JACKSON, Miss.—A grand larceny conviction from stealing all-terrain vehicles at 17 means Shaquille Taylor has never been legally allowed to own a firearm. He drove from Columbus, Mississippi, to Jackson to attend an expungement clinic at Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center on Sept. 11 after missing one closer to his home.
While some people look forward to new job opportunities after an expungement, Taylor has never had trouble finding work; he is more excited about getting his civil rights back.
The petition he worked to draft on Friday could clear it from his criminal record, giving him the right to bear arms for the first time in his life.
The clinic, organized by the Jackson Department of Human and Cultural Services’ Jobs for Jacksonians program, aimed to help residents submit petitions to have their criminal records expunged. Volunteers helped about 40 people at the clinic which required pre-registration and appointments.
Mississippi law allows people to petition courts to expunge certain misdemeanor or felony convictions from their records. This can help reduce barriers that formerly incarcerated people face with respect to employment, housing and public benefits. However, expungement cannot restore voting rights in Mississippi. The state has 23 disenfranchising crimes, and the only way for a person convicted of a crime on that list to have their voting rights restored is through direct action from either the Mississippi Legislature or the governor.
While Taylor looks forward to restoring his civil rights, event organizers said the work focused on breaking down the barriers a criminal record creates around employment and eligibility for public assistance.
“I hope that (we) can get as many people expunged as possible so that they can seek employment and whatever other benefits that they may need that were being hindered from that prior prosecution,” Jobs for Jacksonians Director Candace Ingram told the Mississippi Free Press.
Beyond criminal convictions, both arrests that never resulted in criminal charges and criminal charges that were dismissed by the courts can show up on background checks, meaning residents can lose out on jobs and housing for crimes they were never convicted of.
“A lot of people have the misconception that expungements are only needed for felony convictions,” Mississippi Center for Justice Economic Justice Campaign Director Charity Bruce Sweet told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 11. “However, I will always emphasize that expungements are just needed for your arrest record in general.”
Some people fail background checks even though they have never been arrested, without knowing why.
“Sometimes you could be doing the right thing, but at the wrong place at the wrong time and find yourself in a situation where now you have some type of offense on your background check,” Sweet said. “A lot of people also don’t realize that, honestly and truly, because it is a public forum, that some people can go and just file charges on you, even if it’s falsely, and that still can impact your arrest record or background check.”
If charged as an adult, as is Taylor’s case, criminal convictions from crimes committed as a minor also show up on background checks, Sweet explained.
Economic Barriers to Expungement
While groups like the Mississippi Center for Justice can help residents create their petitions to have criminal records expunged, the fees associated with expungement can often be a barrier, Charity Bruce Sweet said.
Applicants need to retrieve their court records in order to apply to have criminal records expunged, in addition to paying filing fees for the expungement.
“Sometimes there are fees associated with getting those files, and so if you are already experiencing a hardship or (are) in a cycle of debt or poverty, then it can be very burdensome to get those files,” Sweet said. “And then on top of that, coming to clinics such as these, … I love drafting expungements for free, but when it comes to the filing fees associated after that legal document is drafted, it can also be burdensome.”
Sweet advises applicants to file a motion in forma pauperis to ask the court to waive fees due to economic hardship.
“This is discretionary; the court may grant or not, but realistically, those fees can really stack up, and then even with misdemeanors, sometimes even with the misdemeanors, if it’s $50, sometimes the courts might charge $50 per offense,” even if they stem from the same crime, Sweet said.
Clean Slate Mississippi Launch
In some states, residents do not have to do the work—or pay fees—to have their criminal record expunged under what are called ‘clean slate’ laws, depending on what they were convicted of. Fourteen states and Washington, D.C., now have laws that meet Clean Slate Initiative goals.
Impact Mississippi Director of Operations Emilee Shell told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 11, that the organization used the expungement clinic to soft-launch its clean slate campaign in Mississippi.
“We’ve already been working on this in Mississippi for multiple years, but we have some national support from the Clean Slate Initiative that has a lot of experience helping states get this legislation passed,” Shell said. “Most recently, it just happened in Pennsylvania.”
Shell explained that while there may be a long road ahead to passing clean slate legislation in Mississippi, there are smaller milestones to aim for along the way.
“We know we can’t go all in, but … currently the law in Mississippi states that only one felony can be expunged in a lifetime, so we would like to see an expansion to the number of felonies,” Shell said. “So the landscape is so tough, but that’s something we would also like to see.”
Another expungement clinic will be held in Indianola, Mississippi, on October 9.
Sweet told the Mississippi Free Press that another Jackson expungement clinic will likely be held in Jackson in 2027.
Other Mississippi Center for Justice events can be found here.
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The Mississippi Free Press produced this story through the Mississippi Violence Project, supported by the Solutions Journalism Network. This series digs into Mississippi’s systemic issues and sheds light on responses to them in other communities. Beyond just reporting on problems, these stories interrogate their causes and inspect potential solutions.
