‘That pressure is being released now’: A newly expanded law is helping people seal their felony records and start fresh

The kind of cold that one 61-year-old father from West Philly felt while working construction on the high rises above Atlantic City remains burned into his memory.

“The cold coming off that water in February … I’ve seen for the first time, guys’ snot freezing in [their] mustache. Cold beyond anything I’ve experienced in my life for eight hours [a day],” he said.

He has a college degree, and was once just nine credits away from a master’s degree in education. But nearly two decades ago, his life was spiraling away from him. He lost his job, and his wife left him. He still had three children to take care of, and child support ate away at his unemployment checks.

He turned to the streets out of desperation. When he was eventually arrested on felony weapon and drug charges, he pleaded guilty to the drug charge, and his weapon charge was dropped. He avoided prison time because he had no priors and received six years of parole.

He said his criminal record made it nearly impossible to get work that he was interested in and relevant to his degree, so his only option was construction. Even though he was in his 40s, he started out as an apprentice. He was making very little money and was being talked down to.

“Doing anything with a pen. Sitting at a desk … it’s all out the window. My degree means nothing,” he said.

But the West Philly father hopes that changes now that his criminal record was officially sealed on Feb. 14.

He was one of the first Philadelphians to benefit from the state’s newly expanded Clean Slate law, which allows people with certain felony convictions to have their criminal records sealed by filing court petitions. The law could help hundreds of thousands of eligible Pennsylvanians access more opportunities in employment, housing, and education.

“Just because you got a record, that don’t mean you’re a bad person.”

“Something that’s really old and unrelated to their ability to be a good employer or a good tenant is still used against them,” said Jamie Gullen, the managing attorney of the employment unit at Community Legal Services, a free legal assistance organization serving low-income Philadelphians, including the West Philly man.

“I feel like somebody was just holding me by my shoulders and that pressure is being released now,” he said. “I’m starting to feel like I don’t have to be ashamed.”

CLS proposed Pennsylvania’s Clean Slate law and has been one of the lead advocates calling for its expansion since it began in 2018. The original law was the first legislation in the country that automatically sealed certain misdemeanor criminal records. In 2020, legislators expanded Clean Slate to allow for cases to be sealed when the person still owed fines and other costs to the state. Since these two laws were passed, more than a million Pennsylvanians have had their records sealed using Clean Slate policies.

» READ MORE: There are 400,000 people in Philly with convictions and criminal records. Expungement clinics can offer a fresh start.

The latest iteration of the law, Clean Slate 3.0, was passed in December, which made certain drug and property related felonies (such as theft and trespassing) eligible to be sealed, as long as the person has not committed a subsequent misdemeanor or felony offense for 10 years. The updated law also shortens that waiting period for sealing for misdemeanors to seven years, and summary convictions to five years. Beginning in June, some drug felonies will begin being automatically sealed.

“The law clarifies that once the record’s been sealed, it cannot be used for employment, housing, or educational purposes, and it also can’t be used for occupational licenses. In addition to taking it out of background checks, it’s also giving people added legal protection that once this has happened, it really can’t be used against you anymore,” Gullen said.

Before this expanded law, the only way to get a felony conviction off a person’s record in Pennsylvania was to go through the pardon process, which can be an arduous, multi-year long process with no guaranteed success.

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Gullen said that CLS and other advocates fought for felonies to be included in Clean Slate to address racial inequities in sentencing, too.

“Black people are more likely to be sentenced to felonies than white people. And so, under the first iteration of the Clean Slate law, unfortunately a lot of Black Philadelphians were not able to get their records sealed. We felt it was really imperative to expand that relief to include felonies,” she said.

One of those people was a CLS client with a felony record, a 33-year-old man from West Oak Lane. In 2009, around Thanksgiving, one of his best friends was murdered.

“I took it real hard. That was my first real friend that I ever seen killed. Like, laying on the ground,” he said.

The next day, he was driving with some friends when police pulled their car over. The officers found crack inside of the car, and asked who the drugs belonged to. The West Oak Lane man was feeling guilty and depressed about his friend’s death, since he was one of the last people to talk to him before he was killed. He told the officers that the drugs were his, and took the charge for his friends.

“Wrong thing to do,” he said.

After he was bailed out of jail, his mother kicked him out of the house, afraid of the path where his life was headed. He moved in with his father’s family in North Philly, and began selling crack. Several months later, he was arrested. He served 16 months of house arrest and three years of parole.

He was determined to make a change in his life. He picked up any job he could, at one point working three at once when he was just 20 years old. But his felony record made it difficult to find a job that stuck, despite all of his work experience and the professional licenses he earned over the years.

Once, he was hired by a FedEx near the Philadelphia airport and went through all of the required training for the position. But since his job required him to make frequent stops at the airport, he needed to pass a background check. When FedEx learned of his record, he had to resign.

» READ MORE: Your rights when you’re looking for a job and you have a criminal record

A family member suggested that he look into hospital work, and he got jobs working as a psychiatric technician. He was passionate about mental health care, but ran into the same problems with his record even as he built direct experience.

“They tell me that they go with somebody with more experience or somebody that furthered their education, such as a college degree, but I’ve been in this field for years. I got more experience,” he said.

“This is the only thing that’s really been holding me back.”

For the West Oak Lane man, who has a 4-year-old son, getting his record sealed last week is perfect timing. He had just received a new job offer as a psychiatric technician with a local hospital, but was told that the offer would be rescinded after a background check discovered his record.

He told his new employer that his record was going to be sealed imminently, and had the paperwork to prove it. The hospital agreed to let him keep the job.

“Just because you got a record, that don’t mean you’re a bad person,” he said.

“Everybody makes mistakes.”