“For the Record”: Changing the Narrative with a Clean Slate PSA
As part of our “Changing the Narrative” campaign, we produced a Clean Slate Public Service Announcement, titled “For The Record,” that illustrates one of the core principles of our work: “People should not be defined by their records.”
Stigma surrounding people with records can hinder our ability to pass and implement Clean Slate laws — but the impacts to the individual with the record are serious and lifelong. Those perceptions mark people with a scarlet letter long after they’ve paid their debt to society, and that scarlet letter adds to the barriers people face when trying to build a better life.
That’s why narrative change is a key part of CSI’s three-pronged strategy to fulfill our mission, and why we produced a PSA to put a focus on the people, not on their past mistakes.
Our PSA features several people who have lived with the weight of a past mistake. They know the consequences of an arrest or conviction record, and they’ve worked hard to make sure that those records aren’t the ones that tell the story of their lives. Instead, they share the records that have truly defined them: like birth and adoption records, diplomas and degrees, photographs, letters to loved ones, and more.
Help us spread the word: To make sharing the PSA a breeze, we created a social media sharing guide with content for you to use.
Visit our PSA page to watch the full video, find the social sharing guide, meet the people behind the lens, find ways to support Clean Slate, and more.