Michigan Clean Slate Summary

Legislation passed date: Public Act 193 signed into law October 13, 2020.

Effective date: April 11, 2021

Implementation Date: April 11, 2023

Appropriation: $20.1 million to fund the coordinated development of criminal record expungement systems across multiple departments and anticipated $2.2 million for ongoing program support and maintenance.

Other relevant legislation:

• Clean Slate for Kids (2021)​ Seal juvenile cases and expunge records if no subsequent offenses.
• OWI Legislation (2021) Legislation makes set asides available for some first time operating while intoxicated convictions. Effective in February 2022.

Records are Expunged: Convictions are set-aside (sealed).

Eligibility Criteria:

Criteria for Automatic Set Aside:

• The applicable time period required for misdemeanors is 7 years since sentence date; felony is 10 years since sentence date or release date from DOC, whichever occurs later.
• Set aside are limited to 2 felony conviction, 4 gross misdemeanors. No limits to lower level misdemeanors.
• There are no criminal charges pending in the MSP CHR database against the individual.
• The individual has not been convicted of any criminal offenses recorded in the MSP CHR database during the applicable time period.

Automatic set aside does not apply to conviction types:

• An assaultive crime
• A serious misdemeanor
• A crime of dishonesty 
• Any other offense punishable by 10 or more years’ imprisonment.
• A violation that involves a minor, vulnerable adult, injury or serious impairment, or death
• Human trafficking
• Operating while intoxicated
• Any traffic offense that causes injury or death. 

Source: Michigan State Police, Michigan Clean Slate 

Agencies Involved:

• Michigan State Police* (state criminal history records repository)
• Michigan State Court Administrative Office
• Michigan Department of Corrections

Status: Implementing

Approach:

• MSP is responsible for generating the list of eligible records for gross misdemeanors and felony convictions.
• MSP sends the list of eligible records to the CAO, which has 30 days to review and grant a set aside order. The court can overrule eligibility if they deem it necessary (e.g., the court determines that there are disqualifying convictions that were not identified by MSP).
• The court has 10 days to notify the arresting agency upon issuing a set aside order.

Courts identify eligible convictions for lower level misdemeanors – rather than MSP – prior to being set aside.

Reported Challenges:                                  

• Matching arrest records in repository with court dispositions. MSP relies on biometric-based and arrest record identifiers to track an individual’s criminal history. These identifiers are not consistently shared/reported by stakeholders through the adjudication process. This results in conviction dispositions that cannot be matched to arrest records in the repository and delays eligibility determinations.
• Identifying the accurate eligibility start date. Eligibility timeframes (10 years for qualified felonies and 7 years for misdemeanors) required MSP to coordinate with the CAO and the Department of Corrections to determine when the most recent sentence was imposed or when a person was released from incarceration – and which is later. Courts consistently provide disposition date but rarely include sentence date. MSP and DOC are currently deploying a system interface to share sentence and release dates and initial results identified 26,000 records eligible for set aside. DOC and MSP staff continue implementation efforts to validate sentence and release dates and to automate sealing notifications to DOC.
• Identifying eligible offenses within each arrest and court event. Michigan applies Clean Slate at the charge level, individuals may have charges that qualify for set asides that occurred as part of the same arrest and/or court event as ineligible offenses. For example, if a person has three charges—two low level misdemeanor charges plus a charge for operating a motor vehicle while impaired—the automated system will reject the entire case because the DUI charge does not qualify for automatic set aside and requires manual research. MSP is working on improving their algorithms to allow eligible charges to be set-aside while retaining the ineligible charge(s) without the need for human intervention/review. MSP estimates there are about 450,000 potentially eligible convictions that fall into this scenario.

Notifications

No process has been set up to notify citizens when records have been successfully set aside by the courts under Clean Slate.

Outcomes to date

As of July 18, 2024:

• >1.4M convictions have been set-aside
  • >1.3M Misdemeanors
  • ~128K Felonies
• 925,392 people have had at least one conviction set-aside in their records
• 286,045 people have had their entire criminal records cleared.