Connecticut has erased tens of thousands of low-level criminal convictions over the last few days under it’s Clean Slate law.
It's been a long time coming — the erasures were supposed to happen more than two years ago.
Connecticut passed its Clean Slate law in 2021. It was expected to automatically erase misdemeanors after seven years and certain low-class felonies after 10 years.
When he signed the bill, Gov. Ned Lamont said it would change the lives of people who had committed low-level offenses and were missing out on job, housing, and education opportunities years later because of it.
Phil Kent, who is on the legal reform team at Congregations Organized for a New Connecticut, said his community was thrilled.
“When we got the law passed in 2021, you know, everybody was ecstatic about that,” Kent said. “It was a major step.”
However, the state struggled to keep its promise. Aging computer systems slowed the process, leaving people waiting.
Now, more than two years later, things are finally moving along.
Rick Green is with the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection.
“As of now, approximately 50,000 people have had their records partially or completely erased,” Rick Green with the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection said. “In the coming weeks, we expect to have erasures for more than 100,000 people.”
Kent said the update is cause for celebration. And he doesn’t have any hard feelings towards the state, even after years of delays.
“We were able to go back and develop a good working relationship with people in the administration to actually start to address some of those shortfalls,” Kent said. “And that then started us on sort of an upward swing to, you know, have progressive meetings where things were actually getting done, and we were seeing real efforts being made at the state level to address, you know, the promises made by the law that had been passed.”
But Kent is quick to admit that he’s a forgiving person, and doesn't have a record — and for people who do, feelings about the delays are different.
“The trust has definitely been eroded,” Dawn Grant-Lockley said. “Do I think it can come back? I don't know, because the delay said to me that it wasn't important enough.”
Grant-Lockley isn’t eligible to have her record erased under Clean Slate, but she’s thrilled that the program is available for people who are.
And even though the delays are reportedly in the past, Grant-Lockley said the situation had a negative impact on a community that’s already weary of the justice system.
“I don't think that the administration realizes what it feels like to go through that,” Grant-Lockley said. “To get your hopes up that something is actually going to help us.”
Grant-Lockley, though, is quick to complement the team that the state implemented to get the program moving this year.
“If this team had been in place before, I don't believe that the delay would have been as long,” Grant-Lockley said. “But I think that this team was put into place because people were fed up because it was taking so long, because there was so much frustration, because they had said that they were able to do something and had not been able to do it. And we kept pressure on them.”
Now that erasures are back on track, she's ready to start thinking about what’s next.
“I think it's back to the drawing board and seeing, okay, so now we're seeing the benefits of this,” Grant-Lockley said. “We're seeing more people become gainfully employed. We're seeing more people enrolling in school. We're seeing all of these positive benefits of Clean Slate. So now let's extend that. You know, instead of just Class E and Class B. Maybe look at some Class Cs.”
In the meantime, Connecticut’s Clean Slate law is among the most progressive in the nation.
And Grant-Lockley said, despite the delays, that’s cause for celebration.
“It's just so awesome that people are going to have their lives back, that their prison sentence is finally over,” Grant-Lockley said.
