WHEREAS, criminal records impose barriers to trades and licenses, education and student loans, housing and mortgages, credit and business loans, and a broad range of other “post-punishment punishments” that have been called “paper prisons,”1 pardons have been demonstrated to be “no-cost workforce development and community investment policies,”² and in remarks to this Association, the City Solicitor for the City of Philadelphia has called removing criminal records “not just the right thing to do for individuals, and not just the right thing to do for their families: it is a critical and essential neighborhood investment strategy” [emphasis in the original]³; and

WHEREAS, the Philadelphia Bar Association has long championed reforms to the pardon process in Pennsylvania⁴ and the system today is free, open and accessible,⁵ with the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons consistently recommending clemency for over eighty percent (80%) of the applicants whose cases it hears;⁶ and

WHEREAS, as a results of the reforms and the pro bono programs that have arisen across the state, there is a backlog of over 8,000 pardon applications that is growing at a rate of over 1,400 per year, and an officially-estimated wait time of over eleven years for applicants to have their hearing before the Board of Pardons;⁷ and

WHEREAS, this Association has twice urged the Board of Pardons to expedite their hearings⁸ and the Pennsylvania Workforce Development Board has unanimously called on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to “take all requisite steps, including, if necessary, promulgating new regulations, to ensure the prompt review (within one year) by the Board of Pardons of all applications for pardon from Pennsylvanians who completed their sentences five or more years ago on convictions that did not include crimes of violence and who have remained arrest-free ever since”⁹;

WHEREAS, the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons has just circulated for comment proposed regulations that would codify many of the important reforms, but those proposals do not address in any way the large and growing backlog or the recommendations that the Board ensure prompt hearings for pardon applicants such as are suggested in Appendix Two hereto;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Philadelphia Bar Association commends the Board of Pardons for the important reforms it has adopted over the past seven years and for now proceeding to codify those reforms to ensure that they will continue to benefit Pennsylvanians for decades to come.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Philadelphia Bar Association again urges the Board of Pardons to propose and codify such rules as will lead to the Board holding “as many hearings as possible …within one year of filing,” as suggested in the attached proposal.

AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Chancellor and/or the Chancellor’s designee(s) shall communicate the Philadelphia Bar Association’s position as expressed in this Resolution to the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Attorney General, the Board of Pardons, the General Assembly, the Independent Regulatory Review Commission, the Association’s community partners, the media, and the public, and take all such other actions as may be deemed necessary or appropriate to effectuate this Resolution.

PHILADELPHIA BAR ASSOCIATION
BOARD OF GOVERNORS
Adopted: May 21, 2026

ENDNOTES

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¹ Colleen Chien, America's Paper Prisons: The Second Chance Gap, 119 MICH. L. REV. 519 (2020). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol119/iss3/3

² Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, Pardons as an Economic Development Strategy: Evaluating a Decade of Data in Pennsylvania (April 2020). Available at: https://www.economyleague.org/resources/pardons-economic-development-strategy

³ https://www.plsephilly.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Marcel-Pratt-remarks-re-pardon-reform-Jan-2019.pdf

⁴The Association’s Resolutions have called on the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to:

• refrain from Requesting, Investigating or Considering Expunged, ARD and Juvenile Court Records in Pardon Proceedings Involving Non-Incarcerated Applicants (January 2018) https://www.philadelphiabar.org/page/ResJan19_2
• develop policies and procedures that will allow the Board to hear within one year from the date the application is filed as many applications as possible (April 2019) https://www.philadelphiabar.org/page/ResApr19_1
• immediately discontinue the practice of considering the assets, income or wealth of applicants for pardons (October 2019) https://www.philadelphiabar.org/page/ResOct19_1
• provide whatever funds are necessary to ensure that as many applications as possible are reviewed and filed within thirty days of receipt by the Board of Pardons, that as many hearings as possible be held within one year of filing, and that all recommendations for pardon made by the Board of Pardons be delivered to the Governor within thirty days of the date of the votes thereon (August 2020) https://www.philadelphiabar.org/page/ResAugust20_1
• tak[e] immediate steps to formalize the process by which the Governor receives, reviews and decides pardon applications by non-incarcerated individuals; and among other things, to establish, for this Governor and the ones to follow, policies and procedures that will ensure that those applications are decided within ninety (90) days of their favorable recommendation by the Board of Pardons (May 2021) https://www.philadelphiabar.org/page/ResMay21_1
• rescind immediately its policy prohibiting or delaying hearings on applications for clemency where there are unpaid fines, fees, or costs from underlying convictions (June 2021) https://www.philadelphiabar.org/page/ResJune21_1

⁵ On June 17, 2025, Lt. Governor Austin Davis (who chairs the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons) announced that the clemency application was now online, and that the new forms could be submitted by email. “After hearing from nearly 1,500 pardon applicants over the past two-plus years, I’ve seen how many of these folks have worked hard to turn their lives around, make amends and are now contributing positively to their communities. They’re fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles – and many of them have earned a second chance and a clean slate moving forward. At the Board of Pardons, we’ve been working hard, too, to make the clemency application process more transparent and more accessible, and today’s announcement is the culmination of months of work across our Administration.” Press Release, Pennsylvania Office of Administration, Pennsylvania Launches Online Application for People Seeking Clemency (June 17, 2025), https://www.pa.gov/agencies/oa/newsroom/pennsylvania-launches-online-application-for-people-seeking-clem. The enthusiasm for this development was evident: over 240 applications were submitted electronically within just a few weeks. People seeking to clear their record of a criminal conviction can now do so online in Pa., SPOTLIGHT PA (Aug. 18, 2025), https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2025/08/board-of-pardons-online-digital-application-justice-system/

⁶ Official data available at https://www.pa.gov/agencies/bop/about-the-board/about-statistics/statistics-by-year.

⁷ Carl (Tobey) Oxholm III and Zach Keasling, Rebooting Pardons: Once cutting edge, the system is now broken, For the Defense (March 2026) at pp. 34 et seq. Available at https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/PACDL/FORTHEDEFENSE_vol11_issue1_2026/index.php

⁸ Included above at fn. 4.

⁹ https://www.dli.pa.gov/Businesses/Workforce-Development/wdb/Documents/11-9-21-WDB-Briefing-Book.pdf (at 63) This is reproduced in Appendix One.

•   Appendix One
•   Appendix Two