Why Should Delaware Care?
In 2024, Delaware enacted a law to expunge low-level criminal records, removing a barrier that can keep people from accessing jobs, housing and education. The law was expected to clear nearly 600,000 records, but disagreements among state officials over which records qualify have delayed the process. Until that is resolved, thousands of Delawareans may continue to carry records that could block them from advancing in society.
Rebecka Ash is days away from finishing her bachelor’s degree in social work. Soon after, she will begin an accelerated master’s program.
But as she advances through her education – which comes after a period in which she spent in prison on drug charges – Ash said records that should have been expunged are still showing up on background checks and blocking her from internship opportunities and scholarships for school.
“I take full responsibility for what I did,” Ash said. “But I don’t know what else to do to show people that I’m trying to better myself.”
Her experience reflects a larger issue unfolding across the state. For thousands of Delawareans, a law meant to automatically clear low-level criminal records has yet to deliver as promised, with delays tied to state police processing that is slowing its rollout.
Employers, landlords and educational institutions often use background checks to screen applicants, which can prevent people with minor charges, such as shoplifting or possession of drug paraphernalia, from accessing housing, jobs and education.
In 2021, Delaware passed the Clean Slate Act, which promised to automatically expunge certain misdemeanors, as well as charges that had been dismissed and certain other criminal records.
State officials had three years to set up the automated expungement process before the law went into effect in August 2024. But nearly two years later, that has not happened, and of the 594,000 cases expected to be expunged, Delaware has cleared just over 25,000.
Asked about the issue during a WHYY radio interview last week, Gov. Matt Meyer called the delay “reprehensible.” Other officials, such as his director of research, Matt Rosen, placed part of the blame on Meyer’s predecessor, John Carney, who was governor when the law was enacted.
Carney’s office did not respond Tuesday to a request to comment for this story.
‘Not in full alignment’
Currently, state officials are in disagreement about the number of cases that should be cleared under the new law.
Rosen described the situation as officials being “not in full alignment yet.”
When the bill was passed in 2021, the Delaware Criminal Justice Information System (DELJIS) identified more than 290,000 adults with nearly 600,000 cases eligible for expungement.
But officials from the State Bureau of Identification, which is under Delaware State Police, say they believe the estimated caseload is inaccurate.
In a statement to Spotlight Delaware, SBI spokesman Lt. Tyler Wright said agency officials found records within the DELJIS list of expungable cases “that were not eligible.”
As a result, SBI officials began to manually evaluate each record up for expungement – a process that has resulted in delays.
“SBI will continue to evaluate each record for accuracy, and we are working with all parties involved to create a more efficient process that minimizes errors and enables swifter review and expungement of records,” Wright said.
Dominic Carretto, executive director of DELJIS, said that differences in determining which cases are eligible for expungement “are not unexpected in a multi-agency environment.”
Those differences do not indicate limitations of the underlying system, he said, but instead may “reflect variations in how eligibility is interpreted or how individual records are reviewed.”
A national movement
In recent years, a national movement has grown to encourage states to pass legislation that “automates record sealing for people with eligible records,” according to the Clean Slate Initiative.
Delaware was the fifth state to adopt a Clean Slate law when it passed its act in 2021.
Today, a total of 13 states and Washington D.C. have passed similar legislation.
But recently Delaware’s law has been under fire from criminal justice advocates, who say the process is not meeting standards.
“We are coming up on two years since the implementation of the Clean Slate Act, and thousands of Delawareans are still waiting on their second chance,” said Kailyn Richards, associate director of Tide Shift Justice Project, a local advocacy organization.
Tide Shift and other advocacy groups have contrasted Delaware’s lack of progress to Pennsylvania, which expunged over 34 million cases during the first year of implementation of its similar Clean Slate Act.
If SBI continues at its current review rate, it could take Delaware over 20 years to get through the backlog of potentially eligible expungements.
Before the Clean Slate Act passed, cases resolved in favor of a defendant, along with some low-level convictions, could be removed from a person’s record if they met certain criteria. But individuals had to go through a two-step application process and pay fees that start at $75.
Individuals are still able to use this process despite the Clean Slate Act being enacted, though some advocates stress that not everyone can afford the fees.
Rosen and Wright have not given a timeline about when the Clean Slate Act will begin to work to its full capacity.
Ash, the student studying social work, said she began the manual expungement process in 2023, paying out of pocket to clear some charges, while others were supposed to be automatically removed under the Clean Slate Act. Years later, she’s still waiting, she said.
As she has begun working in the social work field, the Kent County resident has seen other people who are also trying to navigate the expungement process.
“I have charges, just like a lot of my clients do, and if I’m having a hard time navigating from a place of privilege … then it’s impossible for me to help them get through it too,” she said.
