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Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday April 24th

2024 and this is a special episode of the excerpt.

If a person is convicted of a crime, they may be sentenced to prison.

Upon release, technically, they're free again.

The catch is that now they have a criminal record that will likely

follow them everywhere they go. So when does the sentence end? For most people the answer is

never. 70 million Americans have some sort of criminal record.

12 states have recently passed laws allowing low-level convictions to be

expunged from records if certain requirements are met. In recognition of Second Chance Month, we ask,

should everyone get a chance at a clean slate?

Our guest today is Shena Mead, the CEO of the Clean Slate Initiative, an organization working to get all 50 states

to offer automatic record clearance.

Thanks for joining Ashina.

Thank you for having me, Dana.

So why is this such a big deal? In what ways does

someone's criminal record create obstacles for them? Well one is such a big

deal because one and three Americans have an arrest or conviction on their record.

And that's a lot of people.

That's a lot of people from my communities, a lot of people in our faith community,

our neighbors, our loved ones.

...