Clean Slate is a Public Health Issue

What if your past was the biggest barrier to your health? For millions of people in the U.S., an old arrest or conviction record makes it harder to access the building blocks of a healthy life — like housing, employment, family relationships, and mental health. During National Public Health Week (April 7–13, 2025), we must recognize what the research makes clear: Clean Slate is a common sense public health intervention.

Why Arrest and Conviction Records Affect Your Health

To understand how Clean Slate is a public health issue, we have to understand how public health issues are defined. According to the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, “Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks.” Let's think about it this way: SDOH encompass five main pillars of a person's life:

• Your economic situation,
• Your level of education,
• The healthcare you have access to,
• Where you live, and
• Who makes up your social circle and wider community.

‍Incarceration affects each of these pillars, and over the past decade in particular, the public health sector has come to understand that criminalization is a driver of health. It’s well known that incarceration impacts health – every year in prison shortens an individual’s life expectancy by two years – and those impacts are woven into every aspect of a person’s overall wellness: mental, physical, and emotional.

Jim Parsons VP of the Vera Institute of Justice asserts that “Mass incarceration is one of the most significant drivers of public health in our time.” 

These health impacts are disproportionately placed, too. Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities are disproportionately criminalized, and thus face outsized health impacts from interaction with the legal system.

The research is clear about the impacts of incarceration on health outcomes, but we must look more broadly at the impacts of the full carceral system to gain a better understanding of the health impacts that arrest and conviction records present. 

The Public Health Toll of a Record

Safe, stable housing and living wage employment are both social determinants of health — and arrest and conviction records negatively impact an individual's ability to secure both. 

Clean Slate partners at the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts (PHIWM) implemented a Health Impact Assessment (HIA) of records on people’s ability to secure safe housing, and found that people with a record are 11 times more likely to be homeless. Homelessness has a staggering public health consequence: people experiencing homelessness suffer from early mortality, dying as early as 30 years sooner than their housed counterparts. 

According to our impact survey, 1 in 3 individuals with records found it “extremely or somewhat difficult” to find housing. That’s because 90 percent of landlords use background checks, preventing many people with records from finding stable housing. In the Hampden County HIA, PHIWM found that Black men were denied housing based on records that were over 40 years old.

For people with past arrest and conviction records, finding stable employment isn’t any easier than finding a place to live. 94 percent of employers use background checks, sidelining substantial portions of qualified workers and relegating individuals with records to poverty wage roles, underemployment, or unemployment — undermining their ability to support themselves and their families.

Record Sealing is a Sound Public Health Intervention

Automated record sealing, or Clean Slate, mitigates the harm of arrest and conviction records on public health by expanding access to housing and employment. Our impact survey highlights this effect by showing that in Pennsylvania, Utah and Michigan – three states where Clean Slate policies have been implemented – 42 percent of respondents said that automated record sealing improved outcomes including employment, 24 percent reported improvement in housing, and 22 percent reported improvement in education. The survey also highlighted significant improvements in mental health, self-esteem, and relationships: 35 percent of respondents reported improvement in personal and family relationships, and 34 percent reported improvement in health, mental health, or self-esteem. 

‍As we recognize National Public Health Week, it’s crucial to include Clean Slate in the conversation about health and well-being. Automatic record sealing is a promising public health intervention that expands access to stable housing, living-wage jobs, and better overall health outcomes. Courageous and innovative public health leaders have played a critical role in efforts to reduce the harm done by criminalization. We have an opportunity now to expand the role of public health in our work. We encourage you to reach out to your local public health officials and organizations to discuss how Clean Slate can benefit their work and the communities they serve. Together, we can break down barriers as we endeavor to create healthier futures for communities.