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A Clean Slate in the Age of Coronavirus

Formerly incarcerated Americans are especially vulnerable to job loss amid COVID-19 and the current economic recession due to the stigma of a criminal record, and Rebecca Vallas and Sharon Dietrich argue that they deserve to have their slates wiped clean through expungement and record sealing.

With jobless claims topping an unprecedented 30 million and counting, nearly half of American workers may be unemployed by mid-May.

We are already in a recession; the only uncertainty is how bad it will get — and how long it will last.

Meanwhile, one group of workers who were facing a permanent recession long before COVID-19 is those facing the Scarlet Letter of a criminal record. Indeed, heading into the pandemic, formerly incarcerated people were already facing a 27 percent unemployment rate, higher than any U.S. unemployment rate including during the Great Depression.

The above excerpt was originally published in InsideSources. Click here to view the full article.

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Authors

Rebecca Vallas

Senior Fellow

Sharon Dietrich