Clearing the way: The promise of a comprehensive record clearing initiative in Philadelphia

Millions of U.S. residents have criminal records, which creates barriers and challenges related to employment, housing, and other important domains. Although record clearing opportunities exist, several factors (e.g. cost, access) prevent most eligible individuals from pursuing relief. To address these limiting factors, a Philadelphia-based coalition facilitated local legal organizations and community-based organizations holding 56 record clearing events embedded within publicly accessible community events throughout the city between May 2022 and June 2024. At these events, attendees met with legal staff and volunteers, at no cost, to discuss their records and initiate record clearing if eligible. In the first 25 months of this record clearing initiative, nearly 3,000 people engaged with the legal clinics and nearly 2,000 of those clinic attendees initiated some form of record clearing. This paper describes the development and implementation of this innovative initiative, characterizes the individuals who attended the record clearing clinics, describes a longitudinal study that recruited 809 participants pursuing record relief as a result of their clinic attendance, and shares descriptive results from baseline surveys completed by those participants, including findings related to the ways in which their criminal records have negatively impacted their lives and general measures of well-being.