Juvenile Law Center

Many states keep records of juvenile delinquency confidential under most circumstances. Some states go even further to require that records not be used against juveniles seeking educational and employment opportunities, an approach the newly adopted American Bar Association Policy on Collateral Consequences supports. Reducing the associated consequences of a juvenile adjudication helps to ensure that youth succeed in adulthood. 

In some states, however, records of juvenile crime—regardless of how minor or severe—follow an individual throughout adulthood and can have far-reaching consequences on a youth’s ability to join the military, pursue higher education, or obtain employment. Those policies, however, fail to appreciate that adolescence is a volatile stage through which the vast majority of teens pass without additional legal difficulties.

Juvenile records can wreak havoc on an individual's future. To limit their effect, we seek to ensure the swift and permanent destruction, or “expungement,” of these documents.

Our attorneys:

• Have worked within Pennsylvania and nationwide to promote expungement policies that are easy for youth to understand and for professionals to implement
• Publish articles to inform attorneys and adolescents of this issue’s significance, support legislative efforts to curb records’ enduring harmful effects, and support litigation and other advocacy to ensure that records don’t enhance criminal sentences
• Partner with Philadelphia E3 Centers to offer educational trainings and assistance to hundreds of young people citywide so that they might petition the court for record expunction

Juvenile Law Center is currently compiling expungement law and policy information for all 50 states to publish a monograph on the state of the law and to promote best practices. Additionally, Juvenile Law Center has recently partnered with the American Bar Association Section of Litigation Children's Rights Litigation Committee to create an expungement pro bono project nationwide to assist youth in obtaining more barrier-free expungements. 

Last updated January 2013