“CBS Mornings” Highlights Clean Slate
Each weekday morning, "CBS Mornings" brings viewers the latest breaking news, smart conversation, and in-depth feature reporting — and on October 23, they invited me to join the broadcast.
I sat down with co-hosts Adriana Diaz and Tony Dokoupil to share my story: an arrest for a bounced check while trying to buy food for my family two decades ago. That arrest left me with a record, which still creates barriers for me and my family to this day.
As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one at the table with a story: Tony shared that he too continues to suffer the unnecessary long-term impacts of a record, 5 years later, due to an arrest stemming from a paperwork error.
“I had a Driving Without a License arrest, which I continue to pay for to this day because of higher insurance fees,” Tony told me. “A lot of people are in that situation. I’m lucky in the sense that I have the extra cash to pay that premium, but a lot of people are just beat down by that and can’t get back up.”
Tony is absolutely right. While some people are in slightly better positions to manage the repercussions that come with an arrest or conviction record than others, 1 in 3 people in the United States have a record, and so many of them struggle daily with barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities.
As I told Tony in our conversation: “We have to do better to make sure we’re not defining people by their worst mistake or moment in their lives.”
Looking ahead, I’m hopeful that the next president, congresspeople, governors, and state legislators will take that lesson to heart when thinking about opportunities to pass Clean Slate both federally and in their respective states.
Watch the full clip below.