This 2021 report highlights key developments in reintegration reforms from the past year. It documents that 40 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government enacted 151 legislative bills and took a number of additional executive actions to restore rights and opportunities to people with an arrest or conviction history.

As in past years, a majority of these new laws involved individual record clearing: all told, an astonishing 36 states enacted 92 separate laws that revise, supplement or limit public access to individual criminal records to reduce or eliminate barriers to opportunity. Most of these laws established or expanded laws authorizing expungement, sealing, or set-aside of convictions or arrest records.

Several states enacted judicial record clearing laws for the very first time, and a number of states authorized “clean slate” automatic clearing. Executive pardoning was revived in several states where it had been dormant for years.