A Resource for Advocates
Good Clean Slate policy starts with the Advocate’s Guide to Automatic Record Clearance
This resource will help advocates shape Clean Slate policies and ultimately eliminate barriers people with a criminal record face.
Read the guide
The Advocate’s Guide is a new informational resource designed to assist advocates in developing automatic record clearance policies that are implementable by government.
Insights include:
- Key concepts in automatic record clearance
- A deep dive into the mechanics of automatic record clearance, including agencies involved and steps in the process
- Expert tips on eligibility criteria and process
Code for America’s Clear My Record team—a leader in automatic record clearance policy design—knows that a policy is only as good as it is implementable. Technical expertise garnered through years of working directly with government, policy makers, and advocates on automatic record clearance is now available in this essential guide.
Table of contents
How Code for America supports advocates in designing implementable policies
As soon as a campaign starts, Code for America works directly with advocates, The Clean Slate Initiative, and the government agencies responsible for clearing records to provide support that goes beyond the best practices contained in this toolkit.
Our role throughout a campaign—from when the first draft of Clean Slate legislation takes shape, all the way through a bill’s journey in the legislature—is to help surface and solve technical implementation problems before they happen, shaping policy based on our technical expertise and input from government agencies involved in record clearance.
The goal of this collaboration is to maximize the chances for successful bill passage and ultimately create the conditions for successful implementation.
Our services:
- We review bill concepts, outlines, and drafts before and throughout the legislative session to provide tailored technical recommendations for a policy’s eligibility criteria and new record clearing processes
- We meet with criminal legal system agencies to assess the technical and data needs of an automatic record clearance policy
- We review proposed bill amendments, identify technical challenges within them, and then propose solutions to any identified challenges
- We help evaluate external stakeholders’ feedback about a policy through a technical lens
- We prepare technical talking points about a policy for use during the legislative session, including hearings
- We provide demos to government agencies showing technical solutions to possible implementation challenges
We’re eager to support you right from the launch of your campaign.