H.R. 3111: Fresh Start Act of 2025 (119th Congress) Bill Summary

This bill, known as the Fresh Start Act of 2025, proposes to amend the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to enhance the process of expunging or sealing criminal records. The main objectives of the bill include:

Establishment of Grants

The bill aims to provide grants to states for modernizing their criminal justice data systems. The goal is to facilitate the automatic sealing or expungement of criminal records, meaning these records can be sealed or erased without requiring any action from eligible individuals.

Implementation of Covered Expungement Laws

The bill introduces the concept of "covered expungement laws." These laws would allow for:

**Automatic expungement or sealing**: Criminal records can be sealed or expunged without individual requests or fees, ensuring that eligible individuals do not face delays due to the inability to pay fines.
The requirement for states to maintain access to sealed or expunged records for law enforcement and courts.

Reporting Requirements

States that receive these grants will need to follow specific reporting guidelines set by the Attorney General, which include:

Reporting the number of individuals eligible for automatic expungement, broken down by race, ethnicity, and gender.
Tracking and reporting the number of individuals whose records have been expunged or sealed each year, also disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and gender.
Keeping records of pending applications for expungement or sealing by the same demographic categories.

Inaccessibility of Data

If a state struggles to compile some of the required data for these reports, it is obligated to create a comprehensive plan within one year to gather as much missing information as possible.

Annual Publications

The Attorney General is tasked with publishing and making available to the public a report each year that summarizes the data reported by the states concerning the expungement and sealing of criminal records.

Summary

Overall, the Fresh Start Act of 2025 is focused on streamlining the legal process of sealing or expunging criminal records in states, making it more accessible, and ensuring that necessary data is collected for monitoring purposes.