Salt Lake City police on Friday announced that they have expunged more than 74,000 criminal records, clearing a massive backlog that had built up over the past two years.
That backlog ballooned after Utah lawmakers in 2019 passed the “Clean Slate Law,” requiring officials to automatically expunge certain misdemeanor criminal records after five to seven years, as long as the defendant had not been convicted of other crimes.
The law was supposed to go into effect in May 2020 but was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It ultimately went into effect in 2022, resulting in thousands of expungement cases suddenly ready for processing.
As of August 2023, Salt Lake City police alone were still grappling with about 66,000 automatically generated cases, which arrive in “large batches” from the Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification, police said.
Since then, 69,000 have been cleared, along with nearly 5,500 court-ordered expungement requests, which police said are prioritized first.
Previously in Utah, record expungement was only available through request. But that process can be costly, according to Noella Sudbury, founder & CEO of Rasa Legal and Clean Slate Utah. Rasa works to make expungement affordable, offering low-cost legal services to help people scrub their criminal record. Traditional lawyers can charge about $2,000 to $5,000 to help with expungement, she said.
“The benefit of automatic clearance is that it’s free,” Sudbury said, “so the fact that it now has fully happened for these [roughly 69,000] cases is very impactful.”
Salt Lake City police had hoped to clear its expungement backlog by October, but they finished two months ahead of schedule.
“Staff working in records, they sat down and thought about how they were able to handle these more quickly and where can we make this more efficient,” said Detective Michael Ruff, with Salt Lake City police. “We had this task that needed to be done, and we owed that to the community members. So it was our priority.”
To accelerate the expungement process, police also received funding from the Salt Lake City Council.
“As soon as the Council learned about the large number of expungements needing to be processed, we advocated for funding to address this urgent issue,” said Alejandro Puy, councilmember for District 2.
About one in four Utahns have a criminal record, which can prevent people from securing employment and housing. That’s why Sudbury said many clients still file expungement petitions even when they already qualify for automatic expungement, in an attempt to expedite the process.
She noted people without criminal records are 63% more likely to get a callback from employers, and within one year of expungement, people with cleared records see their wages increase by an average of 22%.
“Expungement is an important process in our system, empowering individuals with a fresh start to reach their ambitions and unlock a better future full of hope and opportunity,” Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said in a statement Friday.
For more information about Utah’s clean slate law, and to see if you qualify for automatic record expungement, visit cleanslateutah.org/about.