This report presents what is, to the research team’s knowledge, the first-ever evidence from a field randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the effects of expungement. This research also represents, to the research team’s knowledge, the first empirical evidence of the effect of expungement on housing and on life satisfaction outcomes. The research team used a powerful instrument, civil legal aid, to randomize whether participants achieved expungements. Data consisted of two-year follow-up surveys with a response rate exceeding 80% as well as rich administrative data covering two years pre- and post-enrollment. The research team deployed cross-sectional and panel data methods to assess the effect of expungement on recidivism, employment, housing, and life satisfaction outcomes.
The results were unexpected and, for those who advocate for expungement as a matter of public policy, depressing. Achieving expungement caused a statistically significant increase in participants’ optimism that would obtain improved employment and housing. In fact, however, expungement caused no statistically significant improvement in job or housing applications, in other employment outcomes, in other housing outcomes, or in life satisfaction measures. There was also no change in recidivism rates. Overall, then, there was no evidence that expungement improved any life outcome, and the optimism that expungement engendered proved false. For some of the outcomes, particularly those relating to wages and income, confidence intervals were too wide to render implausible policy-relevant effects. For others, however, intervals were tight enough to suggest that only small effects could have evaded detection.
This research team considered several possible explanations for this finding. Although no direct empirical evidence provided reason to favor one explanation over another, one factor common to most was the lengthy waiting periods required for an individual to become expungementeligible. If these waiting periods do in fact play a role in rendering expungement less effective than desired, then perhaps ironically, a partial response could be making expungement more available.
(Author abstract provided.)