Do Expunctions Matter?

Intuitively, the answer seems obvious—a clean record should reduce reentry barriers for employment and other opportunities. Yet, data on the impact of expunctions is elusive because, by their nature, expunged records are unavailable to analyze. No longer. A recent study by J.J. Prescott and Sonja B. Starr, law professors and co-directors of the Empirical Legal Studies Center at the University of Michigan, presents the results of a statewide study pursuant to a data-sharing agreement with the State of Michigan. In Expungement of Criminal Convictions: An Empirical Study, Professors Prescott and Starr examined the criminal records of people who had obtained a criminal record “set-aside,” Michigan’s version of an expunction. Although the details differ, Michigan’s expunction laws are broadly representative of expunction laws in other states. The authors also obtained the records of people whose convictions had not been set aside. They compared this information with wage and employment data from the state’s unemployment insurance program. Armed with this data, they investigated three main questions. First, the authors looked at subsequent reoffending by people who had received a set-aside. The result? We find very low rates of recidivism: just 6% of all set-aside recipients are rearrested within five years of receiving their set-aside (and only 2% are rearrested for violent offenses), while reconviction rates are even lower. Indeed, set-aside recipients’ recidivism rates compare favorably with the Michigan population as a whole. Id. at 4. According to the authors, this finding tends to defuse the most common public safety argument against expunctions: that [...]