S. 2590 — Fresh Start Act of 2025

This section incorporates the definitions in section 901(a) of title I of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (34 U.S.C. §10251(a)) for purposes of the Act and establishes definitions of additional terms, including “automatic” (i.e., with regard to expungement or sealing of a criminal record, occurring without the state requiring any action from the eligible individual) and “covered expungement law” (i.e., a state law providing for such automatic expungement or sealing, subject to state requirements).

This section establishes a grant program authorizing the Attorney General to award not more than one grant of up to $5 million to each eligible state to develop infrastructure facilitating automatic expungement or sealing of criminal records. A state is eligible if it has in effect a covered expungement law that prohibits delaying expungement or sealing due to failure to pay a fee or fine and submits an application to the Attorney General that, at a minimum, identifies any existing expungement or sealing system, describes how grant-funded infrastructure will enable automatic processes, and estimates the number of anticipated beneficiaries.

This section requires states receiving grants under this Act to implement a covered expungement law by (1) using not more than 10% of grant amounts for research or planning criminal record data infrastructure improvements to enable automatic expungement or sealing; (2) using remaining amounts for such infrastructure implementation; and (3) ensuring the grant covers no more than 75% of implementation costs.

This section requires states receiving grants under section 3 to report annually to the Attorney General, per agency guidelines, data on their covered expungement laws (i.e., state laws providing automatic expungement or sealing of certain criminal records), disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and gender, including: (1) the number of eligible individuals; (2) the number of records expunged or sealed annually since the law's enactment; and (3) the number of pending applications. If data is unavailable in any grant year, the state must submit a plan by year-end to obtain it. The Attorney General must publish the reported data publicly not later than one year after enactment and annually thereafter.