“Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget includes $1.5 million in American Rescue Plan funds for the state’s delayed ‘clean slate’ effort.
Clean slate — a series of laws expected to go into full effect on Jan. 1 until a delay was announced in early December — will erase the criminal records of people with certain low-level convictions.
The funds proposed in Lamont’s budget would add to the $5 million that Connecticut has already allocated for technology upgrades needed in clean slate’s full application. The upgrades will allow the state to ‘send and receive data identifying criminal records eligible for erasure’ and ‘update record systems accordingly.’
Lamont administration officials said during a press conference Wednesday that if the initiative requires more resources, the state would support it.
The proposed dollars for clean slate’s full implementation come after the state began erasing around 44,000 cannabis-related convictions from people’s records earlier this year, as part of the law that legalized cannabis usage among adults. Once fully implemented, clean slate could help nearly 280,000 people, according to a study from The Paper Prisons Initiative.
The governor recently committed to clean slate’s full implementation by the second half of 2023, and officials said Wednesday that they’re ‘working as an executive branch’ to still make that happen.”
