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Clean Slate CT facts and answers

What Is Clean Slate?
Clean Slate will automatically erase some criminal convictions of people who have returned to the community after incarceration and who remain crime-free for a specific period of time (the length of time depends on whether the conviction is a misdemeanor or a felony).
Who is eligible?
People with misdemeanor and lower-level felony records will be eligible after seven and ten years respectively (except for sex, family violence, and firearm charges). For a person with multiple convictions on their record, some convictions may be eligible for erasure, and some may not.  Don’t assume that if one conviction is eligible for a person, that every conviction for that person is eligible for erasure.
What convictions will be erased?
Certain low-level felonies (class D and E) after ten years from the conviction, and misdemeanors after seven years from the conviction. The new law does not allow for the erasure of class A, B, or C felonies, and also family violence crimes or certain sex offender crimes requiring registration.
What does it mean if a conviction is erased?
If all your convictions have been erased, you are legally entitled to say that you do not have a criminal record. If your conviction or convictions are erased, and a potential employer asks you about it, you are allowed to say that you were not arrested or convicted. If any of your convictions have not been erased, you cannot legally claim that you do not have a criminal record. Clean Slate will automatically erase some criminal convictions of people who have returned to the community after incarceration and who remain crime-free for a specific period of time (the length of time depends on whether the conviction is a misdemeanor or a felony). 

Answers to common questions about the Connecticut Clean Slate law.

Yes. Anyone can apply for a pardon through the Board of Pardons and Paroles. People are eligible to apply 3 years after the date of conviction for misdemeanors and 5 years after the date of conviction for felonies. You can learn more here and seek assistance here.

We provide instructions on how to find your CT criminal record history on the CT Judicial Branch conviction search page. Alternatively, you can request your Criminal Record History from the Connecticut State Police. 

Your criminal record could be listed under an alias, a previous name, a misspelled name, or with an incorrect date of birth. If your criminal record does not appear, try another name that the police could have used. It’s also possible that your record has already been erased; erased records will not show up in a database search.

Your eligible offenses will be erased. You can apply for a complete erasure from the Board of Pardons and Paroles. 

No. If your record has been erased, you are legally entitled to say that you do not have a criminal record. When a criminal record is sealed, you can deny it ever happened. If your record is sealed and an employer asks you about it, you are allowed to deny that you were arrested or convicted.

Note: If your record has only been partially erased, you cannot legally claim that you do not have a criminal record. 

The Clean Slate law in Connecticut is designed to automatically erase a person’s eligible convictions. It is NOT designed to erase a person’s entire criminal record if there is more than one conviction in that criminal record. However, if all the convictions in a person’s criminal record are eligible for automatic erasure, they will all be erased.

There will be circumstances in which some convictions are erased and others are not. This means that the convictions on your criminal record, which are not eligible for erasure, will be available if someone conducts a background check.

If you have more than one conviction on your criminal record, and you are trying to determine which convictions may be eligible for automatic erasure under CT’s Clean Slate law, you must look up EACH individual conviction to determine if it will be erased.

Currently, the best method of checking conviction eligibility is using the judicial website as directed by this site. However, once the Clean Slate law goes into effect, it is unclear as of yet how people can easily confirm that their conviction has been erased (absent a background check). It is a question we will continue to ask of the State. We anticipate that everything won’t happen all at once on January 1, 2023, so it is possible there will be a lag time on automatic erasure for many eligible convictions.

There is much that remains unknown about how the implementation process with Connecticut’s Clean Slate law will work. CONECT is in communication with the State agencies overseeing the implementation and will be gathering information to share on this site as we learn it. 

One thing to keep in mind is that if you look up a conviction on the judicial system after January 1, 2023 and you don’t find it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that conviction has been automatically erased from your record. It could certainly be the case that it has been, but it could also be a website error, or the conviction could not be showing up for some other technical reason.

Connecticut’s Clean Slate Legislation only applies to convictions in Connecticut. If you live out of state, but your conviction history is in Connecticut, you may be eligible for Clean Slate depending on your specific convictions. If you currently live in Connecticut and your convictions occurred elsewhere, they will not be erased under Connecticut’s Clean Slate legislation.

Why is Clean Slate important?

Prior to the Clean Slate law being passed, the only way to apply for erasure in Connecticut has been through the Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles. The application process is burdensome, costly, bureaucratic, and subjective. Clean Slate legislation is the much needed automatic solution, in contrast to the long pardon application process.

Clean Slate is a racial justice issue.

  • In Connecticut, Black people are 9.4x more likely than white people to be incarcerated, and Latinx people are 3.9x more likely to be incarcerated than white people. The effects of systemic racism on incarceration will persist for decades without Clean Slate. 

Clean Slate improves public safety.

  • When people’s records are erased, they become stable citizens with access to jobs, housing, and higher education. As a result, the tendency to reoffend is dramatically reduced. This makes everyone safer.

Clean Slate boosts the economy.

  • One 2016 study estimates that the collective national impact of the shackles of a criminal record reduces our GDP each year between $78 billion and $87 billion. Based on Connecticut’s population, this means the loss of between $859 million and $958 million in economic activity each year in our state. Clean Slate will create job opportunities for thousands of CT residents, thereby expanding our state’s economic growth.
  • An estimated 200-300,000 people in Connecticut will benefit once it is fully implemented with greater access to jobs, housing, educational programs, professional licenses, and more. Clean Slate is a victory for racial justice, community safety, and economic growth.

Read Connecticut Public Act 21-32 known as the Clean Slate Law.