The Legal Aid Society urged Albany to immediately pass automatic expungement legislation today in response to data released by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) revealing that only 1,758 individuals – out of an estimated 600,000 eligible – have capitalized upon a law implemented in October, 2017 to seal dated criminal records to defend against employment, housing, and other forms of discrimination, reports The Appeal.

“We have huge numbers of people in poverty who have arrests who are basically disenfranchised from working [and] participating in regular activities. Until we actually fix that problem, and address the fact that we’ve been incarcerating more than a quarter of our population for decades, there’s going to continue to be a huge gap in what people are able to achieve,” said Emma Goodman, with the Case Closed Conviction Sealing Project at The Legal Aid Society.