Launching Utah’s Clean Slate law

SALT LAKE CITY (Feb. 10, 2022) — This is an important day for the state of Utah: Our Clean Slate law officially goes into effect.

Utah’s Clean Slate law will clear about 400,000 criminal records automatically, and is projected to affect hundreds of thousands of criminal records into the future.

Utah’s Clean Slate law will impact Utahns whose cases were dismissed with prejudice, and certain qualifying misdemeanor conviction records for individuals who have remained crime-free for a set period of time.

• Individuals must remain conviction-free for five to seven years (depending on the level of the offense) in order to qualify.
• Covered offenses include misdemeanor A drug possession, most misdemeanor B, and C level offenses, and all infractions.
• Utah’s Clean Slate law will not clear any felony records, domestic violence related offenses, registered sex offenses, simple assault, or DUI offenses. Some of these cases may be eligible for clearance under the petition-based process, but will not be automatically cleared.
• Some individuals will have too many total records to qualify for any automatic clearance under Utah’s Clean Slate law.

This is a very important issue to our administration, and we’re so excited that it’s fully implemented. We believe in the rule of law and we believe in holding people accountable — we also believe in second chances.

Watch our news conference about the law here, and find more resources at cleanslateutah.org.

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