speedy process to restore civil rights to individuals seeking to have them restored, and those who already have their voting rights restored through Amendment 4.”

Many of the changes included in our proposal then are now included in the Florida Executive Clemency Board’s new rules. While we still have a long way to go to give returning citizens in Florida a full second chance, it is good to see government officials from both parties beginning to recognize and embrace the idea that individuals and communities prosper when people are fully restored. That is a testament to the people clamoring for change. Their voices are being heard, and our state is becoming better for it.