Tim Head Op-Ed Featured in The Hill

“The Clean Slate Act isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s smart policy,” by Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Executive Director Tim Head was recently featured in The Hill. In his op-ed, Tim discusses the expansive growth of modern government and the corresponding increase in the number of federal crimes and regulations, which has led to a situation where one in three Americans now has some form of a criminal record. It points out that many of these records are for minor offenses or for arrests that never led to convictions, yet they carry significant consequences that affect individuals’ ability to secure employment, housing, and education, among other things.

Below is a short excerpt from Tim’s op-ed:

Certainly, not all criminal records are the same. There is a world of difference between a violent crime and a nonviolent crime. But that distinction is often lost, and society tends to lump all “criminal records” together.

This becomes very important because every criminal record comes with a host of consequences that most of us rarely think about. These collateral consequences are legal and regulatory restrictions that limit or prohibit people convicted of crimes from accessing employment, business and occupational licensing, housing, voting and education. And there is rarely any distinction made between people who made simple mistakes and those who are truly dangerous.

Increasingly, states are realizing that this situation makes punishment never-ending, harms families and does nothing to promote public safety. States as diverse as Pennsylvania, Utah, California and Oklahoma have passed legislation in the last few years to seal low-level, nonviolent criminal records of people who have completed their sentences and not committed any new crimes.

Read the full version of Tim’s op-ed, “The Clean Slate Act isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s smart policy,” on The Hill’s website.