Countless New Yorkers convicted of crimes in their youth would have their records sealed under legislation that awaits Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature.
The Clean Slate Act passed both houses of the Legislature in early June, and if signed into law would remove barriers to work and housing for residents by sealing conviction records for millions of New Yorkers. The governor has until year’s end to sign or veto legislation.
“Clean Slate is a transformative victory for young people in New York,” said Kate Rubin, director of policy at Youth Represent, an advocacy organization providing legal services. “It will automatically seal the records of hundreds of thousands of people arrested and convicted when they were teenagers or young adults, and who have faced lifelong barriers as a result.”
But working weeks past this year’s legislative deadline, bills specifically intended to reform the juvenile justice system failed to pass. The state Legislature formally concluded its 2023 session on June 9, but lawmakers reconvened in a special session that wrapped up its work last week.
“There’s this whole group of older teenagers and young adults — 18- to 25-year-olds who are in this incredibly dynamic period of growth and development — and have no youth-based protections.”
— Kate Rubin, Youth Represent
The bills that failed would have made significant changes to the lives of young people accused of breaking the law, advocates say.
They include a bill that would have ensured minors could speak with an attorney before being interrogated by police. Another required officers to take sensitivity training. One failed bill would have scaled back school suspensions, while another would have expanded the scope of the juvenile justice system to include some young adults through age 25.
Below is a summary of this legislation:
- Arrest Rights: Youth and their advocates held public rallies and fought hard for S1099, which would have protected teenage crime suspects from being bullied into falsely confessing or incriminating themselves.
“When you are questioning children, they may not understand the gravity of what they are doing, what they may have done, or what they have been reported to have done,” Sen. Jamaal Bailey (D) said at a January meeting of the Senate’s Committee on Children and Families. “It’s really important to make sure that they are protected, and they have the proper safeguards.”
The legislation also would have required that a parent or legal guardian be contacted immediately after an arrest. Backers of the bill — sponsored by Assemblymember Latoya Joyner (D) and Bailey — argued the legislation was necessary to protect minors’ constitutional rights to remain silent, to obtain legal counsel and to be informed of the cause of their arrest.
- Ending school-to-prison pipeline: The “Solutions Not Suspensions” bill, S1040, did not progress after a May hearing in the Legislature and public protests by parents, teachers and students. Sponsored by state Sen. Robert Jackson (D), the legislation aimed to keep more children in school and out of the justice system by limiting the time they could be shut out of classes. The legislation would have limited suspensions to 20 days and required schools to provide suspended students with schoolwork.
A related bill sponsored by Bailey, S2747, passed the Senate but stalled in the Assembly. It would have required police departments to develop arrest policies and procedures that are “child-sensitive.” The intent of the legislation is already being enacted in some cities, including Buffalo and New York City, which train police officers on ways to interact with children who witness or are impacted by a parent being taken into custody.
- Stepped-up oversight: S600, sponsored by state Sen. Julia Salazar (D) would have authorized the Correctional Association of New York, an independent watchdog, charged with examining the state’s adult correctional facilities, to also monitor juvenile residential facilities operated by the Office of Children and Family Services. The bill, attempted since 2009, passed the Senate this year but stalled in the Assembly.
The bill would have also established a hotline for residents to speak with an attorney at Prisoner Legal Services.
Currently, there is no non-governmental organization overseeing the state’s juvenile facilities.
Jennifer Scaife, executive director of the Correctional Association, said in an interview that the expansion of oversight would have led to improvements at the youth facilities.
If the bill had passed, Scaife added, “we’d be able to bring information about what happens inside these facilities back out into the community so that the public understands what impact they have on kids and their families.”
- Expanding “youth” justice: Another piece of legislation that will not be advancing this year is considered cutting-edge among reformers.
That bill, titled the Youth Justice and Opportunities Act, sought to expand the “youthful offender” status of people charged with offenses under the age of 19 and create a new “young adult” status for 19- to 25-year-olds. The legislation, backed by the Legal Aid Society, Youth Represent and the Children’s Defense Fund, was sponsored by state Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D). Supporters say extending protections of the juvenile justice system to young adults in their 20s is backed up by neuroscience, which shows the brain’s frontal lobe continues to develop into the third decade of life.
If enacted, Myrie’s bill would also have limited the length of prison terms for young adults; increased judicial discretion to offer alternatives to incarceration for all but the most serious crimes; automatically sealed young people’s criminal records; and waived court fees for poor families.
“There’s this whole group of older teenagers and young adults — 18- to 25-year-olds who are in this incredibly dynamic period of growth and development — and have no youth-based protections,” said Rubin of Youth Represent.
Incarcerated people lobby from prison for legislation
Criminal records follow the formerly incarcerated well into adulthood, and the Clean Slate legislation now before Gov. Hochul would work to mitigate that impact. After repeated attempts, this year Democrats in the statehouse finally passed this law that will automatically seal criminal records of people who avoid subsequent convictions for eight years in the case of a felony, or for three years after a misdemeanor conviction. The bill aims to help people rebuild productive lives after their arrests, rather than being burdened by criminal records when they apply for jobs and housing. Supporters included justice advocates along with business and labor leaders. The law would exempt the most serious crimes, including murder, kidnapping and terrorism.
Alisha Kohn, director of Queer Justice at the Newburg LGBTQ+ Center in the state’s Hudson Valley, was among those advocating for Clean Slate as well as the doomed Youth Justice and Opportunities Act.
Kohn spent 10 years in a male prison for a conviction that landed 11 days after her 18th birthday. If she’d had a clean record, she said in an interview, she “wouldn’t have to face the various obstacles that I do now despite being almost six years home and getting denied jobs and my criminal popping up on my record every time I apply for housing.”
Kohn is leading a coalition of incarcerated people organized through the Newburg LGBTQ+ Center’s Prisoner Advisory Team, who are advocating for criminal and youth justice reforms. Members reside in five New York state prisons, and a majority were sentenced to prison at a young age.
In a letter supporting the Youth Justice and Opportunities Act sent to the Legislature, Marcos Espinal, a 26-year-old advisory team member, described a common circumstance among the incarcerated — an abusive upbringing and exposure to crime at an early age. He went to prison at 17, with what he described as scant attention paid to the environment he grew up in.
“Rarely do we interpret youth’s rage and pain as a response to betrayed hopes,” Espinal wrote. “When confronted with the gritty facts of urban life, those with the best intention, the best education, best certification/degrees, can never understand or know what these youth’s life feel like: siblings being murdered, abuse occurs daily, crime and violence are the norm, and messages of rejection are everywhere.”
